May 23, 2008

For anyone that’s a regular reader here, I apologize for my silence over the past few days.  If you notice I was batting 1,000 for the month of May, posting every day.  But if you saw in my last post, I was deep in my investigation for a new phone.  Not just any phone, but one that would replace my dying MP3 player, my effectively dead PDA and my literally glued together phone.  Oh and it needed to take decent pictures of my garden or kids on the fly.  I’ve been pining over such a device for 5 years, way before anyone even thought they would make one. 

 

So after finding my lost contact at Verizon, she helped me more than any other 5 sales people at the stores.  Long story short, I got a new phone.  It’s a Blackberry Curve and it’s radically different from my Palm Pilot so the learning curve has been steep.  And just like my garden, I kind of obsessed over learning it because if it wouldn’t do everything I needed it to, I was going to return it.  Now if only I can figure out how to view GardenGirl’s videos on it. Hehe. So it’s been eating up all my time that I’d normally be blogging.

 

That’s not to say I haven’t been gardening.  The weather’s been pretty crappy so I haven’t been doing much, but I have planted more seeds, started more seeds and tried like mad to keep ahead of the rapidly growing greens… a losing proposition I assure you. And to think I thought I’d run out and have to wait so I planted more squares in bed #2.

 

 

Specifically, I planted one plus SF of my new Ed Hume radishes, so I’ve got three different varieties going to figure out which I like the best.  We’re going for a peppery taste since the Italiansheir lettuce isn’t living up to my recollection of the pepper taste.  Can you tell I like black pepper?  I use it on everything (within reason).  I especially like it as I get older and my taste buds stop regenerating as fast.

 

The corn seeds I started germinating in coffee filters haven’t sprouted yet, but my goal is to plant out the rest of my bed in one-fell swoop since all the rest of the seedlings have sprouted, giving a decent succession planting.

 

 

However, at the same time I started my corn germinating, I started some pole beans that germinated too well.  I had to throw some away because I filled up all my blank spots on my trellis.  Actually I hope they’re pole beans, I forgot to label them and I hope they’re not bush beans because I need them too. I just don’t want them taking up trellis space.  I really need to label even if I KNOW I’ll remember.  Grrr.

 

To add to the grrrr factor, something's been eating my pole beans, well just one leaf but I'm not happy about it...

 

Lastly, I started five cucumber seeds germinating in peat pucks. I know Toasty said just use coffee filters but I started them before I got her message.  Oh well.  Funny thing is, in the after I started the last of my pickling seeds and two more of my Green Slams, two more seeds sprouted in my garden.  So I had way too many after all my indoor seeds went from nothing to inch-tall seedlings in 24 hours.  After I threw them in the ground in my cuke bed (#3) and filled up spots the best I could, I had two pickling seedlings left over.  They were so healthy that I didn’t want to throw them out, so I put them next to my pole beans in bed #1. Now I officially have no more room at the trellis.  I was planning on putting basil there and not worrying about the trellis space right next to the SWC, but I figure basil a foot away from tomatoes and not in the same dirt will be just as good as a few inches away. /shrug

 

As far as research, I read in Ciscoe’s P-I column Thursday something I actually knew but didn’t think about.  He said make sure you drown your transplants not just immediately after you plant but for several days after to help them over the shock.  Duh. I knew that. But for some reason I didn’t do that for the rock garden my Aunt and I made a few weeks ago.  The big plant’s not doing so well. So last night I went home and hit it with tons of water.  Let’s hope that helps. /shrug

 

This is a three-day weekend, and we’re not going anywhere. I’d like to say it’s in protest to the outrageous gas prices, but we don’t normally do anything special for Memorial Day.  Maybe we’ll have a barbeque.  Anyway, since we don’t have a garage sale, I may actually get to my to-do list:

 

- Cut and install boards and add dirt for potato bins.

- Put up the trellis netting.

- Plant out my corn bed.

- Turn the compost bin and maybe build a new bin.

- Install the door for the compost bin.

- Get my Aunt to help weed my rose garden area.  The morning glories have attacked in full force again.

- Maybe mow. The problem with the rain showers and 60ish weather we’ve been having is that the grass is growing fast. I may be adding to my compost pile early.

 

Lastly, I'd just like to say thanks and WOW!  I just noticed that I've had over 1,000 hits to the Build-As-You-Grow page in just over a month. /boggle  Hope you enjoy it!

 

Enjoy your garden!