The semester has ended

A little straw around these tomatoes and sweet peppers would have kept
the weeds down and moisture in the soil.  Only four or five tomatoes and
two peppers survived.

This is my experiment for finding a way to self water the plants.  The weight
of the water in the tube would cause the water to bubble out of the saturated
soil.  I don't want to saturate the soil anyway.  I think this piece of PVC will
be used next year to grow lettuce.  Mulch is the answer to keeping soil moist.

July 16- Small watermelon starting to form.

The semester is over and although Plant Biology was a pretty easy class, it took a lot of my time. The garden suffered.  On the bright side, I learned plenty about what makes plants grow and what they need to be healthy.It turns out, plants need only a few things to be healthy- food, water, protection.  Since the whole point of this blog was for us to read in the spring before we plant.
When I'm putting the snowblower away and starting to think about vegeatables- although we grow mostly fruit don't we?

It all starts with soil. The spot we use seems to have pretty good soil.  I will have to ask if they do anything for the soil before planting.  If I want more, I will have to add some composted manure in the spring before I plant.  We might want to consider planting in a different direction to follow the contour of the land and make better use of the natural drainage.
This year we got very little rain.  The location is pretty moist and the other people growing there didn't have too much problem but we sure dried up our plants.  They went into drought mode.  The stomata closed off and transpiration didn't happen very well so photosynthesis didn't make much food.  They seem to have rebounded and we may have a nice late harvest as long as the frost holds off.  So  how to prevent that next year?  My plan is to use mulch.  I think the best mulch is going to be straw, preferably something that has been used as animal bedding.  Rabbit poop is very high in nitrogen and bird poop is good too. Cow and horse poop will have more humus in it which isn't so bad either.

Ju;y 29-  Same watermelon getting bigger