Early August Pallet Beds

After all of the struggles and ideas and attempts at making this whole pallet bed thing work, I thought it might be nice to give you am update on their progress!  Now, remember that we got a late start on planting all three pallets out, so they may be a little behind still, but I think they're doing great!

Early July 2013

Early August 2013

Vast improvement, right?

Let's look at what's working first by starting with the bush beans which are incredibly happy!

I even harvested our first few beans off of a few of the plants!  OK, OK, it was only three ounces, but hey! It was three ounces!  Every ounce counts!

Next up, we have the soy beans, which are also doing well!  Not quite ready for harvest, but still growing well and producing several little pods!  This is our first year growing organic/non-GMO soy beans so I'm just plain happy they're doing anything!

Next up is the chard.  Most of it is doing well and looking healthy, though I haven't harvested any of it yet.  I'm thinking that, due to (what I perceive as) their delicate root system, I will probably cut leaves when it's time as opposed to simply pulling them off in the hope that the plants will continue to grow well after harvesting a bit.

Look at that chard growing straight
up out of that pallet!

Along the tops of the pallets, if you'll remember, I planted (and replanted) some cucumbers.  Unfortunately, none of the cukes in my yard seem to be doing very well this year.  However, these little White Wonders are doing the best out of all of them!  Who knew?!  The Lemon Cukes in the red pallet aren't as far along as these guys, but they are doing pretty well, too.

Now, along the bottom of the red and blue pallets, I decided to plant some Butternut Squash and some of my favorite Mystery Melons and guess what?  They are both doing excellent!  The Butternuts don't have any actual fruit on them yet, but check out that little flower cluster!

And the Mystery Melons are forming the tiniest of fruits! YAY!

OK, onto the not-so-exciting shots...the yellow pallet is quite boring right now, but it was also the last pallet planted out so it's well behind the others.  Also, I only planted chard and spinach in this bed assuming it would get it's feet under it super late and hoping that we might just have some later greens to harvest.  So, from that perspective, it's doing great ;-)

Last, but not least, is a failure of sorts.  I have learned that Spinach does not like being planted in the blue pallet and I think it's because it gets too much direct sun.  It just went straight from germination to seed.  I have not, however, given up on it growing in the pallets entirely.  Since all of the pallets face different directions and get very different light, I am hopeful that the spinach in the yellow pallet will fare better.  We'll see.  So, maybe it's not a failure, but a learning instead.

There you have it!  So far, so good, and getting better every day!

xoxo,

M

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