Thursday, September 9, 2010

Ain't No Sunshine

Blame lack of Sunshine as the primary reason behind my poor harvest this garden season.
So far I have gotten 7 quarts of stewed Tomatoes, a handful of deformed curly -q Cukes, about a dozen fair sized Zucchini and Summer squash. Peach trees had a small harvest made even smaller due to flying rats. We were robbed in both broad daylight and rhythmic calm of an inner city night. In years past playing children and hours spent in the garden posted our sent as a deterrent. Or it could be that this upcoming Winter will be a hard one. 



Early afternoon on the back half of thirtyfivebyninety.
Notice the shadows in both the foreground and the right side of the tomato plant against the trellis.
Total amount of direct sunshine in this part of the garden is > 3 hours.




Raised bed just to the right of the beds pictured above.
Same day, same time, same lack of direct sunshine.
Cantaloupe growing on trellis along with Roma toms, and a volunteer Sunflower.
Sunflower is a direct descendant of hybrid Mammoths that I planted 9 years ago. Sunflower fence along the white picket in the background. Tallest is over 18 feet high.
Interesting to note that this year is the year that all the heads were numerous but very small.
Enjoyed by Finches.



Shadows, shadows, shadows.
Too many cool nights and rainy days.




Neighbor's 100 plus year old Maple tree shaped like a broccoli stalk.
2 years ago paid out $350 to have it trimmed with moderate results. Upside was that no limbs fell on our 81 year old dilapidated garage these past few Winters.
Notice the moss on both the roof's of our garage & the neighbor's home.
Tree top right hand corner is city owned planted in the hell strip.
Yeah it's that tall that it's shadow reaches my backyard.
As much as I petition for removal neighbor petitions against.

One of two directions I can grow - don't put in a garden next year devoting efforts to foraging & gleaning, find a way to increase sunlight with artificial methods, kill neighbor's trees.
Plural because I didn't photograph the Walnut tree that blocks all early morning sunshine.That tree is located just behind my greenhouse on a vacant lot. A lot that gets 9 hours of glorious sunshine.
5 years ago DH attempted to barter lawn care for use of the lot for container gardening but the owner wasn't interested. Should have cut it down 10 years ago when it was only 15 feet high.
Lost opportunities suck.

Yeah I'm gonna need a really good alibi.



~~ pelenaka ~~