Steph 
I can’t believe it’s already time for my raised garden bed progress week 3 update. This has been a productive week. I really can’t wait to start getting produce. Although I love the ease of direct sowing, I’m kind of regretting not starting indoors early this year. It has gotten so hot so fast, it feels like there should be fresh vegetables. As I was working outside yesterday it was 92 degrees. This was on the thermometer. The ridiculous humidity hiked the “feels like” index up to a scorching 99 degrees, and it was still officially the first week in June.
My raised garden beds have made a lot of visible progress this third week. I trellised the tomatoes this past week and we fenced the pea and bean patch because of those pesky rabbits that destroy the foliage the second it appears. Within the next week I will have to trellis the zucchini & beans before they start to take over the bed. It seems like I could be getting close-ish to my first zucchini blossoms. I want to have them trellised by then if possible. I’m considering a couple of options for trellising these. I really screwed my zucchini up last year when I was working to trellis it and somehow pulled the whole plant up. It’s like a special gift I have, not a gift I’d necessarily recommend, but it’s definitely mine.
I am starting to get concerned about my eggplant and Anaheim chili peppers because they haven’t peeked up yet and they’ve had plenty of time. I think it’s time to go ahead and pop another couple of seeds in the ground in those spaces for good measure. I know I’m in the minority here, but I usually just put in one seed because I’ve experienced a pretty high germination rate historically. The weather has been favorable for germination, but I can’t be sure that one of the birds hasn’t eliminated the possibility.
My okra is plodding along. No rapid growth yet there for sure. It seems to be a good bit behind the zucchini and lima beans but I’m sure it will hit it’s stride soon. I threw some bamboo poles into the space with the peas to try to decide how to trellis these. For some reason I thought I had planted the bush variety, but now it’s clear that they are vining. I’ll have to find a good way to trellis them so they don’t take over the bed completely, which climbing beans and peas will.
Although 1/3 of the soil mixture is compost and it’s still early, I’m thinking I might start adding some organic fertilizer pretty soon to make sure they are getting everything they need. I wasn’t able to find a nice mix of compost products this year and I am behind on my own composting. All of my beds are composted with Black Kow this year, when I usually have a nice mix of a variety of composts. I would greatly preferring mixing types for the best results. I don’t know why compost options are so limited in my area, but this is my reminder that I really need to step up my compost game to have great options for my plants and vegetables.
I can’t wait to see how everything looks in just a week. I’ll document everything in my raised garden bed progress report for week 4. I’m hoping to see some zucchini blossoms by then, and maybe even some cucumber blossoms. I also need to decide how I’m going to trellis my peas since all I’ve done so far is throw some bamboo sticks in the ground.
