April 26, 2010

This post will mostly be random thoughts and pictures from the past two weeks since my last post.  Again, no clue where the time has gone. I mean, this time last year I was working 60+ hours a week, spending time with the family and still had time to blog nearly every day (6 or so days a week).  Now I'm at home all the time and can't get more than 1 per week.  Bad me.

Well, my lettuce has finally taken off.  I mistakenly only planted one square foot of each type of lettuce, remembering the deluge of greens I had last summer.  Stupid me, that was the heat of the summer, not early spring.  Next year I need at least 2 square feet of each variety to have a few salads a week at this time of the year.



As you can see, the Italiensheir is only a few inches tall instead of a foot tall, but should be tender this way.  My salad bowl is sad looking and even the Red Sails are at haf mast.  At least the radishes in the lowe right corner are not ready yet, so I am hopeful a good salad is in the making.

About the only thing holding it's own is the mustard greens.  Funny thing about them.  I swear the package says mustard greens and I got them from my good buddy EG last year.  Unfortunately a few emails and photos detemined that they were indeed Collard Greens.  He apparently never had any mustard greens.  I'll try them in a salad, but if they don't work, I'm going to have to email EG for a recipie, hehe.  I've been to the South as a kid, but never had the pleasure of eatting collard greens. 



Think they're too big to eat raw?  They're even bigger since this picture was taken.

Speaking of salads, they just aren't the same without tomatoes.  Of course I won't have any ready until mid-late summer, but I have been taking them for a walk every day.



As you can see, all but one has been potted up to a 2 quart pot.  I know folks like my brother already have theirs in the ground, but I got a slow start, so mine are a bit delayed.  I will hopefully plan them in a week or so.  Also, you can see I'm using the popsickle sticks from the dollar store with the names written with a Sharpee.  They seem to be holding up to watering and the rain, so I'm hopeful I won't have a repeat of last year's mystery tomato season.

Lastly, my neighbor and I share a lilac bush. Well, it's mine but since it was planted too near the fence line, it grew under and into his yard.  He likes it too so he doesn't complain.  He does like to repeatedly ask why the flowers on my side are light lavender and his are downright purple.

Mine:



His:



It is absolutely the same plant, though my side gets more direct sun.  The only other thing I can think of is that for years I had three tall cedar trees right next to this, so maybe it turned the ground acidic or something.  No clue.  One of the great mysteries of life.  Either way, it's still a gorgeous tree.



Enjoy your garden!

January 17, 2010

/Sigh it has been forever since I've been here.  Mostly I've been away spending time with the family and looking unsuccessfully for work.  The rest of the reason is that I haven't had much to say gardening wise.  I've been content reading my friend's blogs. 

Until tomorrow (hopefully), the only gardening thing I've done besides helping my eldest pick a carrot from the garden for dinner or a snack is to write an article for Patti's e-zine.   It was on indoor gardening under lights and should be coming out in February.  Tomorrow I hope to take some time to start some lettuce seeds to germinate and grow under lights.  It is time to do that finally.  I am not sure if I will use my self-watering window boxes or one of my soil blocks for these.  I wanted to use the window boxes for mint and other herbs this year to keep them from spreading, but I like the idea of being able to move the lettuce indoors if we get another cold front move in.  We've already had a week of 18 degree nights (never happens here).  It killed everything in the garden.  I would love to be able to bring in the lettuce on those nights if it happens again.



The real reason for my post tonight is that I'm excited to bake bread again.  Some may remember last year when I made a sourdough starter and tried my hand at no-kneed sourdough bread.  It worked ok, but I never really mastered it before my starter died.  I just wasn't consistent keeping it up. 

Well, my brother found a recipie for easy no-kneed bread in Mother Earth News.  It takes all of 5 minutes to make enough dough to last a week and make 5 rounds, pizza crust or other breads.  Do that once a week and know that the kids are eating healthy fresh bread.

Lastly, my brother and I are going in on our Territorial Seed order this year to save on shipping.  We did it last year and it worked great.  I don't really need much as I intend to just grow what we can consume, with any extra possibly put up.  I got more carrots, broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, peas and some herbs.

I hope you are getting geared up for spring if it fits your climate, or at least planning for spring.  I expect to start posting again as often as makes sense.

Enjoy your garden!

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!

July 11, 2009

Well, I swore I would have bounced back by this weekend after that long stint of hectic times that ended last Tuesday.  Sure I was sluggish all week, but I slept well, but no, today I had grand plans and slept most of the day away.  Now it's past 10 and I'm wide awake.  Bad idea.  Oh well. I've got tomorrow to catch up.

Not only did I water, but I took the opportunity to add some tomato cages to the volunteer tomato and the sucker experiment.



Both now have blooms on them, so I may have some more mystery tomatoes this year.  Oh, and speaking of mystery tomatoes, this one's just as mysterious as the watermelon tomato plant above.  I know I didn't plant tomatoes in amongst my carrots.



This one's very late, but I may let it go.  It all depends on how much space my fall planting takes up.

Speaking of fall planting, I was over at KitsapFG's site and she's already transplanted hardened off broccoli and cauliflower for fall.  Oh how behind I am.  Maybe tomorrow I'll direct sow the areas where I want to plant.  Aside from the cole crops I want to plant carrots gallore.  My kids have pretty much gutted my garden of all the carrots.  Gotta love it, but sheesh.  These carrots above are just about the only ones left until fall.  I've got some more planted, but they're not growing fast enough to replace them. 

In order to plant more, I have to gut my garden of bolting lettuce, harvested cauliflower and broccoli.



However, I hate to get rid of all this since I have tomatoes to harvest and my lettuce bins are not quite ready yet.  The broccoli shoots that I had hoped would be a single meal are toast.



Ah, well, I've got more broccoli ready to harvest.  Boy do I wish succession planting worked well with cole crops.  I still haven't got it down.

Hope everyone is handling the weather where you are, it's been in the high 80s, low 90s and muggy.  Tough to get anything done.

Enjoy your garden.

June 20, 2009

Well, in honor of Father's Day, I am going to dedicate this post to my brother.  He, like me, gets lost in the shuffle when it comes to taking care of our dad.  Hmm, I was going to say dads, but he only has one, since his father-in-law passed away in Argentina years ago.  On a personal note, I've got three, hehe.  There's my dad of course, and my Father-in-Law, but then there's my wifes biological father who is kind and loving and is in regular contact, so that makes three. Whew!

Anyway, late last week my brother who convinced me to start my garden and helped design it, sent me an email saying that the project was finished!  At first I thought he meant his planting chart on Excel that he was working on to tell him when to start seed, harden off, transplant out and harvest throughout the year (I passed along KitsapFG's seed starting schedule to help him fine tune it).  Actually no, it wasn't about that, it was his garden expansion project.  He's been working evenings during the week and after working at my folks so he could plant some summer crops in them.

You see, he's wanted to expand his garden forever.  He's got two 4x8 beds and one 4x4 beds... you remember, one has a cool hoop house on it...



Well, he wants to become 70% sustainable at this house.  To do that he needs darn near 1,000 SF of growing space.  The first phase was to remove three overgrown trees.



It was pretty cool. He put an add on Craigslist and a landscape company came and took them away.  Pretty cool, recycling huge trees!  I couldn't have done it, but they had a crew.  The tam in the corner got ripped out and sent away in the yard waste containers.  Nobody wants those hellish plants, hehe, just kidding.

So now that you've seen the before, I think you'll remember that I have previously posted some of the progress pics, but I wanted to share them in sequence.  Here's the cleared area.



Note that he tried to make the rail-road ties work, but they're not produced anymore and he couldn't find enough to finish the project, so he spent the money to go bricks.  I personally think it's a major step up.  It was tons of work as he cemented each one in place.



You can see how he leveled the bottom with pavers so the wall would be level.  You can also she he's started to build his beds.  Sorry that I don't have a shot of the leveled wall area, but he sent me several angles of the completed beds.  Very cool!



Note the bed on the far left is a 2x4 bed nearest the house that will have permanent raspberries planted in them. I've encouraged him to go a thornless variety since it's right by the walkway and garbage can storage, so the last thing you want is to get caught or cut on a regular basis. 



The other three are 4x4 beds with 2 foot paths between them.  He went gravel over landscape fabric like he did in his original garden.  I think it turned out awesome!



The beds are filled with Mel's mix lite, sans peat moss.  I think he liked my vermiculite for aeration and water retention, but went 50/50 topsoil and compost from Cedar Grove (recycling his tam, hehe).  I'm told that these beds will get great late-morning and afternoon sun, or about 8 hours of summer sun a day.  Should be great!  The backs will get trellises on some beds.  He's got it all figured out.

Lastly, his next major project (likely a few years out), is to remove the 6 cubic yards of river rock that we shoveled and spread (my back hurts just remembering it) and placing 3 or 4 4x8 beds on the west side of the house. 



All his beds are what you'd call neighbor beds as they're in the front yard (with the exception of the original garden behind the fence in the middle of this picture)  His front yard is his southern facing area, the opposite of me.  He pulls it off well, don't you think?

Well, Happy Father's Day to all the young and old dads out there alike!  Hope you get to enjoy your garden!

May 31, 2009

Man, time flies when you're busy beyond belief, and this weekend was no exception.  We got a ton done over at the folks place, including painting most of two floors of the house, but I got squat done around the homestead.  Par for the course I guess.

I did of course water, since we had tons of sun and temperatures in the low 80s all weekend (horrible weather if your painting clothes happen to be sweats, hehe).  Most of my pics came from when I watered.  My garden has been on autopilot since I haven't had time to do much of anything to it.  However, Mother Nature has done me proud by setting a few broccoli heads growing this weekend.  Here is the farthest along.

 

I should remember to throw in something to give perspective, but I'd say this head is about a quarter diameter size.  I was excited so I looked and counted two more of my 8 or so plants with tiny heads forming.  Not long now and I should have fresh broccoli!

Yesterday after a long day working, we had plans to go over to our friends for a barbeque and Rock Band action.  I decided I should bring a salad, so I snipped 1/100th of my greens and four radishes.  I could do that every day for a month right now.  Judy, do you think it would ship Fed Ex well to you? hehe.

While I was out there my wife came to hurry me along (I always get carried away when I'm out there).  You see, my Aunt was robbing the old house of excess plants that she or we wanted at our homes.  My brother and I each snagged a Spanish Lavender plant.  We both wanted to put them into pots so they could be used to attract bees to our gardens.  Unfortunately I didn't have an ornamental pot to put it in and we were late for the dinner party, so when I got home with a bare root wilting plant, I threw it into the blueberry bed where my dead lavender was.  You should have seen me yanking that monster out of the ground with my bare hands, hehe.  Being later for a party will do wonders for your adrenaline. 

Anyway, after that I was harvestinga salad and my wife and I got to talking about tomatoes so I had to show her (and you) the progress babies.



If these are Bloody Butchers, they'll grow much bigger than that, but they could be some of my cherry varieties.  Not sure.  Regardless, these will have their seeds saved as the first to produce.  I understand that's a good way to get earlier maturing heirlooms.

Today's evening was spent with the whole family over at my folks so the boys wouldn't have to cook after a long hard day working at the old house.  After we got back both by brother and I needed showers to wash the paint off before dinner, and I HAD to get out and hill up my potato bins.  They've grown gangbusters in this great weather.  I swear you could watch them grow.  I didn't have time to take pictures of them, but safe to say I need to add one, maybe two more boards to each bin, I just didn't have time so they're hilled well above the board level.

When we got to my folks house, I took a moment to check in on my brother's garden progress, only to find he had the same idea I did.  Only he needed to plant some peppers and squash.



As you can see, he hadn't changed out of his paint clothes to garden either, you're just going to get dirty again, hehe.  Also, you can see some of his 10 plus tomat plants planted nearly as close as my SWCs.  Then come the newly planted peppers, followed by some really close zuchinni and other squash.  He says he'll thin them later, could you see how badly they take over that bed? 

While I was there I snapped a couple more pics of his garden. 



Here you can see part of his elaborate hoop house that he left up to provide support for his peas.  In the back of the bed he's got tons of cukes in a similar state as mine, so it looks like we may have a pickling party after all. Don't worry Jen, we can have one too.  Behind that bed you can see the explosion of mint that he can't kill. It just keeps coming back with a vengence.  He plans on harvesting it and making mint jelly and tea if his tea plant provides a harvest.  You can't see it well, but the tea plant is currently in a black pot between the cukes and the mint.

In the 4x4 bed, he's got 4 more tomato plants growing nicely.  And in case you're wondering, he's not going to do Mel's method and prune heavily.  We just let our tomatoes grow together.  However, he will use the spaces in between to grow carrots when he thins his carrot patch.  Like I try to do, he thins and transplants the rejects.  He's had better luck than I have, but I keep trying it.

The last pic I'll show you of his garden is a progress shot of his expansion beds.



As you can see in this picture, he dumped the rotting railroad ties that you can't buy anymore due to the chemicals used in water proofing them.  I think the bricks will look better myself anyway.  As you can see in the back of this photo, he's got two beds built just to make sure they were going to fit like he expected.  The back one is the 2x2 for the raspberries and the closer one is the first of three 4x4 beds.  He's chomping at the bit to get this project finished so he can plant beans and other summer crops.  Yep, he's a bit behind on planting them, but as you could see how crammed full his other beds are, he needs this space something fierce.  If only we had a weekend to ourselves, hehe.

Lastly, I'll share the cuttest pic I've taken in a long time.  We had corn on the cob and the boys had a blast shucking it (ours is 4 inches high right now).



I hope you had a great weekend and got to enjoy your garden!

April 29, 2009

Man, the last two days were fun, but I realized I have been neglecting my blog.  Two nights in a row we went for a walk.  It was our standard power walk, but it sure felt great to be active again.   We were back to doing our 3+ mile walk in under an hour.  However, the second night it rained most of the walk.  Thankfully we kind of dressed for the occasion. 

It seems I'm up to my old problem again.  I've got salad makings ready in the garden (well, only greens), but for the life of me I can't seem to get up the desire to eat it.  GRRRRR. Sometimes I wish I were a vegetarian. /sigh.

I wanted to let you know that it's no use. I can't figure out which tomato plant is which.  Well, not all of them.  I still have a few options open to me, but I'm resigned to the prospect of them being mysteries.  Heck, if I like one I'll just say I do on the bag of seeds I save, hehe.

My brother called tonight to tell me that he had planted out the rest of his tomatoes in the ground, along with tons of cucumber seeds.  My cukes are not doing so well under the hoop cover.  Three of the five have survived and I've got 3 upstairs hanging out under lights.  That means I need to plant tons of seeds.  It seems my inside germinating experiment with cukes didn't turn out well.  Half didn't germinate and half of those that did didn't handle the nights in the mid 30s.  Grrr.  So much for cheating Mother Nature and starting the summer crops early.  More on that experiment come the May issue of Patti the Garden Girl's ezine.  Hope you have subscribed to it. 

Well, that's it for me.  Sorry for the short post.  Work's heating up and the garden is feeling a bit of an afterthought right now.  I can't wait for the weather to improve and it starts to thrive.

Enjoy your garden!

April 27, 2009

Man, I was out of it last night.  I hate it when I publish before proofreading.  You see, I haven't been able to edit posts for quite a while.  I had wanted to link Judy's post on the webring. Also, it seems I've forgotten to classify my posts for the last few days. That sucks because it's good to be able to search for related posts. Of course, by the looks of my reader search requests, nobody looks at the categories anyway, hehe.

Mostly I wanted to post about two small things tonight.  The first is that my potato bin page just surpassed 25,000 hits!  It's amazing that I'm still getting hits on that page.  What's even better is that I believe I've convinced around 800 people to come back regularly.  Now that's cool!

The other thing is that it seems I made one mistake when labeling my tomatoes.  I've worked really hard to keep track of them so I would know what I'm saving seed from.  Unfortunately, I didn't think of this...



When I was potting them up last, I had forgotten a pen, so I had my eldest go get one from the house.  I forgot that his pens are washable.  Watering the plants got the labels wet and presto, green smears.  Drat!

My one hope is that I took good enough pictures when I was potting them up that I can recognize the containers for some of them.  It's a long shot, but otherwise I'm up a creek.  Grrr.

Well, this evening after work was gorgeous weather, perfect really at 65 and slightly overcast.  So the kids wanted to play outside, tag mostly.  While taking breathers I cut some more landscape fabric and placed my two remaining SWC scraps.  The big one will be used for corn and the small one will be used for watermelon.  Yes, you heard me. I'm going to follow my advice (that wasn't heeded) to EG regarding his 80 pound melon experiment.  I suggested planting the seeds in a scrap SWC and encourage the vines to sprawl over the ground around it.  Who needs dirt for them to lay on when they can get the nutrition from the vine that's sticking into perfect soil!?



Actually, the more I think about the placement I think I'll change places with the beige corn bed with the kids carrot beds.  That way, in the evening sun (which they get the most of), the corn wont shade the carrots.

Anyway, it's getting dark, so I had better get out and cover back up the bed and swap those out.

Enjoy your garden, and check out Judy's webring idea.  I sure hope at the very least my garden buddies can all join up so however it works we can be connected in some way.  It will make it easier for me to remember to get to your sites!

April 10, 2009

WOOOOOOT!  I got my taxes done. They're filed and it's over for another year (hopefully)!  Now I can quickly write up a new blog post to let you know what's going on in the garden.  But before I do, I have to say, I keep getting publicity over my potato page.  I figured I'd have my 15 minutes of fame, crash my picture hosting link and call it a day.  Wrong.  Apparently folks have linked me to places like StumbledUpon and TipNut.  In fact, over the last two days, I've had over 3,500 hits!  That's nearly what I got when the Times story was published.  Last time I got about 200 more regulars out of the deal.  Let's hope I get another 200.  Wouldn't that be something!  So keep it coming and if you're reading this, comment. Let me know what you like, don't like, want to see, etc.

Well, now for my post.  First off, if you remember the entire seedling tray of soil blocks packed together such that the roots were growing into the next soil block over.  Well, I took the opportunity one evening to plant as many of my seedlings as I thought were big enough.  This is what I've got left in the tray...



What's left in there? No clue. None whatsoever.  Some died, no problem. I need the soil blocks to replant.  The others have to grow a bit so I can figure out what they are.  Some of them may be stevia.  I have no idea what it will look like.  So much so that I have since planted another stevia plant (that would make 4 when I only want one) hehe.  This time I bought a fire glazed clay pot to plant it in.  That way I can bring it inside for the winter in the hopes that it will be a perennial.

So, where in my garden did all the soil blocks go?  Well, I was planning on the fly as the sun went down.  No clue why I was in such a hurry, but I was.  First off, I had a TON of greens to plant.  I don't think my Italiensheir lettuce germinated well for me, so I will want to direct sow that soon, but everything else went gang busters and had to go in the ground or be harvested as indoor lettuce.



Yeah, it's dark, sorry, I wanted to see where I was planting and didn't think to take pictures until I was done.  Oops.  At least you can see the row of green, starting with what my readers say is the mustard greens.  Not sure if they're close to being harvestable.  I've never had them before.  I want them for salads, so I guess I'll just harvest them when I harvest my lettuce and spinach and see how it tastes.  The rest of the row is mostly Red Sails, with some Salad Bowl thrown in, I think.

Aside from greens, what I planted the most of that evening was broccoli.  Kinda sad that so much germinated and did so well, because I'm the only one in the family that likes it.  I had to direct sow cauliflower because it did horribly inside this year.  It wouldn't germinate even if I pregerminated it (I did a bunch too).  Very odd, I know.  Anyway, I ended up planting broccoli all over my garden.



This group is right in front of the direct sowed cauliflower.  My experience from last year showed that cauliflower is one of the few plants in the garden that block more sun then broccoli, so there you go, broccoli, then cauliflower.  Oh, and you see the overwintered, overgrown green onions.  Well, I haven't had time to harvest them and freeze them like DoubleD suggested, but when I do, those squares will get cauliflower as well.  Behind that will go peas (it's where cukes went last year).  I should really soak some peas tonight so I can plant them (very late) tomorrow morning.  hehe.



Here I planted broccoli behind my overwintered spinach that's just going to come out.  It's looking very tough, so I'm not going to make salads with it.  If I liked cooked spinach, that would be a differnet story, but we don't.  Oh, and I won't compost this, because of the leaf miner issues.  I have no clue how to rid myself of them other than catch each leaf quick and get rid of it. 

And behind the broccoli is my second row of cukes.  We're growing tons of plants (16) this year to try to pickle more than we did last year.  Even though my wife's not eating them, I've got dibs called out on both sides of my extended family for any pickles we want to part with, hehe.



Here is the row that I got to grow inside.  Since they're warm weather crops and the weather's still cold at night, I put the hoop cover back up for this bed (it's the lettuce bed as well).  Right now it's 45 degrees and should hold that way all night.  I hope that's not too cold for cukes. I know I'm taking a chance planting them out so early, but they grew too fast inside (those that germinated).  Next year I'll plant later and not listen to my brother's calendar, hehe.

Other than that, I've just been taking the tomatoes for a walk every evening, including tonight where it was cloudy and overcast and 50 degrees.  They've got to get used to it sooner or later.  They're going in the ground next weekend.

Well, that's it for this tired gardener.  Tomorrow is a free Saturday, so I'll plant some, turn the compost and water if necessary.  Then we'll pack up the van and head over to our friends to build us some Self Watering Containers! I've been waiting for tomorrow for a very long time.

Enjoy your garden!

February 8, 2009 Wrap-up

Today was a full day.  Without the kids and having taken Nyquil last night, I overslept.  No surprise there.  Thankfully, when I called my father I found that my brother had just woke up an hour after we were supposed to start demo work, so at least we carpooled, saving the environment one car ride at a time...  It also meant that we got a great chance to talk gardening, seed starting, soil blocks and the like.  We also hit Home Depot on the way home (nothing there), and then Sky Nursery.  I kinda hate going there because it seems they've added $1 to $2 to each item to help pay for their substatnial remodel.

Still, they are a nursery, so they had a much bigger selection.  Unfortunately, they had a very limited seleciton of seed trays.  I had expected to see Plantel quality down to flimsy throw-aways.  Instead the best they had was slightly thicker throw-aways and the cheap things (to which they added $1 to Home Depot's price).  Wanting to be done with it, I settled on the not-so-flimsy ones.  They're not quite the right size, but I'll make do.  Here's a picture of them lined up under my light system.



Oh, I couldn't get the bow out of the 3/4 inch plywood, so I just turned it over.  It works better that way I think. Besides, maybe gravity will take some of the bow out over time. /shrug  As for the trays, they're too thin and too long, if that makes sense.  You see, they're 10 by 20.  My lights span about 15 inches to get full light coverage.  That means the edges of the trays get poor light.  Not sure I can live with that, but hey, they were $3.50 each. 

While I was typing this, I got an idea to check out how close together I could get the lights.  Sure enough, I can get them so close that they are about 10 inches across.  So in the interim, while I've got little to start, I will change it out so I only use two of the four trays and get the most light possible to the plants on them. 

Another thought I had was that some people bolt the two lights together, so they move as one and are great for focusing the light.  I think I'll leave them separate.  That way, I can leave one high for tomatoes and the other one low for cole crops.  Sound good huh?

Well, on the way home from my brother's, I head back to my local True Value.  It's a half mile from the house, so it's convenient.  Notice that I was just there yesterday, but I forgot to ask about timers.  Sure enough, they have them, and they were on sale!  Bonus, hehe.

So, you know what that means?  I'm FINALLY done with my light setup.  The timer's set for 12 hours of light during roughly daylight hours (6-6), and the trays are all ready to go.  The only thing I don't have is a soil block maker. (John, thank you so much for your offer to make me one, I am seriously considering it.)

I talked to my brother about block makers and we may go in on a 2" 4 block maker.  He's seen the videos on them as well.  However, he wants a whole set-up for it, with a table to mix and make the blocks on.  I thought I have a board that fits nicely between two of my beds.  I could mix it in a 5 gallon bucket and dump it on the table, then make the blocks.  The left over could be brushed into the beds, no biggie.  Guess to make my brother happy I'll have to add three sides to the table.  Kinda cuts down on the multi-purpose nature of it, but we'll see.  I'm working on my taxes right now and if I get back anything like what I got back last year, I'll splurge on a soil block maker and some new dress shoes (mine have holes in the soles, hehe).  Yep, I'm being frugal to a fault right now.  My saying has always been don't worry about things you can't control, but if you can control it, do something about it... I can do something to prepare for the worst!  I'd thought my birthday is coming up and now I'd have something I wanted for it, but it's in March which is way too late to be starting seeds indoors, hehe.

Ok, back to my day.  When I got home I was so excited.  I had everything ready to go to plant seeds.  So I headed out to the garage and set up everything for planting my tomato seeds.  Unfortunately when I got my seeds out, I couldn't find Cynthia's Gardener's Delight seeds she sent me.  I'm sure they're here somewhere, but I couldn't find them.  Fortunately, when she sent me my Red Horizon from our joint Tomatofest order, she also graciously sent me samples of all the ones she bought!  So instead of Gardener's Delight, I planted Idli, which is a yellow, extra sweet, extra early cherry tomato, so it should be good for my area.  I'm not sure if it's odd to have two yellow cherry tomatoes, but maybe, just maybe, I'll get my eldest to try them since they're yellow (his favorite color).



Notice that I labeled each so that I could easily peel off the sticker to move to the next container as I pot up the tomatoes (they like that I guess, wierd I know, what plants LIKE to be transplanted? hehe).  Pardon my poor grammer this post, it is just flowing that way.

So each cup got tamped down to create a solid block-like soil mix, then two seeds were put into a divit and dirt was brushed over the hole.  Don't they look good all potted and labeled?



After that, I took my spray bottle and misted the tops about 20 times and placed them on top of the fridge to germinate. 



Once they sprout, it's up to the light system, where they'll get 12 hours of sun bathing 2 inches from the sun, hehe.  Very exciting!

Next up will hopefully be some cole crops.  Broccoli is 12 weeks before the Last Spring Frost (LSF), while cauliflower is 10 weeks before LSF.  Guess that means I should start the broccoli soon.

What a satisfying day.  I hope yours was the same!

February 7, 2009, Evening Edition

Well, I had hoped I could simply edit my earlier post today, but alas, there's something wrong with my blog edit feature.  Nothing comes up when I try to edit posts.  So that means you get two posts today.  Funny I know, since it's been ages since I was regularly blogging.  As I've said before, between being busy as heck at work and home, and being a bit burned out with no creativitiy, I took a bit of a break.  But don't worry, spring is heating up and I'm doing more gardening work in my limited free time, so expect more posts from here on out.

Anyway, I did take a swing around the garden today, and nothing surprised me.

First off, there's nothing left of my cauliflower.  I should have started it much much earlier to get it growing.  Not to mention keeping up with the predator urine to detract the raccoons, hehe.  But look at these perennial green onions!



Oh, and as you can see, the jute twine I used to make the SFG grids have broken down much faster than I had expected.  I've got more though.  Gives me a good excuse to get my wife out into the garden again.  See, she's got the spacial recognition to string a grid without cutting it. I don't. 

Well, that's about it for the good news.  Green onions, great...



Maybe the spinach is doing well, not sure. I doubt my wife would eat it.  It's not as easy as it looks to get into there from the sides.  It's not hard, just a process.  Maybe I'll try to salvage it.  Maybe I'll just rip it out and replant for spring.  Not sure.



Oh boy, doesn't this look like a bomb went off?  Nothing left of my wonderful lettuce.  And my succession lettuce there in the middle?  It hasn't grown an inch in over a month.  Bah humbug.  Ah well, according to Steve Solomon's book, it's about time for replanting for April and May lettuce harvest.  I think I'll plant a mixture of lettuce, spinach and mustard greens.  Doesn't that sound like a great salad?  I'm getting hungry already.  Come on spring!

Enjoy your garden!

February 7, 2009

Well, thanks to reader's comments, I think I've found a good solution to my seed trays.  Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting for me folks!  Look what I found... 



According to Charley's Greenhouse, it's 12"W x 17-1/2"L x 2"H. That way I can fit four of these under my four foot light system.  Then, if I someday get the 2" soil block maker, it should hold five or six across.  Not sure if I need to get an insert try to keep the seedlings off the bottom of the tray, but this will keep the water off the board and out of the room, hehe.  At $10 each though, this seed starting system is getting more and more costly as I go through.  Silly me for not planning better.  What was I thinking? Hehe.

I didn't see anything like this at Lowes, so I guess a trip to Sky or Emery's is in order.  Tomorrow's plans just got changed, so I hope to rush out and get some work done in the yard before I have to help my folks.

Hope your weekend is going swimmingly!

February 6, 2009

Wow, time flies when you're dodging the economy.  There's a saying around the office that things don't change every week anymore, nor every day.  You shouldn't leave your computer too long or the world may have changed.  Yep, it's that ugly out there!

Well, I know I should have posted my to-do list yesterday, but I was exhausted so I'll get it out today instead of actually accomplishing anything on it.

First off, the weather.  Seems to be a popular thing to blog about as spring approaches, but here the groundhog saw his shadow in the puddle so we have 6 more weeks of this...

Saturday	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday
45° F | 31° F	43° F | 34° F	41° F | 31° F	40° F | 31° F	43° F | 29° F
Partly Cloudy	Chance of Rain 30% chance of precipitation	Chance of Rain 40% chance of precipitation	Rain 70% chance of precipitation	Chance of Rain 50% chance of precipitation

So, tomorrow's the day to visit the garden it seems, and wear a coat.  There will hopefully be some salvagable plants (like the succession lettuce).  I haven't seen it in a month, so I hope it isn't dead from lack of water.  Mostly however, it will be clearing the dead plants out of the garden in time for replanting.

Another outdoor activity would be to flip the compost pile.  I would love to see what's down at the bottom.  And I think my kitchen compost bin is about ready to spread onto plants it's been so long under the sink, hehe. 

The rest of my weekend will likely be spent indoors as it's too cold and wet to do too much.  I really would like to finish my light setup.  I have the wood for the base and the shelf, and I have the lights to put together and hang.

However, I still need to buy some seed trays, where do you get them?  And I need a timer.  Should have one laying around, but can't find it.  So I need to pick those things up to complete the setup. 

Then I need to figure out how to plant my seeds.  I'd hoped to use soil block makers, but I am under strict self-imposed purchasing restrictions so I can't buy it from the Dervaes site.  Much as I'd love to. 

Lastly, I need to figure out when to plant everything.  Thanks all for the links and help to figure it out.  I just need to sit down and map it out so I feel better.  Now I have the sinking feeling that I'm late, even though I know I'm not.

So, enjoy the weekend, and enjoy your garden!