May 1, 2011

This post is a little late as I temporarily lost my camera, so here's a post I started about last weekend.

Well, I'm sure you all had busy weekends, but I wasn't nearly as productive as I'd hoped to be.  For one, I had two back-to-back baseball games for the boys on Saturday that blew the morning and part of the beautiful afternoon.  Then I found out that my much needed coop construction was on hold for the day.  I have come to realize I am not a construction guy, at least without clear direction.  So I turned my attention to something I know, or at least think I know, my garden.

A quick garden tour told me I had tons of badly germinated spots in my pea row, so I started soaking some peas.  Then I watered since as odd as it seems, we haven't had much rain of late, so at least the top inch was dry.  I still need to replace the spigot on the hose bib in the back, so I have no water to the back yard, so I have to go around to the front of the house to get water and use a watering can.  I wish I didn't need to turn off the water to the house to change it out.  I am having all sorts of faucet problems this month. First it was the kitchen, then the main bath, now the outside faucet.  Someone's telling me to set up my rain barrels after a year of sitting there.

What I could do right away was finally plant out my tomatoes.  They were at a point where they either needed potting up or to be tossed in the trash.  I figured what did I have to lose.  So I grabbed some compost and mixed it into the SWC.  I know you're supposed to not use the same dirt you used for tomatoes the previous year, but gardeners have been planting tomatoes in the same plot of dirt for eons, so I used half last year's Mel's Mix and half new compost.  They'll either love it or they won't.

Then came the difficult task of getting the monsters into the SWCs. Some were easy because they were just bushy, or sticks, but a few were to the moon, which required my eldest son to hold the top while I de-potted it and planted it in the container. Don't these look nice?  Oh, and sorry for the bad shadows, my main garden area doesn't get late afternoon/evening sun, and I was working late Saturday.

Next, I couldn't forget to fertilize.  Per my garden buddy Judy in Alabama, the best tomato fertilizer is part Epsom Salt and part all-purpose tomato fertilizer.  In a SWC, this goes in a shallow furrow between the two plants.

Then it was simply a task of placing the cages into the bins.  I must say this was no simple task indeed! The plants were so tall and branches spindly that I didn't want to break anything.  Eventually, they were planted out.

As much as I wanted to have tons of tomatoes this year. My poor germination earlier this year made me scrounge to fill three SWCs (6 tomatoes).  In my third SWC went the volunteer that did so well and the one I grew from succession (read emergency) replanting.  So I'll have two Stupices this year.  One's flowering already so the other one can really be a succession planting.  I sure hope I can figure out what that volunteer is, because it's growing so well and healthy, I'd like to grow it again, even if it means I need to save seed to do it.

Lastly, my final tomato did rather poorly, even more so than the others, when I hardened them off.  Note to self, no matter how nice and calm the day, don't leave your plants out all day in the beginning of the process. When I took a look at the nearly dead one, I found it was my only "surviving" Sunset Red Horizon. I bought that seed and really wanted to taste it.  Last year nothing grew well, so I was really hopeful for this year. So hopeful that I planted a stick.

Of course I didn't waste an entire SWC for that little sickly stick. Instead I planted it in the scrap SWC material I have next to my kids experiment gardens. I was planning on planting peas there (I found a package I don't remember trying before, but didn't want to mix them in the main beds). Now I don't know what I'll plant next to it.  Maybe one of the really late growers I still have upstairs.

What a great segway to the plants still hanging out under lights upstairs.  I had totally forgotten them.  What's worse, I had forgotten that I had turned the fan on to help my broccoli and cauliflower not be so leggy this time.  It had only been two days, but the fan must have dried out the plants.  When I went upstairs to put the last of my tomatoes that weren't quite ready to plant, back under lights, I found this scene...

MY BRASSICAS!!!! I killed my succession crops of broccoli and cauliflower to hopefully be preserved for winter consumption. Still I had to try putting them on life support, so I ran and grabbed the defibrillator, aka, watering can, and tried to save them.  I could keep you in suspense, but I won't.  The next day I went to check on them and found this radically different scenario.

They have odd coloring, but the leaves all perked up nicely, so there's hope for them yet.  I don't think I'll continue with the fan though. I'm just too spotty on watering my light system, out of sight, out of mind, as they say.  Oh, and the other container on the right? It's got a tomato sucker growing that I'm not sure I'll plant out, as well as some wheat grass my son's preschool class planted.  Is that something we'd eat raw, say in smoothies? Or something to feed to the cats or chickens?  Not pictured here is the tiny seedling I had hardened off that I potted up into a quart container and put back under lights.  Can't hurt to experiment can it?

Enjoy your garden!

March 8, 2011

Let's call this the tomato post.  In case you haven't been reading, you know I have a whopping 3 tomatoes out of 10 that are going gang busters.  Another handful are languishing and three are refusing to germinate despite multiple attempts with 2 seeds each.

So, just how amazing is the growth of those big three?  Here is what they looked like the day before I decided to pot them up.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the CD case is just there for perspective, and to raise seedling trays to allow for gravity to feed water to the plants better.  And I used to like Depeche Mode. Hehe.

Yes, I know the seedlings were past time to be potted up.  I don't know what I was thinking?  When I went to re-pot them, I realized I really don't have a good place to do that, other than my chest freezer in the garage.  Since I gave them a brief walk in the yard, I decided to do the surgery on top of my yard waste container.  Don't they look like they want to start flowering already?!

Well, my waiting so long to pot these up was immediately apparent when I tried to free them from their 9 ounce cups.  They just DIDN'T want to come out.  One plant actually started to fall apart from the potting soil, such that I was very worried that it wouldn't survive the transplant. Anyway, here's what they looked like before I threw them on a tray and brought them back upstairs for their tanning session.

My brother says he pots up his young seedlings up to the first leaves.  I bury them up to the first true branch.  Not sure which is right, but I want the dew leaves or whatever to become roots.

Aren't they magnificent looking? I sure hope the compost I planted them in isn't too fertilizer rich that they shoot up again. I can't handle more than 18 inches including the pot in my light system, and it's a long time before April 15 (our traditional last frost date).
Speaking of roots, my Legend seedling (shown on the right below) that's about ready to be potted up looks like it's been almost cut at soil level in it's cup. I would HATE to lose it since my other Legend planting is one of the never germinated 3.  I have got to pot that up tomorrow.

Another one I need to pot up is my 3 seedling cup (on the left above).  I've since noticed one of the seedlings has simply disappeared, so now it's just two healthy seedlings battling for dirt in that 9 ounce cup.  The question was still, which seedling is which.  THANKFULLY one seedling has potato leaves and the other traditional tomato leaves.  A quick search online found that Stupice tomato plants have potato leaves, so I know which one I need to survive.  The other is gravy.  Well a bit more meat and potatoes than gravy, since I don't even have enough tomatoes to fill my SWCs yet.  Here's hoping EG is right and splitting tomato seedlings is easy.  I get the process but I hate playing with fire.

Now before you post that I should really plant more seedlings next time, you''re absolutely right.  My brother has the right idea to plant 6 of each to keep the best one and give away the rest.  I have always had good luck with planting multiple seeds in each cup, but only one cup.  My results were horrible this year, so I'll make room for more next time.  Maybe I'll just start them in soil blocks and pot them up sooner. I could fit many more in soil blocks than I can with those unwieldy cups.

Well, that'll just about do it for tonight.  Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I got some money that I'll use to pay bills and maybe even fund the construction of my chicken coop!

Enjoy your garden.

May 30, 2010

Wow, nearly a month has gone by.  You wouldn't have known it from the shape of the garden though.  The weather's been more like late fall than late spring.  Cool, wet and windy.  I haven't planted cukes yet but I'm fairly certain they wouldn't germinate in this weather anyway. 

Other things I haven't done include planting my tomatoes in my Self Watering Containers.  The containers still sit there ready to go, but there appears to be no hurry to get them in the ground.  They're not growing much anyway.  I have picked off a few flower buds to encourage more green growth.  Last year I didn't do that with my first flowers and the plant size suffered tremendously.  This year I've been more cautious. 

I also haven't weeded my Bed 1.  The overwintered carrots there had gone straight to seed rather than form good roots.  Shame as my kids don't have carrots for a while.  My new plantings are about 2 inches tall.  Let's see, my trellis is still in the shed.  The only thing that would need it now are my peas, which are about a foot tall now.  I think that will go up soon to give them something to grab hold of. 

Lastly, I haven't hooked up my rain barrels.  I need to build the platforms for them, nor found the right way to hook it up.  I am still considering the Gutter Adaptor here though I am not sure how well they work or how long they'll hold up.  However, considering the deluge of rain we've been getting of late, I'm in no hurry to store water.

Speaking of all the rain, look what I found on the way back from running my eldest to the bus stop... Note the paper is just for comparison, though it is really good that folks are trying to figure out how to improve the park behind our house.



Oh, and I haven't had a chance to mow with all the wet grass, but here is the composting action from my last mowing.



First I mix and dig a trench while I'm fluffing the aging compost. Then, while I'm mowing I occasionally throw down a sheet of news paper in front of the mower to mix in some shredded browns.  Tis the season of all greens and no browns.



Then I simply dump the new stuff into the trench, wetting the layers and adding heaps of the old compost for variety. It still needs to age and cook more.  Doing this creates a heaping pile of hot compost in action...



Speaking of the lack of browns, I have been adding small amounts of cat hair, lint from the dryer and the like.  I don't like to have too much of those, but they do help out and create a great diverse compost.  And while we're on the compost subject, if you've seen the Sun Chips commercial, I'm trying out to see if their chip bags are really compostable.  We got them for an outing as they're a healthier alternative to potato chips or Doritos.  When finished, I cut the bag into little pieces and put it in my home compost bin.  Give it a chance to cook a bit inside before being added to the bottom of my next compost build.



Oh yeah, I was also planning on bagging up the remaining finished compost and doing a two-bin system.  That hasn't happened.  Too busy playing with the kids and doing the job search.

Lastly, the kids have been getting in the action.  One warmish day my eldest took some discarded peat pot egg cartons and trying to grow cut flowers... Cuter than all get-out, but not going to work.



I hope you all have had better weather than I and have been more active in your gardens!

May 2, 2010

Well, the weather is definitely working along the idea that April and May showers bring flowers...  I got out in the morning to start working on the Self Watering Containers.  They had been crudely stored for the winter and needed to be cleaned up and filled for planting.

The first order of business was counting.  I've got 10 viable tomato plants that are all hardened off and ready to go in the ground.  Unfortunately, even if I use my 32 gallon SWC for tomatoes and not mellons, I stil only have 4 bins.  My solution?  The 32 gallon scrap container that held my failed corn last year.  It's behind my blueberries and in great sun.  So what if it's not an SWC, it's good enough.

It was sprinkling off and on, so I worked fast.  I know that dirt used to grow tomatoes can carry diseases from year to year, so it's good to rotate, especially since I'm growing heirlooms with horrible disease resistance.  So I did some musical dirt.  Using a small bucket as a big scoop, I transferred the tomato dirt (Mel's Mix) to my sons' scrap SWC bin gardens and took their formerly carrot dirt and augmented my scrap tomato bin and a little into my SWCs.  My goal with the tomato bins was to keep the mix as diverse as possible to allow for the best possible nutrients for the heavy feeders.  I'm still going to fertilize, but it all starts with good soil. 



Next up for my crazy concoction was copious amounts of home made compost.  It's very dry because of the cover over the compost bin for the last year, but that's ok.  It will hydrate soon enough.  It's also not what I'd call finished compost, at least not in the way Cedar Grover uses a chipper on theirs.  Again, I don't mind.  I love seeing bits of egg shell and news print that isn't quite done.  It's all good for the soil.



After that, I mixed in an equal amount of Cedar Grove compost.  I know, cheating.  At least I didn't buy it.  My Aunt got 6 yards delivered to spread out all over the yard at their new home.  She got too much (minimum orders) so she's been giving it away.  I just bagged four left over compost bags and brought them home.  I used three of them to fill all my bins.  Actually, rain stopped me before I could finish.  I basically left everything right where it was when the sky opened up.



Over the next few days, not much gardening got done.  If it wasn't rain, it was horrible wind storms.  So bad in fact that I actually brought in my tomatoes overnight.  I could do that since mine are still in pots.  Unfortunately, my brother's plants are in the ground already.  I got a call at 8 the night of the storm asking if I had anything he could use to protect them.  Thankfully I've been slowly collecting junk over time for use in the garden.  I had 5 empty 2-liter pop bottles in the garage for just such an occasion.  He cut the bottoms off, drilled a few vent holes in the top and put them over the plants like mini-cloches.  He's leaving them on to heat the plants a bit.  Can't wait to see how they fair.

Hold onto your hat and enjoy your garden!

July 31, 2009

Wow, time sure flies.  Long ago my mother called to say she was treating the family to an Alaskan cruise in recognition of all the hard work we put into rennovating their home.  Of course we were in the middle of the process so it didn't register at the time.  Then, over the next few months my sister-in-law who works for the line was trying to excite folks and get us to do what was necessary to book the cruise.  Again, I was apathetic.  It was the start of the hellish period in the renovation.  Time to pick excursions came and went and I still couldn't wrap my brain around it.  Finally the house was done and I had time again.  Alas, things needed to be done around the home and the weather got scorching hot, so I still didn't do anything. 

Well, it's time to head out tomorrow. I packed last night and am continuing to pack for us and the kids tonight, so I wanted to post my last blog entry for a week or so. I'm sure when I get back I'll snap all sorts of pics of what has matured, been harvested or bolted.  But for now, let's get into a marathon post.

First off, I wanted to show my stunted corn stalks.  For some reason they only got 3 feet tall rather than the 6 feet they got last year.



Despite the short stalks, I'm getting corn.  Unfortunately I think my Aunt (who will be watering) will be harvesting them.

\

Only two stalks have corn on them as I type, but this one has two ears and others show signs of growth.  Who knows if I'll taste home grown corn or not.  Someone will at least, hehe.  I recall you only have 10 days after the silks die or something like that.  They may last for a week. Not sure.

Oh, I found this shot on my camera, just to show how hot it's been here, look at this.



The top is the garden and the bottom is inside the house.  Makes me sweat just looking at it.  Oh, and the barrometer isn't calibrated right. No rain for several weeks still. Very odd for us (global warming ahem).

Speaking of the heat, that record 103 degree day did a number on my cauliflower.  This was just about ready to harvest one day and the next...



Destined for the compost when I get home.

The lettuce however hadn't shown much signs of distress despite a week of temps in the 90s.  In the back of my mind I knew I should shade them, but I left them as is.



As you can see, some of the leaves wilted due to that day.  A day late and a dollar short, I did something about it.  I removed the wood between the beds and replaced it with one of my trusty window shades and PRESTO!



Gotta love keeping junk from our window replacment project last year, hehe.  Not only will the shade protect them, but the 16 inch bed sides will help them get just over 5 hours of sun a day.  Should do the trick.  When I get home I'll plant more I guess.  Maybe I'll have time to throw some seeds in the ground tonight or tomrrow morning.

Lastly, for the grand finalle before head off into the sunset for a week on the high seas, not everything is hating the heat.  No, it's not the tomatoes, they lost all their blooms due to the heat.  It's acutally my cantaloupe!



I actually have 3 growing bigger than they ever got last year, with more on the way, but I believe you can only see two in this picture.  Can you spot them? 

Something interesting about this 31 gallon Self Watering Container.  Sure it's only got 3 cantaloupe plants in it, but it never runs out of water.  Seems like these plants don't need much water.  Very odd.

Well, that's it for me.  Sorry I haven't been around much lately, and that I'm going away again for a whole week, but I can't wait to get back and see all your blogs to see that you've been enjoying your gardens in my absence!

July 29, 2009

YIKES!  We hit a new all-time record here in the Seattle area.  Our previous record temperature was 100 hit as recently as 1994.  I personally recall playing tennis all day long in high school only to find out it hit 99, but that was when I was insane. I'm better now, hehe.

Well, today we shattered that record.  It hit 103 officially today, though it was as high as 104 or 105 depending where you were.  Again, with almost no homes having AC, and less than half having sufficient fans, it was not pretty.  Poor Logan, he had soccer for 3 hours again today.  Thankfully they played it safe with tons of water breaks and spent most of the time in the shade doing drills.  Whew.

I must say though, despite the swealtering heat that's melting my garden and bolting my spring crops, I found enough to harvest for one deliscious salad.

So far (knock on wood), my container lettuce mix has held up to the heat and did some cut and cut again rather than pulling leaves from the outside.  Then I harvested my first Bloody Butcher tomatoes.  Of course I had to pull a big fat carrot, but I was surprise to find this while harvesting.



No, not the sun burnt cauliflower, but the pickling cuke next to it.  The first cucumber of the season!

Yum!  I was so happy, I picked it and brought all my harvest in to be prepped at 6 am.  Here's what I came up with.



The verdict?  I may have waited too long to harvest the ripe tomatoes. They were a bit squishy, and the flavor was a bit off to me.  That and I can't say I'm thrilled with one or two of the lettuces.  Maybe they were bitter from starting to bolt, not sure.  The carrot was great though, and the whole thing was very edible, sans dressing, hehe.  While my good buddy EG likes a little lettuce with his dressing, I like a few cranraisins thrown in for some sweetness.  Yummy!

Of course I watered deeply today before work, but when I got home in 100 degree heat, the lettuce was wilting.  I sprayed it with water hoping to rehydrate them.  Tomorrow I'll throw them in shad to help save them.  Maybe I'll plant a few squares of fall lettuce now in case the containers die out prematurely.  Oh, and I had to fill my tomato SWCs twice today, hehe, poor monster plants, wilting despite my best attempts.  Ah well, it's gotta cool down soon.

I hope you're staying cool. As of my writing at 9 pm, the outside temp has officially dropped below the inside temp at 89/91, so I'll start the fans blowing cooler air into the house.  Take care and...

Enjoy your garden!

July 13, 2009

Wow, how the weather can change here in Seattle. My father used to say if you don't like the weather here, wait 15 minutes, it will change.  It hasn't been that bad, but following a 90 degree Saturday, we've had two days of 60 degree overcast weather.  It even rained, though that was welcome news to my garden.  Everything but the SWCs, which I still need to water.  The funny thing is tomorrow the weather is suppose to change back to hot.

Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
74° F | 52° F	81° F | 54° F	79° F | 54° F	76° F | 56° F	74° F | 54° F
Partly Cloudy	Partly Cloudy	Partly Cloudy	Partly Cloudy	Partly Cloudy

It was raining when I got home today, so yet another day where I felt no motivation to get out and work in the garden.  However, I am chomping at the bit for nice weather. 

I want to get out and rip out the garbage in the garden and work my compost. It's been forever and stuff is just rotting in place, not to mention my full kitchen compost that's warm to the touch, hehe.

Once I rip out the garden of all the spent plants, I need to plant cole crops, carrots and onions for fall.  That and I think I will re-seed for cukes.  I ony have a few surviving plants that aren't doing anything after being shaded by the broccoli and cauliflower.  Remind me never to do that again.  As I've found out, it takes too long for the cole crops to mature and majorly overlaps the growth period for the summer crops.  I'm thinking now that my yukon gold bed will be devoted to brassicas next year.

So far I'm not inclined to put up my big trellis if I don't have cukes needing it.  The peas just flopped over and grabbed onto the succession cauliflower and are almost spent.  The only other things to use them are the tomatoes, which I haven't pruned at all so my harvest will be lacking.  So what, I'll get something which is better than nothing considering all the absentee time this season.

Lastly, I am a bit disappointed that I wrote an article for GardenGirl about being away from your garden during the busy summer season.  Unfortunately it wasn't chosen for the summer newsletter, which is a shame since it was helpful information for the comming months. Maybe I'll publish it here tomorrow if you all want to read it.  400 readers is not 80,000, but it's better than 1.

Enjoy your garden!

June 25, 2009

I guess this is a random garden tour-like post.  I've been accumulating pics of things that struck my fancy for a while and just haven't had opportunity to work them into posts.  After chatting with Judy on Facebook tonight, I commented on my freaky corn and I promised her I would show it in my blog post tonight. 

I've been trying to get it to grow fast by side dressing with fish emulsion every week or two.  That may have had something to do with these side shoots...



I went out today and those V side shoots are thicker and looking like more stalks.  It almost looks like the stalks that the ears grow on, but they should be mid-way up a 3 foot tall stalk, not coming out of the ground?  What do you think? Can I expect ears from each side shoot?  Very odd.  I'd wanted the nitrogen to help them grow tall, not freaky, hehe.

Ok, now I'm normally good at segwaying to the next topic and pic, but I'm not going to bother this post, sorry.  Instead I'll just jump from topic to topic to clear up my pics, hehe.

Here is a demonstration of what a few weeks can do for my peas.



I took that a week or two ago, and that same pea yesterday looked like this...



What do you think, snap peas ready now or should I wait?  I'm so nervous after waiting too long on my beans that I'm gunshy. hehe.

Now on to tomatoes.  I finally found another plant that is producing fruit. 



It's clearly a cherry, though not sure which one.  I'm kind of liking the mystery of it all.  Oh, and if you're wondering like I was, the grey thing at the bottom left is my wand, filling the SWC.  These plants are going through water very fast, much earlier than last year.  As a result, I may very well have home grown tomatoes by the 4th of July.  No, not these, but look at what I found when I last watered.



Yep, I've got two (Bloody Butcher?) ripening.  Pretty cool.

Next, I thought this shot was cool, so I snapped it.  It's a pic of my yukon gold potato patch.  Some of the plants are nearly 3 feet tall now, but some have dodged the crowd and are growing out into the path.



I remember last year I had a broccoli that did this, the stalk was leggy and in the shape of an S with the head growing two feet off the ground.

This next pic is yet another from my lone surviving Blacktail Mountain watermelon plant in a scrap SWC.  I'm just waiting for tomatoes to grow on it.  Very odd.



Lastly, I just had to take a pic today of one of my new blueberry bushes.  It's too small to allow it to grow a full harvest, but I like to let a cluster or two mature to taste them while most of the energy goes to developing a sturdy root system and strong canes.  This Jersey will be the first to mature a berry.  Look at them!



I'm worried that if those corn with the V stalks grows much bigger, they'll shade this plant, hehe.  Tough to do from the north, but it could create a canopy.

Anyway, sorry for the random thoughts.  Hope you've enjoyed my miscellaneous pics and have a big weekend planned in your garden.  I've got renovation and plumbing repairs scheduled. /sigh.

June 19, 2009

Happy Friday! I hope you've got some great gardening and Father's Day celebrations planned this weekend. I need to mow the lawn, put up the trellis and maybe clean up and add some dirt to the potato bins to make sure I get as many potatoes as possible from my semi-failed bins.  Of course I think my dad expects some work on the house this weekend (Saturday of course), so when this all will get done I have no idea.

For this post, I've got one last thing that I accomplished this week to share.

My lettuce is starting to wilt in the heat and is growing out of control. I know KitsapFG says it's better when young, but I don't mind a meatier leaf myself, so I am still harvesting salads.  However, from last year's experience, the spring crop will eventually bolt or wilt, so a second planting is needed even for us who eat salads only once or twice a week.

This year, I decided to take a page from my brother and friends who utilized window boxes to grow lettuce.  My buddy Jen has hers on her deck railing and my brother has his on a shelf built a the top of his fence.  Either way, I love the idea for lettuce in summer.  You can control the amount of sun it gets by moving the container to the shade if it's a really hot day.

For my lettuce, I bought two self-watering window boxes from Wally World.  Then I filled them 2/3rds the way up with used Mel's mix (I'm running low so it's a good thing I am not filling my potato bins to the top).



Then I sprinkled a liberal amount of bloodmeal and 5-10-10 vegetable fertilizer.  Then I took them to my compost bin and filled them up the rest of the way with my finished compost.  Unfortunately it's not as finished as I thought it was.



The biggest problem is the dried grass that is seen in on the top of the lower bin.  It's also covering the replant of carrots, which would be good if they were fresh, but I doubt there's much nitrogen left in the dried grass that's a year old.  Regardless, it should be good for the lettuce.

To plant I removed the top 1/4 inch of compost and wet the soil.  Then I took EG's mixed loos leaf greens and sprinkled it down the middle and covered it back up with 1/4 inch of compost.  The other bin got strategic placement of my own seed for salad bowl, Italiensheir and Red Sails.  For now I placed them between two scrap 2x2s from last year's potato bins, spanning the 3rd and 4th beds.



I love that I can bottom water from any one of the four corners, and these only cost $8 each.  Next year I plan on using these for 4 to 6 mint plants like Jen has that we loved crushed in our water and tea.  I can't wait!

Enjoy your garden!

June 16, 2009

Well, the weather was much cooler today, though muggy. I think we're finally in for some rain tonight.  Of course that didn't stop us from having a great 3-mile walk sans youngin's tonight when we got home from work.  It was great.  The heart rate wasn't racing quite as much as pushing an old jogging stroller with 45 pounds of 5 year old, but it did allow us to spend a relaxing dinner at Subway mid-walk.  Splitting a foot-long ham and cheese loaded with veggies. Ah, the life. hehe

What does that have to do with a gardening blog you ask?  Well, it isn't really a stretch to say that part of the reason I started my garden was to eat better and live healthier so I can play with my grand kids some day.  Besides, the other reason I started the garden was for a stress reliever, and I can tell you I feel nice and relaxed after that evening.  Lastly, it's my blog and I'll ramble if I want to, hehe.

Now on to the garden.  After my walk today, I took the opportunity when we got home to wander around the garden and water.  I can tell you more broccoli is coming on strong all of a sudden, so I should really figure out how to encorporate it into more meals.  That or resign myself to the fact that I'll need to preserve it or give it away.  I'm sure I could give it away, but having freshish broccoli in the heat of the summer or dead of winter sounds pretty good (yeah, there's a good chance I'll have broccoli to harvest mid-winter, but you get my meaning). 

While I was watering, I decided to take a few snapshots of the other side of the garden for a change.  First is Judy's Minnesota Midget cantaloupe.



Why do you ask are all the plants bunched into the corner of a big 31 gallon Self Watering Container (SWC)?  Well, the third seed didn't germinate but the fourth that I just threw in did.  Anyone want to tell me if the little guy will transplant a foot away?  I don't want to kill it but it does look kinda runtish next to those big guys.  Anyway, I need to figure out a trellis for this area.  Now that I think the big tomato cages are doing fine to contain the tomatoes I really don't need to waste my big trellis on it, but it does need to be sturdy.  Maybe I'll build one of the sturdy conduit ones that Mel pushes and KitsapFG uses so well.  Who knows, I've got another month or so before these need a trellis.



Speaking of tomatoes, I think I mentioned that I took an idea from EG who pinches his suckers (the stems that grow from the middle of a V on a tomato plant) when they're decent size and plants them for succession or back-up plants.  Well, I decided to experiment myself with a decent sized one that I must have missed.  I planted it in the back of my blueberry bed where I had a ton of room in the corner of two fences.  Well, it seemed to take, but silly me, I forgot to water it well during that 90 degree heat we had last week.  I guess I'm spoiled by my SWCs, hehe.  It died of course, but I decided to water it regularly to see if I could revive it.  Sure enough, it looks like it may just pull through.  Wouldn't that be a resilient tomato plant?



Sorry for the poor quality picture, I didn't want to climb into the bed so I zoomed in.  However, you can clearly see new growth on top of the old dead leaves.  I'll keep checking back with this guy to see if it produces anything.

Hehe, continuing the unintentional segways, speaking of blueberries, the plant right next to this tomato is going to be my best producer by far.  Look at all those berries froming...



They almost look ready don't they?  Maybe this is one of my early producers?  It's a Blueray, which matures in July and August, so maybe... Yum!

The next pic is for my good buddy EG who already has corn growing.  I think I told you that I hit these with a shot of fish emulsion yesterday to help them along, hehe.



Notice that some of those stalks are growing side stems at a 45 degree angle?  I'm not sure what to make of that.  I mean last year the stalks did that but not until they were nearly 6 feet tall and the Vs were 3 feet up the stalk.  I wonder if this means I'll grow short corn stalks with multiple ears... wouldn't that be interesting?  I haven't grown this variety before.

Lastly, I wanted to share a pic of my lone watermelon from EG that germinated in a scrap SWC.  It seems to be doing pretty well, but I'm kind of curious about it.  It doesn't look at all like a cantaloupe or other melon plant.  In fact, it looks a LOT like a tomato plant...



I swear the seeds looked like black watermelon seeds, which matches the name, Blacktail Mountain Watermelon or something like that.  EG, you growing them?  At least I think it was EG that gave them to me, maybe Judy... hmm?  That reminds me that I should really lable the envelopes with who gave them to me, to thank them when I get a great crop or something... hehe.

Enjoy your garden!