Re-seeding and General Update

First true leaves on my daikon seedlings.

A happy garden hastily photographed due to mosquito attack.

My garden is coming along nicely, and the tomatoes and herbs especially seem to be thriving. Some seeds didn't do so well and I got low germination, so yesterday I re-seeded. The problem was worst among my green beans, where I got less than 50% germination and zero germination of the Carson Yellow Wax variety. I suspect that the seeds were predated in whole or in part and then rotted beneath the soil. My reasoning is that when I dug in the rows I found few seeds, and those that I found seemed to have holes in them and were rotted. (Though the rotting itself could have caused the holes, so who knows).

July 29th:
Re-seeded

• Toscano Kale
• Champion Collards
• Hakurei Turnips
• Scarlet Queen Turnip
• Amour Pickling Cucumber
  
• All varieties of green bean
  

Next I need to pop in a couple of more cabbage plants. I had one more red cabbage plant die on me--for whatever reason they didn't take to the transplanting. My sorrel hasn't germinated, or if it has I can't identify it. I will wait a while longer and then decide if I want to re-plant or maybe put in some Thai basil.

A red sorrel seedling from the Ohio State Website. My sorrel isn't red, but the seedlings should look something like that.

Beyond some low germination, things seem to be going well. I'm getting some leaf predation by flea beetles on my turnips and radishes (though fortunately as that's increased the nibbling on my cabbages has decreased). I might look into getting some floating row cover, but I haven't been able to find it at the couple of stores I checked at. I don't know how much aerial holes will prevent root development--I'm most interested in the roots and if nibbled leaves is the cost of keeping my cabbage un-eaten, I'll happily sacrifice my turnip greens.

My peppers are still playing head-games with me, but haven't died or anything, so that's good. Many of my tomatoes plants have unripe fruit now, byt I've learned not to 'count one's chickens before they hatch' when it comes to tomatoes, so I'm cautiously excited.

Amazingly, I have one pickling cuke! It matured so quickly because I bought it as a large greenhouse seedling. What do I do with one pickling cuke?

Weather-wise it's been a pretty typical few weeks of summer. Hot days in the low- to mid-eighties with rain or a thundershower every 3-4 days. I pulled back on watering a bit, but I'll go back to it to keep the new seedbeds moist. We're going to have some extremely hot weather this weekend, so hopefully it won't damage anything.

Weed-wise, the redroot pigweed is finally starting to pop up significantly. The seedlings are still quite small, though, so they're easy to control. It's the dominant weed, joined also by lambsquarters, purslane, and cheese-weed, and a few grass species in the mulched areas. I think the mulch brought in the grass seed--I should make more of an effort to identify it, but I usually pull it out before it's big enough to do so conclusively.