May the 4th be with you!

(A day early, oops!) Nothing special to commemorate the day in the garden, just had to start with that. Still overcast a bit, breaks in the clouds, got rather nippy last night. Apparently May is going to be cooler and have more rain than previous years. That's fine by me, as it pushes summer temps back to where they should be..in June and July. Typically we have 'May Grey' and 'June Gloom' so it may still get that way given the reports. I call it Northwest Weather.

Watsonia is chugging along nicely, you can see the other branches behind the bloom spike with a bud or two showing already. Going to be a wonderful pink show!

This is the rose bush near the school, wonderful open loose, two tone flowers. It looks really familiar but again, can't place the name of it. The bush I had pictures of previously is to the left of this one. They kind of run together in the middle.

The other flower is Duranta or Skyflower, Brazilian Skyflower as I learned it. Sort of a hedge growing around a part of the school building and under some trees. It would have more flower and more color if they weren't shaded. I do a couple of laps up and down the sidewalks while I wait for the kids to get out of school so when this flowered I thought from a distance it was Myrtle then saw the flower shape and color and had to refresh my memory on what it was.

Last evening's foray to the garden. There's one cutworm left somewhere. I tried to break off the one leaf on this onion and ended up pulling the whole thing. I did discover a tiny cutworm inside one of the leaves and crushed it but this morning there was still damage on some of the tiny onions toward the front. 

I pulled a few cilantro leaves and laid them around the onions in the hopes of it being a deterrent but to know avail. Still some tips being eaten. Just the tips. I did see a hoverfly moving around the peas but sorry little buddy, no aphids over there for you.

Garden is thriving so far, with all the coffee grounds I spread around it sort of stinks when I get my nose down close to examine the onions. Really looking forward to the tomatoes getting going. That one I put in recently is doing good and so is the one behind the cilantro. They're all doing good really which is a testament to what a sturdy plant it is.

 

The garlic is still worrying me though, it's going to take a while for the fertilizer to work and the coffee grounds, and the damage isn't going to go away overnight. Just hope I'm not keeping it too wet is all and that turns out to be the issue. Garlic prefers sandier soil so the really rich soil in the bed may be a problem.

If it's going to be a wet cloudy spring month can't do anything about it. So weird the lettuce behind the cilantro is moving a lot faster than the plants in full sun. Guess that variety really likes being shaded more. It did fantastic in the south bed for sure. Maybe that's just going to be the lettuce and greens bed.

See, garden planning sometimes is a matter of what does better where.