I took a week of vacation last week away from home and the garden. I was a bit worried what would happen if my garden was left by itself at the peak of the season. The weather turned out to be windy and wet (and so did my vacation 🙁 ), and below is a series of photos showing what I found when I returned home, but be warned – it’s not a pretty sight 😉 … actually it’s rather awful.
First of all most of the apples blew right of the apple trees before they had a chance to mature, due to the strong wind:
Fortunately my girlfriends dad cleaned up the lawn while we were away – thanks Peder! 😀
This pile of rotting apples is a heaven for sugar craving wasps, but I managed to save some of the apples for jam. There are still some left on the trees so I think we’ll be able to make a decent amount of jam:
Before I left I wrapped my chicken coop project in a tarpaulin and it stayed on the coop the whole week, although the sharp edges punched a few holes in it:
I’m really looking forward to some dry weather so that I’ll be able to finish the project.
The rain water collection tank proves that the weather has been wet, wet, wet. 550 liters in a week:
It turns out that if bird droppings end up in a tank like this you’re likely to get a problem with bacteria if the water is standing still for too long. This can be a problem if you water crops which are not boiled before you eat them since the bacteria is carried into the kitchen.
My bean trellis took a hit by the strong wind and almost collapsed:
But the beans are have been growing fast and new ones are still developing:
My sweet corn plants have also been hit by the wind and one of the plants fell over. Not a pretty sight but hopefully we’ll get some fruits before the end of the season:
The squash plant didn’t waste any time – compare the fruits with my foot to the right:
The fruit near the ground is huge! But I knew that would happen. You need to check the size of your squash fruits every second day during the peak of the season. The same thing happened with my squash a couple of years ago.
Two different kinds of caterpillars in my broccoli?? Jebus… You guys must be hungry. It doesn’t even look tasty anymore:
The strawberry plants decided to grow all over the place:
and the tomato plants got hit with blight and the fruits are rotting… Sigh. :
I hope I can do a bit of damage control by removing wilted leaves and rotten fruits, to help the healthy tomatoes through the season.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a thriving cucumber plant with flowers and healthy fruit:
but my saved pea seeds looked far from healthy. I made the mistake of throwing the pods in a cardboard box with the lid on, so that the moisture couldn’t escape freely which resulted in mold, and some of the peas even started germinating! 2 x sigh… :
To finish off this crappy status, all of the potato fruits fell off and started rotting on the ground:
But then again – the flowers are nice:
I’ll leave you with a lonely bee on a white Cosmos flower:
and a video that show the fencing around my garden that is supposed to shield off against the wind, dammit:
