Wednesday, July 23, 2008

July 23, 2008

Summer is a busy time, both at work and home.  So much to do and so little time, especially for posting to my blog.  But that doesnt' mean that gardening isn't getting done or in my mind often.  Hehe I can tell it's a busy time for readers as well as my readership's dropped off tremendously over the last few months.  At first I thought I was getting boring.  You know, like the high school dating scene where after a few months you knew everything there was to know about them and had nothing more to talk about so you broke up, hehe yeah like that, without the coffee at Denny's at midnight (or Starbucks now-a-days, hehe).  But then I realized folks are just busy.  I "get" busy. 

Anyway, for my post tonight.  First off, I'm not big on harvesting anything but salad makings it seems.  I have let my mother harvest most of my other veggies.  Like today, she cleaned out my garden.  My cauliflower that had started to bolt all got removed.  Seems it doesn't matter if the heads are bigger than baseballs or not, when it's time for them to bolt it's time.  Gotta remember that for next year's succession planting.  That said, I will definitely plant more during the fall, which should go into the ground soon.  In fact I'm late per the Territorial Seed planting guide.  Oops.  So I'll give it a shot anyway.  This weekend I plant cauliflower for fall and winter harvest. 

It'll be easy to do since my first and second beds are getting pretty empty without broccoli and cauliflower taking up space.  Especially after I remove the bolting lettuce in bed #1.  Sorry no pics today, I was busy with the kids and forgot.  However, I'm really getting excited about planting my fall and winter gardens.

Speaking of kids, Logan harvested a bunch of carrots because he wanted to eat them.  I think between the two of us we ate four carrots tonight, hehe.  Boy were they tasty!

Well, on the way home from work I stopped by True Value and picked up some predator urine.  It's great, that little store has 3 different brands of the stuff, so I can cycle through them time and time again and hopefully keep the raccoons away.  So this time I got some from Shake Away.  Hope it works because I didn't use much. Instead of laying down a perimeter, I spot treated where I thought it was likely they'd try to get in.  Kinda like what an animal marking its territory would do, hehe.  I laid it heavy around my potato bins and the new SWC. 

Finally my wife got me a ton of coffee grounds today.  She hit the mother load.  She knows now to ask whenever she gets coffee.  Today they said, sure, how much do you want.  She said as much as they had and I got 4 full bags.  I've got 8 now to use this weekend.  Gees, it's only Wednesday and I'm already working up my to-do list, hehe.  Fun!

Enjoy your garden!

4 comments:

  1. Hi Sinfonian!! I'm back!!!! Yeah!!!! Between visiting relatives, computer problems and a business trip to Louisiana -- I'm back home.... Oh man how I have missed my garden, my blog and the message boards. I have alot to catch up on to say the least.

    I know what you mean, we all get so busy in the summer. But about the time that school starts and people start working on their fall and winter garden planning, they start getting back online and posting, etc.

    Can you believe it's already time to start planning for fall?? Oh my goodness!! I have one more planting of summer veggies and then it will be time to plant fall veggies. I can't wait because I have just been so jealous of all of your broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce! I can't grow any of that from about April through at least October. So when it gets cool, I will definitely love it.

    Off to read more of your blog!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Been kind of lurking here on and off. I have a question that I couldn't find an answer to - how many lettuce plants did you put in each square foot? All the spacing info for mine said 1 ft apart, so one in the center of each square. I'm pretty sure from your pictures that you put them in more tightly.

    I wish you luck with the predator urine - we had an Evil Monster Groundhog eat all our lettuce and broccoli. Even coyote urine didn't deter it. Next year, we're reconfiguring our beds slightly so that we can cage up the greens to keep that thing OUT.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Annikki - I plant loose leaf lettuce per Mel's spacing at 4 per SF. They all grow togther but don't seem to mind. I believe head lettuce is 1 per SF but don't quote me on it.

    ReplyDelete