Transplanted raspberries have started putting out new growth. This bodes well! For one thing, it means that they didn’t die out entirely. For another thing, if they can put out new canes this year, it means we might have fruit next year, instead of the year after that!
Cucumber trellises are built. I made them from scrap wood that a neighbor gave me and left-over pieces of EMT from the dome build. Yay free!
I got them in none too soon! The cucumbers had already started to sprawl a bit, and one even has started making tiny fruit!
Corn is getting about waist-high, maybe a little bit taller. The “three sisters” setup really seems to have some advantages. The fast-growing squash is doing a great job of providing a natural shade cover to keep weeds down. The peas are climbing up the corn stalks just like they’re supposed to. It’ll be interesting to see how the yield of this patch compares to the solo-planted squash and peas I planted, although a 1:1 comparison won’t really be possible without more data-crunching than I care to do.
The tomatoes have also started fruiting, finally. Tomatillos have been at it for a few weeks now. No roma tomatoes or cherries, but the slicers have gotten a start.
I have also upgraded my watering situation. I previously bought a $15 oscillating fan-type sprinkler, but it stopped working adequately after only about a week of use. I don’t know if it has something to do with minerals in my (well) water, or maybe low water pressure or something, but the jets on one whole side stopped working, and it also stopped oscillating.
I bought a tripod-mounted impact-style sprinkler instead. At $40, the tripod was pretty flimsy, but the impact head is where the magic is. It does a great job of providing even water over the entire coverage circle. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cover the whole garden, so I have to move it every time I water, but I’m hesitant to spend another $40, plus the $30 or so in fittings and hoses it would take to put another sprinkler in. The only hassle is that the tripod has to be staked down or the entire thing falls over, so every time I have to move it, I have to re-stake it too. I would recommend a sprinkler like this to anyone who has to water a large-ish area.
One note: the sprinkler came with adjustable clips that set the ends of the head’s motion. This allows the head to cover just a partial circle if you want. The sprinkler goes to the end of the arc throwing water in a long-distance pattern, and then returns, throwing water in a shorter pattern. The problem I had was that the coverage was always just slightly less than a full circle. There was always a tiny slice of coverage that didn’t get water, even when the clips were set the closest to a full circle that you could get. I solved this problem by simply removing the clips so that the sprinkler head continued in a full circle and never “returned”. I set the lever that selected between “long throw” and “short throw” to the “long throw” setting because I found it to provide the most even coverage, even at closer range.
