The sun is shining in a brilliant blue sky here today and, knowing I had to nap this afternoon for night shift, I took advantage of the weather this morning and topped up my potato bed. This is my first year planting potatoes here and I created a semi-raised bed framed on all sides and sunk into the ground to house the plants. I mentioned before (here and here) about the bed and how I wasn’t sure how it  would do but it seems to be quite happy. It sits in shade for the morning, getting dappled sunlight around noon and early afternoon and then receives a bit more sun mid and late afternoon into early evening. I have three plants that are really taking off, poking up within a day or so through each new layer of growing mix that I put down (I’m using this method). Today I noticed four new sprouts with tiny leaves and was loathe to cover them but I’m optimistic now that all of the potatoes planted will send up shoots that find their way to the surface and become healthy, happy plants. I had previously been worried that only the three thriving plants were going to grow as they were the only ones I could see. If I gently dug down into the dirt I was able to find sprouts from other potatoes but nothing that looked promising. Now I just have to sit and wait.

The rhubarb patch is also thriving. This spring I moved it from a full sun location just inside the fence by the driveway and placed it at the back of the yard, also against the fence, in a location that, like the potato bed, only starts receiving sun partway through the day. I moved the frame that had been around the patch in its original location and took it to the new spot. I also took some of the soil but filled in most of the new patch (which I dug deeper and sunk the frame into the ground a little) with the same mix as my raised gardens and the potato bed, equal parts of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost/manure. My rhubarb bed was happy last year but this year he is ecstatic. I think I have a batch of blueberry-rhubarb jam calling my name and begging to be made. Strawberry-rhubarb would be wonderful but I have a bag of frozen blueberries as well as two containers of fresh. (That’s a jar of blueberry-rhubarb jam in the middle of the trio in my header.)

For all the thriving being done by my potatoes and rhubarb, however, my beans are not faring so well. There are a few plants in the garden that are going to need some attention (from me, not the bugs who are already paying attention to them) and some re-planting, but the beans are what I noticed today.

I have two rows of 10 plants, I think, and it’s only the 5x2 block closest to the side of the bed that seems to be affected. So far. I noticed a dead ladybug-looking insect on the dirt right between the two plants shown above. Is he the culprit? He was a darker red, almost brown, with dark orange spots that looked more like o’s (they weren’t solid circles). When I google, it’s highly likely that he’s some type of bean beetle. Maybe I’ll have to move one of my borage plants closer to the beans and also a rosemary, since those are supposed to help. And marigolds can’t hurt either. I also have something that is lopping off my bok choy leaves at dirt level (a cut worm?) and just leaving them laying there. And something is eating a hole out of my watermelon leaves, leaving just a rim all the way around. Gardening is such a frustrating learning experience.

It’s Sunday and therefore Quotable Sunday over at Toni’s blog. Today’s quotes are garden-related because it’s only fitting.

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
     — Hanna Rion

Weather means more when you have a garden.  There’s nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.
     — Marcelene Cox

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.
     — Benjamin Disraeli

It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening.  You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not.
     — W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish, 1936

It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience.  It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn’t a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong?  Maybe nothing.
     — Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts, 1981

The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.
     — Author Unknown