I waited longer to start the weekly garden updates this year than last year, when they began in March. It wasn’t an intentional decision to delay it this year; more so, I was busy and wanted to make sure I had things to write about. So with that in mind, here is the first weekly garden for 2026.
Restarting Seeds
Our garden is doing well as I write this. We’ve had great germination rates, and the plants appear to grow in height day to day. But there are still some seeds that didn’t germinate, leaving sections of rows and individual hills without any plants. Last Friday evening, we went out and filled those missing areas with new seeds. These included beans, corn, squash, and pumpkins. Disappointingly, only one of the planters I made has germinated, despite all the planters being roughly the same size. So, we also resowed seeds in those, choosing to plant our Iroquois Skunk Pole Beans, which have been the only pole beans to germinate thus far.
Later, we’ll need to sow another batch of sweet corn seeds since I only sowed a half-row of each to start to stagger them a bit. We’ll also need to fill in the rows of peas where any failed to germinate from the initial batch. Elsewhere, in the basement, the restarted tomato, pepper, and sunflower seeds are doing very well and should be ready to be transplanted in a couple of weeks.
Deterring Birds With Aluminum Pans
I’m going to write a full-length post about using aluminum pans in the garden to deter birds and other animals, so I won’t go into too great of detail here. But we bought several packs of disposable aluminum baking pans to hang on our fence. Typically, these are round pie pans, but our Wal-Mart was sold out, so we bought the small loaf pans that are roughly 2 inches by 4 inches.
I think the goal is for them to move in the wind and reflect the sunlight to scare birds, but I could be wrong. We’ll see if they work.
Addressing Grass in the Garden
Unfortunately, one of our nemeses from last year’s garden is back: grass. I thought that if we had a problem with grass in any of our beds, it was going to be the newest one, since it was still part of the yard last year. The others have gone through two years’ worth of tilling, which I thought was going to do enough to kill off the grass. Plus, I thoroughly sprayed glyphosate on the grass. However, it wasn’t as successful in one of our beds as we would have liked. Currently, there is a layer of grass in the bed we named Beer Talk.
Spraying weed killer in the bed now that there are cucumber, molokhia, and melon plants in it isn’t an option. So, instead, we are addressing it with cardboard in an attempt to smother the grass. It seems to be working, although we have to find a way to prevent the cardboard from getting blown around. I’m also going to write a standalone post on using cardboard in our garden once we’ve had time to see if it’s successful.
1st Thunderstorm of the Season
We had our first serious thunderstorm of the season last evening. We’ve had lots of rain and some gentle thunderstorms, but yesterday’s storm involved strong winds and a lot of thunder and lightning. The first thunderstorm of the season is always a bit nerve-wracking for me because you aren’t certain if your fences will hold and the plants will survive until it happens. Because we were replacing our fence this year, we weren’t certain how it would fare, but I’m pleased to say that it did well. There was one section where we had to secure a few posts, and we’ll need to upgrade to strong wood in this area, but beyond that, it did great, so we’re pleased. More to come on the fence we switched to this year.
Happy gardening!
One Rabbit Riot 
Leave a comment