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Thursday, July 7, 2022

Status Update on the Vegetable Garden - Sequim, WA - The Good News and the Challenges

    It has been 9 days since I wrote my first garden journal update here in Sequim, WA and this post provides an update.  I've got some good news and I've encountered some challenges but all is fair with Mother Nature.  

    First the good news.  The seeds I planted are all coming up.  This includes radishes, beets, spinach, beans and dill in this raised bed.

 
     Seeds are also sprouting in the 10 gallon planting bags.  Left to right:  1st bag, nasturtium and catnip; 2) Big Kahuna bush beans; 3) lettuce; and 4) carrots.
 

 
     In my last blog post entry, I expressed concern about the lack of bees in my neighborhood so we installed a "bee spa" to attract the solitary bees.  I did check with my neighborhood HOA and they confirmed my suspicions that honeybee hive keeping is not allowed, or any type of animal "husbandry" for that matter.  My previous neighborhood in Forney, TX also did not allow keeping farm animals but we had a privacy fence around the entire one acre lot and we kept hens for fresh eggs.  HOAs were not our concern back then.  Unfortunately here in our Sequim neighborhood, we have a smaller lot and no privacy fence, so we'll have to follow the rules. 
 

 
     This beehouse attracts solitary bees such as:

  • Mason Bees (metallic, solid black, and other colors) have a cell partition material of mud and chewed plant material.
  • Resin Bees (striped) have a cell partition material of plant resins, sand, and pebbles.
  • Leafcutter Bees (striped) have a cell partition material of cut or chewed leaf sections.
  • Carder Bees (black and yellow, or black and white) have a cell partition material of compacted fibers, hair, resin, and sand.
  • Carpenter Bees (various colors) have a cell partition material of compacted sawdust.
  • Masked Bees (various colors) have a cell partition material of a plastic-like membrane.
 
 
 
        I placed rocks in the bee waterer to give the bees something solid to land on when they get a drink. 
 
  
 
 
    Now for a challenge.  Unfortunately the underground irrigation system in our front yard was periously close by where the garden fence posts were drilled.  Apparently one of the double PVC pipes was bent sideways and the water pressure finally cause the pipe to fail,  so my poor husband dug up both sides of the post trying to find the leak.  After the leak was located and fixed (a total of about 3 hours of labor), everything is working well.  

    

    Unfortunately, the pipes were located on the inside of the post, and he started digging on the outside of the post first - double work. 

 Here is the repaired piping.  The hole was back filled and all is well now thank goodness.


    Another challenge I'm facing now is insect pests.  I read an article in the Sequim Gazette this week (very fortuitous) regarding Leaf Miners.  This article could not have come at a better time. As stated in the article: 

"Leaf miners are one of the most common insect problems in Pacific Northwest gardens. They affect a large number of vegetable crops such as spinach and bush beans as well as ornamental plants and weeds. Although a common plant problem, leaf miners are fairly host-specific and result from the larvae of a variety of flies, moths, and beetles.  The spinach (or beet) leaf miner is the larval stage of a small gray insignificant fly about ¼ inch long with prominent black hairs. The fly lays eggs, usually on the underside of leaves of susceptible plants including spinach, beets and chard and broad-leafed weeds such as lamb’s quarters."

 https://www.sequimgazette.com/life/get-it-growing-leaf-miners/

 

    Unfortunately for me, these plants make up a lot of my garden.  I will now have to wage war.  New bean sprouts are already being attacked. 

    The cabbage leaves are also being attacked.  It is possible that slugs may be contributing to my woes as well.

 Lower broccoli leaves and swiss chard leaves are also being chewed on but it is not catastrophic.


    I observed that the warm weather crops I planted (which include tomatoes, different varieties of peppers, zucchini and yellow squash, as well as cucumbers and eggplant,) are not experiencing any of the problems.  I actually have tiny tomatoes growing on four of the six tomato plants.



        The first Bell Pepper has popped out and more little flowers have emerged since last week.


    The zucchini and yellow crookneck squash are growing well.

    The zucchini leaf is bigger than my hand now.  It grew a lot this past week.

     

    One of the cucumber plants has grown enough that I can wrap it around the its back trellis.

 

     Final overall photos for use to compare next week's growth.  All of the tomatoes and most of the peppers have cages now. 









    Overall I would say we have enough sunlight (that was a concern because the trees cast long shadows in the early morning and evening.  I only have to sprinkle the beds once a day so watering is very easy and we are not planning on installing an automatic watering system like we had in Texas (which was absolutely needed there due to our hotter than heck summer weather).  Now - on to the next week of gardening and pest diversion!


Tuesday, June 28, 2022

First Gardening Blog At My New Home Located on the Olympic Peninsula in Sequim, WA and My Looming Bee Crisis

    It has been a long while since I have entered a vegetable gardening post (over 5 years!).  We finally completed our last move to our new home so I've decided to start the blog back up again to journal my new gardening experiences.  I'll definitely be learning new things.  We purchased our retirement home in 2019 in Sequim, WA on the Olympic Peninsula and made our final cross country move from north Texas in October 2021.  We made numerous cross country trips to update the 1980 house which needed new flooring, lighting, updating in general as well as clearing out the extremely overgrown front and back yards.  Large trees that were either sick or dead were also removed (but the up side is that the tree removal provided extra sunshine for a vegetable garden).

    While I was familiar with growing two vegetable gardens a year in north Texas, I'm learning that Sequim, WA vegetable gardening is entirely different.  Although both north Texas and Sequim are in Zone 8 (orange), that designation refers to coldest temperatures and frost dates.  The difference I'm learning with Sequim, is that warm soil temperatures (60 degrees) dictate success for many of the warm weather crops such as tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and peppers.  


    With that in mind, my husband built several raised beds as well as a protective 6' fence to surround it since my new neighborhood has a large deer population.  The deer eat anything and everything and I'm going to do another blog post on what plants they won't touch versus "deer resistant" plants that they didn't show any hesitation in decimating.  You'll notice the twin fawns are enjoying my planted perennials in this photo.

    Fawns were also watching my husband while he was working on the fence in anticipation of some tasty vegies.

     Here is the vegetable garden area, the photo is taken from our front porch deck on 6/26/22.  The garden was planted on 6/18/22.  We purchased approximately 2 yards of garden soil and compost mixture in bulk.  Each yard of topsoil weights approximately 2100 lbs for a total of 4000 lbs of soil.

    Vegetable plants in these beds include cucumbers, cabbage, broccoli, and Swiss chard.  The bed with seeded plants coming up contain, radishes, beets, spinach, and beans.

    The beds on this end contain several varieties of tomatoes (we tried to select varieties with early maturation dates to ensure harvest before temperatures drop and daylight recedes too much.)  We also planted several varieties of bell peppers and jalapeno peppers.  Eggplant, yellow squash and zucchini too.

     On this end, we added 5 planting bags that are the 10 gallon size.  In these bags we planted seeds for carrots, lettuce, more beans, dill, catnip, and nasturtiums. 


    Seeds planted in 2022.

    I'm adding a few photos from this morning 6/28/22 to show additional growth.  Broccoli, cabbage, Swiss chard and cucumbers in the back.

 
 
    In this photo you can see the two back climbing grates that were made from leftover hog wire for the cucumbers to climb on.
 
 
 
    The tomato plants have their new cages supplied by my sweet next door neighbor!  Bell and jalapeno peppers, eggplant, squash and zucchini.  We also have an Olympic fig tree we will be planting in the back yard.  We had a brown turkey fig tree in Texas.

 
 
 


The beans began sprouting this morning to join the radishes, beets, and spinach.


    Finally I want to discuss a looming and potentially huge problem facing my garden and the possibility I won't be able to produce "fruiting" vegetables at all (those plants that need pollination which include, tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, and cucumbers).  We live in a golf course community and I suspect that a lot of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are all being used liberally to keep the greens beautiful.  Unfortunately, I've observed we have no honeybees!  I do see a few small bumblebees and other solitary bees, but definitely not what I'm used to having when I gardened in Texas.  I'll be checking with my Home Owners Association to get their position on me potentially keeping a small bee hive near the garden, but I am skeptical.  In the meantime I have planted several good perennials that will hopefully help to bring in the solitary bees I've seen.  Here's what I've planted so far.

French and English Lavender are planted right next to the garden.  They should be pulling in bees but I rarely see any bees on them.

    My volunteer snapdragon from last year came up again in the driveway and I continue to water it.  It is over 3' feet tall.  Snapdragons should also be pulling in bees.


    Salvia Meadow Sage is a perennial and it survived in the backyard deck pot over the winter.  I severely pruned it in the early spring.

    I have three large pots of English lavender blooming beautifully in the front yard next to the garage.

    I have a large pot of herbs with flowering chives and thyme that have flowers also attractive to bees.  The plants in this pot also lasted over the winter and came back well after a severe pruning in the early spring.

 

    I planted several of the salvia greggii, the hot lips variety.  I grew these plants in north Texas and they were fantastic for bring in pollinators.

    Even my hanging strawberry plant should be bringing in bees.  See all the beautiful flowers?  But I have very few strawberries, which means very little pollination.  I fear my fruiting vegetables will suffer the same fate. 


     Finally, and unfortunately, I actually do have some pollinators setting up shop literally on our garage light.  But they are HORNETS.  If it were any other place other than the location where we walk by every day, I would leave them be, but the nest will be removed today. 

 

 


    In the end, I have ordered a bee house and a deck "bee waterer" for the vegetable garden to help attract solitary bees and I'm investigating adding a small hive.  I'll finish today's post with early morning and late afternoon photos of the sun on my garden.  I'm looking forward to getting gardening again and I'm hoping I can overcome my pollinator crises.


    Very Early Morning Sunrise

 


    Evening Sun




Saturday, December 5, 2020

Olympic Peninsula Mushrooms in My Sequim, WA Yard. 2020

Nature Diary Post:  I recently moved to the Olympic Peninsula from north Texas and have been observing the different kinds of mushrooms located here versus those native in my old home in the Dallas area.  These specimens are just a few examples of the mushrooms that I've managed to snap pictures of in my yard.  There are so many around the entire area and I look forward to exploring and discovering more about them.  I have no idea whether these mushrooms are poisonous or not.  I simply wanted to document their existence until I can identify them. 

The first three photos are the same mushroom taken several days apart to show the changes.  They were located in my front yard and have a thick beige cap with a brown center and a thick white stem.




The next two photos show many white mushrooms emerging in the front yard with a tall cap and a mature specimen of the same variety.


 

The next two photos show a group of mushrooms and then a close up of the cap.  These mushrooms were also located in the front yard.  They do not have a thick cap like the first photos although the coloring is similar.


 

The next two photos show very tiny green mushrooms were very unusual - these were also in the front yard.  These were one inch or less in height.




Another group of tiny mushrooms with tiny thin stems.

 

A lone small white mushroom with a pointed cap, also in the front yard.

 

In my backyard was a huge cluster of white mushrooms.

 

Here is a picture of the same white mushroom that has been broken off showing the underside of the cap.


Another grouping of mushrooms, also in the backyard, with a dark gray cap and white stem.

 

Another variety in the backyard.  These are older and getting worn and weather beaten.