Despite the incessant rain and unstable weather, despite the fluctuations in temperature, my garden is doing/has done a good job of producing zucchinis, strawberries, raspberries, and black currants. We won't get red currants this year, but we will get gooseberries. The pumpkin plants are starting to grow pumpkins, and we'll see how far they come along by the end of August. We will need more sun and warmth for them to grow and thrive. My potato and carrot plants will also yield potatoes and carrots, but they're not ready yet. Ditto for the tomato plants; I planted cherry tomato and full-size tomato plants. I'm unsure how well the string bean plants will produce; the slugs seem to like the leaves and chew them up so that the plants themselves become stressed and eventually die. The three corn plants are growing, but I don't hold out much hope for their producing full ears of corn before the summer warmth is over.
I post these garden updates for myself as much as for my readers. It helps me to keep track of my garden's progress each season. I definitely had beginner's luck with my fifteen corn plants during the first garden season; they grew well and produced at least twelve good ears of corn. It's been downhill ever since for success with corn. With each new gardening season, you learn something new and what not to focus on. The past two years have seen a lot of rain during the summer months here in Oslo, which is something that may force me to re-evaluate what I plant in the coming years.
One of the more interesting things that happened this year--I empty the compost bin at the end of the gardening season and spread the new earth onto the raised beds in preparation for the following year's plantings. Then I begin to fill the compost bin with the dead plants and refuse from the current season. I did that last autumn with the dead marigolds and cornflowers; amazingly enough, they began to grow and blossom on one side of the compost bin this year, as you can see from the second to last picture when you scroll down. So they must have seeded and been quite happy during the winter months, covered with new compost and kept warm until the spring. I also planted my giant sunflower plants (grown from seed in the greenhouse) behind the compost bin; I use the bin to support them and it is working out well so far.
Here are some photos of how the garden looks right now:
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| Astilbe plant--red goat's beard |
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| the pumpkin patch |
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| behind the greenhouse |
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| tomato plants |
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| zucchinis growing |
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| more zucchinis |
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| raspberry bushes |
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| gooseberry bush |
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| flower garden |
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| close-up of flower garden |
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| strawberry patches (harvest is pretty much over for this year) |
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| rose mallows growing |
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| Veronica spicata plant (the bees love it) |
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| a rare sunny day in the garden this year |
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| lots of raspberries this year |
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| a type of marigold |
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| sunflower plants behind the compost bin, and marigolds and cornflowers to the left |
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| black currants |
