Garden Update: 5 weeks

It's been quite a while since we started our Trout Lake Garden Experiment, so I thought it might be time for an update. How is our little experiment progressing so far?


Potato beds. The potato look very good from the top, but time will tell if the plant looks as good below the soil.


Peppers. In our haste to finish the garden before our vacation, we only had enough fence material to protect 3 out of the 4 plants. Thankfully it seems nothing has found that fourth plant interesting enough to taste yet.


??? This is what happens when you "plant and forget". There was supposed to be something in this bed, but we waited too long to weed. We never could find any of the things we actually planted.


Greens bed. The lettuce bed actually turned out reasonably well. The far section is a mesclun mix, the middle is romaine lettuce, and the near section is spinach. It's amazing what a difference in appearance weeding makes. Before we weeded, the bed looked like a mess; afterward it looked great. So great, in fact, that the day after we weeded the deer ate EVERY SINGLE ROMAINE PLANT. So far it looks like there's enough root structure remaining to regenerate.


Lettuce bed (closeup)


Tomato. Apparently deer like tomato plants. It took them a while to decide it was good enough to eat; it must not be one of their favorites, though, since the munching has been sporadic.


Beets. The Clausens told us that they had the best luck with root crops, so we have high hopes for these beets.


Basil.

But by far the best success has been with... the cover crop. Of course, the one thing we have great success growing is the one that is "filler".





Despite the additional nutrients that a cover crop will add to the soil when it is incorporated, and despite the wind and soil erosion protection that it provides, by far the best thing that buckwheat did for our garden is give the deer something else to eat!

Single deer in the buckwheat.


"Hey, don't eat it all without me!"


Two deer in the buckwheat.

- Mike (& Corinne)