July 24, 2011

Ah, what a beautiful summer day! Weather's in the upper 70s and the boys and I had a blast.  We rode our bikes til the tires fell off and got to spend time with a really nice neighborhood couple and their two girls that are the same ages as my boys.  After we all got tired riding, we were treated to Otter Pops and watermelon in their back yard.  Can you say yard envy!?  They had at least 100 feet by 50 feet of southern exposure flat back yard.  I just couldn't resist drooling over it and telling them that I could do wonders with their yard. 

I then proceeded to suggest what they could do with their side garden areas.  They were growing a bit of stuff, though mostly weeds (aren't we all).  Of course, they were growing great flowers.  We ended up taking about three beds that could be used to grow food. I explained how they could grow tons in those beds.  I wasn't about to go all Mel on them, but I did talk of intensive gardening and succession planting.  They seemed impressed. I even offered to help how I could. Man, if only I could make money doing this, hehe.

We sure had fun, but talking lettuce to them was a bit of an issue.  The husband is Asian, so I had to change my tune to bok choy and the like.  Came home and looked it up in the "book", only to find Mel's not big on Asian greens.  Best I could find on the internet was 9/SF, which makes sense as they harvest baby bok choy.  They seemed happy that after the initial work outlay, there wouldn't be much work, and also that they could grow tons of fresh veggies.  Best of all the ability to save tons of money on produce costs was a big hit. 

Our last topic of course was compost.  They've got a great spot for it.  Anyone have any good ideas to cheaply keep dogs out of your compost? I don't have that problem.  I thought of a pallet to block it, and of course chicken wire, but what else?

Alas, sorry for yet another post without pictures.  I just don't have the camera with me these days.  What would you grow if you had 150 SF?

Enjoy your garden!

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!

April 5, 2011

So, to give equal time to both my gardening and animal husbandry obsessions, this post will be about plants rather than chicks.

Despite the rain, mixed with heavy rain mixed with light showers over the past week, I found time to make it out to the garden.  Mostly I was out there to plant what NEEDED to be planted out.  However, I couldn't help but admire the growth (albeit slow) of my initial salad green plantings.  I definitely can start harvesting outer leaves of these for salads.  That said, we prefer to wait until more items are ready to go into our salads, like radishes, carrots and the like.

During a break in the weather, I took some time to augment my tiny bed #3 with compost, and plant a mixture of Savoy Bloomsdale Spinach (from Laura) and my traditional Space spinach (from Territorial). Given the size of the seeds, and wetness of my compost, I didn't even bury them, but rather used the board trick I got from Laura.  No clue if this will work or not, but it is worth a try.  I mean, who has a supply of dry sifted compost on hand to sprinkle 1/8" deep over a bed, hehe?

I also did something similar to several varieties of carrots to replenish our supply.  The ones that overwintered are very hairy and need to be pealed to eat.  Speaking of which, it is about time to harvest them so they don't go to seed.  Thoughts on what to do with carrots you need to peal to eat?  Hmm?

Anyway, now to what I actually went out there to do.  In the back of bed #4, I augmented the soil with a kitty-litter-bucket of compost.

And with my hand trowel, I worked the compost into the soil a bit, chopping up tons of worms in the process.  Poor little guys. This back portion of my only bed without a trellis will be the home of my initial plantings of broccoli and cauliflower. 

This season I'm planting more cauliflower than broccoli, as my wife likes it better, but I am planting a ton of it to freeze for the off season.  My goal is to add it to mashed potatoes, saute it with bread crumbs, use it in stir frys, etc. Don't these seedlings look good?

That taken care of, it was time to turn to my flat of succession salad greens.  First to be planted were my green wave mustard green experiment.  I'm sure long-term readers recall my fascination with mustard greens, leading back to my trying one from a local CSA.  The rainbow colored wavy leaves had a nice mustard bite to them, and would be perfect to add to our salads since I don't like to use dressing for home grown salads.  Unable to find the variety I knew I liked, I have settled for this variety from Territorial.  I went with two plants to see how it grew and if I'd like it.  They germinated well, but were slow growing under lights.  I wonder if they'll take off in the ground?

Then, as the rain began to pick up, I raced to get rid of the rest of my salad green seedlings.  It was very easy to peal apart the soil blocks from their neighbors and throw them in a shallow hole, pressing the compost in around them.  For the seedlings that were growing in the wrecked soil blocks, I did my best to plant them in straight compost.  It doesn't look pretty, but I'm hoping it all grows in nicely as spring moves into high gear.

Oh, I forgot, I also filled in the row of green onions above the salad greens, and filled in radishes where I could find space.  I still remember the first year I planted radishes.  The package said 22 days, so I was expecting to eat radishes every month.  Wrong!  The first planting took 5 weeks to germinate and mature.  It wasn't until my late spring succession planting that I got anywhere near the 22 days it published.  Deceptive advertising, ROFL.

So, now my garden is coming along nicely.  I still have space in the back of Bed #1 (above) and in the front of Bed #4 when I remove the carrots.  Not sure what I'll plant in those places.  Maybe some beets and a squash plant or two, both for roasting.  My brother introduced us to them last fall and I wanted to grow a limited number of each to try my hand at adding variety to our veggie diet.  As I've said many times over on NW Edible, I wish I could cook half as good as the former chef, now stay-at-home mom and urban homesteader Erika.  /sigh

Enjoy your garden!

April 1, 2011

Well, the cats got into the light system room and wreaked havoc on the plants.  What they couldn't eat, they knocked over. What a mess and all that work down the drain! I had planned on a tomato post today, but what's the point?  At least last year my brother had a crappy germination and seedling growth and still did well buying starts from the farmer's market. 

Thank goodness my lettuce starts and broccoli/cauliflower seedlings were outside hardening off for the last day before planting them out, so I'll still have some brassicas to grow this spring.  I'd planned on a big succession planting to freeze for winter next year, but now that too may not be possible.

Don't let this happen to you! Toddler gates don't work!  Big cats can simply knock them over and most cats can jump them easily!  Your best bet is to close the door and lock it, in case they learn to turn knobs, or in my case where I need the door open to allow heat in, electric fencing is the way to go! Nothing cruel mind you, just the stuff they use to keep small dogs from leaving the yard should do it.

April fools! None of this actually happened, but it is a fear of mine, so I have two toddler gates stacked on top of each other.  In reality, this will be a tomato based blog post with some of the above issues thrown in, but this time truthfully told.

First off, I have ditched the TV tray for a lower storage box with goodness knows what in it. It was just in the storage room, sturdy and the right height.

As you can see, it's give me a few more inches on the tallest of my tomatoes. However, their rapid growth has caused some of the lower branches to be too heavy and start to droop and some even break off.  So to help a bit, I've taken to staking them up with bamboo poles from my folks place.  I knew I was going to miss their old house when they moved because they had a bamboo plant that we'd use for gardening as we thinned out the dead canes.  Thankfully their new home had a much bigger mature plant that provides all any of out three families need. 

While I was up there, I continued to bemoan my limited stock of viable tomato plants to plant out in a few weeks (weather permitting). Thankfully my existing stock provided me with some options for expanding my garden.  A few plants had slow germinating seeds finally sprout, allowing me to semi-successfully transplant them to new 9-ounce cups.  Other plants had already grown healthy suckers (branches growing out of the middle elbow of the stem and another branch). Suckers themselves won't grow tomatoes as branches, but are great for planting for succession plants in their own right.  Funny how they won't grow tomatoes on a plant but AS a plant they grow them fine?  Nature's funny that way I guess.

So, I decided to experiment a bit. Why not, for some reason I have the space in my light system.  After looking around at all my plants, I found tons of possible additions.  Some more viable than others.  One of my more wacky attempts was to pull a drooping branch off a plant and plant it in a cup.  It was far too long/tall to stand on it's own, so I staked it.

Fast forward a day and I'll tell you, it didn't work. hehe.  However, my other attempts did better.  Of the two seeds that finally sprouted, one was salvaged with enough roots to take hold, and as of last night, the sucker was holding it's own, though VERY small.

Sorry for the bad photo. The tray with my tomatoes is in the back, sitting on a couple of VHS tapes to raise it up closer to the lights.  The lights have to be that high for the tall tomatoes. So I had to be creative. That's one of the benefits of doing this in a storage room.  There's always junk laying around to use that nobody is going to miss.  That's why it's up there. ROFL.

Speaking of finding creative ways to raise plants. I mentioned my massive succession planting of broccoli and cauliflower in my poorly executed April Fools joke above.  Well it's in the foreground of the picture above.  As you can see, I hadn't yet raised it up closer to the lights.  You can even see the seedlings laying over, trying to find light on the top of the fridge.  Well, thankfully I found an old box laying around.  Worked out well enough, don't you think?

For the last pic of the post, I have been pretty much leaving the salad greens and initial plantings of broccoli and cauliflower outside all day long, bring them in at night.  I saw no point in taking them back upstairs to the light system every night, so they hung out in the garage and taken back out in the morning. Time to plant these out I think, don't you? Come on, I love comments, please...

Lastly, I've mentioned my brother tons of times in my blog. He's the one who convinced me to start my garden, helped design and build it, and even was my inspiration for wanting chickens.  Well, yesterday he finally decided to take the plunge and start his own blog.  I really shouldn't give you this link, because he was a journalism major in college and writes extremely well.  You may not come back to my babblings. hehe.  Seriously, I encourage you to follow his blog and mine and see how two brothers make the most of their small suburban yards on a journey toward greater self sufficiency.

Enjoy your garden!

March 29, 2011

Well, Laura and others commented that I likely have chick-fever, so, when I looked at what she did last weekend, I immediately realized I was behind again on my planting. Seems I should have planted my peas but didn't.  So the night before my kids and I talked gardening and peas.  Their interest in peas came from one of those PBS snippets between cartoons.  The kids planted snap peas, then came back to pick and eat them.  They called them sugar packets.  All of a sudden, they wanted to plant peas.  So, we got some Cascadia Snap Peas and soaked them overnight.  They also wanted to plant corn, so we did the damp coffee filter in an open Zip Lock bag to germinate those.  I also took the time to plant several new succession broccoli and cauliflower. As you can see, I am big into repurposing containers for gardening.

The next day was sprinkling a bit, but we trooped outside anyway to plant our peas!  The kids got their own SWC scrap gardens to play with, though I told them what I would do.  First thing's first, weed and add compost (they loved counting the worms we found in the compost). Then we planted 5 peas in each bin in two rows with one in the middle.  Pretty generous spacing, but the plan is to interplant two corn stalks in each back corner. Hopefully the corn will grow fast enough to provide something for the peas to climb. If not, I picked up a bunch of bamboo from my folks place. I'm sure I could build some sort of trellis for them.  The front of the bins will probably be carrots as we're running out of veggies that they like.  Still, a good exercise in intensive planting!

After that, I decided to dig my beds out as Laura suggested, then add compost and plant my peas.  I didn't do it exactly like she did, but I used some of her techniques.   Here you can see the results of half my bed being dug up by rocking a pitchfork back and forth.

As you can see in the pic above, the kitty-litter bucket full of compost isn't sufficient to augment the entire bed, but it was more than sufficient to plant peas in the back of the bed.  I know the SFG spacing for peas is 8 per SF, but I just kinda scattered them around the back of the row between my two blue SWCs.  Now is when I really took a page from Laura's play book.  I grabbed a piece of scrap wood and pressed it onto the soil to make sure the peas came in good contact with the soil.

Finally, I sprinkled a bit of fresh compost on top of the row. Normally I'd water them in, but it was raining by then, so I let Mother Nature take over.

Lastly, I took my broccoli and salad greens out for a walk and accidentally left them out over night.  They seemed fine in the morning so I left them out all day and just brought them in Sunday night.  They're out again this morning and will be planted today!

See, I AM gardening in addition to playing with my chicks!  But don't worry, I will give both passions time in my blog.  Comments anyone? I love comments! Makes me feel loved, hehe.

Enjoy your garden!

March 5, 2011

What a wonderful day for a birthday! I didn't wish for anything, but if I had, a little bit of spring would have been at the top of my list.  Mother Nature came through for us.  Partly overcast with highs in the mid 40s isn't amazing, but compared to what we've had for the last few months, I'll take it. 

I finally got out into the yard today.  I must say I've been a bit disheartened by the foul weather we've been having, staying cooped up inside most days, even when I had time to get out.  I think I'll spread out my eventful day into multiple posts though. I've seen other bloggers I read do that, though mostly they work long hours so can't do anything during the week, but as one can never count on good weather here, I'll just talk about my compost today.

You see, I haven't touched my compost in months.  Sure I've added my kitchen scraps to it whenever the kitty-litter container was full, but the last time I tried to turn it my pitch fork hit rock!  Today was very different.

Aside from countless egg shells that didn't break down because last year I wasn't crushing them when I put them into my kitchen scrap bin, my compost was nearly finished.  Turning it was just like I imagine a worm farm to look like when you're feeding it.  Every turn generated a dozen or more worms wiggling in the dirt.  The funny thing is the first thing I thought of when I saw them was my chickens would love this place!  My second thought was how good they are for the compost and garden.  How sad is that.  I'll have to turn in my green thumb for that one.

When I was turning the compost, I was smashing the egg shells into smaller pieces, so they'll eventually compost in place.  Then my youngest and I decided it was time to weed the garden beds.  I hadn't touched them, other than to harvest carrots, since last fall, and I had many weeds growing. 

Don't those weeds almost look like lettuce? I have let them grow thinking they may have been volunteers.  Today I made the executive decision to yank them though.  Of course it took all of 5 minutes to pull them and the moss out.  It all went into the yard waste bin rather than my compost. Let Cedar Grove worry about it. They're better equipped to ensure 150 degrees to kill everything.

When I was cleaning, I did notice my beds had settled even more this year.  If you look closely, you can see one whole 2x6 is visible now.  It may be time for a few yards of Cedar Grove compost as I don't generate enough to do more than augment my beds.

Although I couldn't add much in the way of depth with my scant compost reserves, I could do some major augmenting with the compost, so I added a wheelbarrow full of compost to the front part of this bed, then finally planted out the seedlings that were in dire need of more soil.  They weren't looking so healthy when I put them in the ground, but I'm hopeful some water and tons of great compost will perk them right back up.

Lastly, you can see that I throw my hoops up. I actually got the plastic over the hoops at around 10 pm after getting back from my birthday dinner at the folks place.  Here's hoping they survive the night in the low forties...

Hope you got to enjoy your garden today!

April 27, 2010

Look at this, three days in a row.  Actually I wrote them all the same day after a lovely Sunday in the yard.

Saturday we spent the evening with some good friends of ours.  We had wanted to duplicate their window boxes filled with various varieties of mint.  We had the idea last summer when we were over at their house and they offered us some mint water.  All it was was ice water with brused mint leaves in it.  You can't believe how refreshing it is on a hot summer day.

So last summer I bought the self watering window box containers from Wal Mart.  Last fall I used them for lettuce, but this spring they took on their permanent role. Mint containers.

I have been wating all winter for the local hardware store by our friend's house to get their stock of mint in.  Last week I got the call saying they were in.  We picked out multiple varieties of mint.  Well, my wife picked them out since I had a cold or allergies so I couldn't smell a thing.  In additon to the mint, we got lemon thyme, lemon balm and pineapple sage.  The thyme went into the containers to break up the mint leaves so I could tell them apart when they all grow together.  Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. 

When we got home late Saturday, the plants just went outside with the tomatoes.



Sunday morning was spent planting and weeding with my Aunt.  First we planted a Spanish Lavender that I got to replace the one that died last year.  The bees LOVE it and it completes the triangle of cross-pollination for my blueberry plants.  This time I planted it in the back of the blueberry bed so the bees won't be too close to the kids.  I know they won't sting, but I'm not so confident that my kids won't get carried away and stumble into it.

Anyway, digging out a hole about 2 feet from an old evergreen stump should have warned me of this, but the going was slooooooow.  There was a five inch thick root running through my hole.  It took me the better part of an hour to dig a hole, since it required using an axe on the root.  Here is a picture of what came out of the hole to make room for the lavender.



After the hole was cleared, the planting went smoothly with compost in the bottom and a bit more mixed in with the native soil for the infill.



Now it has room to grow and expand and won't be near the edge of the rock wall where the kids play.  In front of that is where I planted the pineapple sage.  It too is small righ now, but I saw the one my friends cut back from last year. It was a good one foot in diameter and woody.  It went in much easier as it was a little seedling, but the planting process was the same.  This corner that used to just have a sprawling lavender, is really comming together.  I should really take a picture of the bed, but it needs more weeding. Don't all beds that aren't filled with Mel's Mix? hehe.

After my Aunt left, I took the time to plant up my mint.  I was good about taking pictures so bear with me.  Here is me figuring out the placement of the plants within the containers.  There is already an initial layer of compost at the bottom.



The planting went pretty easy, though I ran out of my compost and vermiculite mixture and topped them off with straight compost.  They should like it.



Like my impromptu work station on top of the kiddie play set.  Probably should Craigslist that one unless our friends want it for their babby.  My youngest is too big for it.

Here the bins are in their semi-permanent resting spots between the beds in my garden.  I was thinking about haning them from the fence in the garden, but they would have to be right at the top to not be shaded by the fence.  Also, I would have to buy the hangers, and I'm still Mr. Cheap until I find a job.



You can see that they fit nicely between the beds so they're 2 feet long.  You can also tell that the path ways between the beds are useful things.  The pot on the ground has my Stevia plant in it. It's come back with a vengence! I don't know if I'll keep these where they are once the trellis goes up in back and the SWCs get set up with my tomatoes.  That would make for a crowded path way.  Not sure where these will go then.  Oh, and you can see the size of my collard greens.  Going to have to ask EG what to do with them, hehe.

Overall, this was a productive gardening weekend, with some great quality time with the kids in the afternoons.  Who could ask for more?

April 6, 2010

Man, it sure feels like I'vele been blogging tons over the past week, but alas, I haven't.  You know this from the lack fo posts. I guess I've just thought I'd been keeping up with it.  Oops.

Well, Easter came and went, along with spring break for the kids.  The weather was crappy all week, which was bad for letting the kids go out to play, but at least it cleared up for Easter. 

I'll spare you the tons of pictures and even video clips of my kids racing for Easter candy, though I did want to share a few shots from the day before.  My eldest wanted to leave carrots for the Easter Bunny.  Just not any carrots either, but ones from our garden.  Before I could get out there to stop them, each had pulled from the not-quite-ready to harvest patch of over-wintered carrots. I had hoped they would pull from the didn't finish harvesting the overwintered fall carrots patch.  It's still adorable what they did.



Being out there in the garden made me want to do some spring clean-up and planting of spring's carrot patch.  Logan wasn't too keen on helping this year, despite his desire for the spoils.  Thankfully by the time I had them nearly done tilling the bed to aerate it for carrots, they were in heaven. 



We did 12 SF of carrots in the middle of bed 4, where I planted potatoes last year.  I actually found a few yukon gold husks that I'd apparently missed.  With that many squares and rain interrupting us, most of the patch got 16/SF spacing, but some got far more than that.  A little thinning never hurt anyone.  And they sure had a blast!



Speaking of potatoes, my brother never asked for my potato bins like he was supposed to.  I had planned on giving potatoes a rest for a season given my planned absense during the critical hilling stage.  Of course, Mother Nature had other plans.  I couldn't help but notice that what I thought were weeds in the bins that I hadn't taken down over the winter, were actually potatoes that I swore were not there.  I dug and dug with my hands trying to find some to no avail last fall.  But sure enough, each bin looked just like this the other day.



I plan on hilling a bit to give the taters room to bloom, but not the tower of old.  The system works if you work it properly.  I just haven't yet. 

I've got tons more to talk about, but this post is getting crowded as it is.  So I'll leave it with a slight breakthrough.  I swear I only brought up chickens to my wife a few times, but the kids keep wanting to go back to the chicken house near my folks place.  So, much to my shock and surprise, my wife starts asking questions about chickens the other night, clearly looking for answers that will cross off her cons.  Like how do they stay warm in the winter and what do you do with them when they die (she doesn't want to eat pets).  Great conversation insued, and I didn't push.  I'm still bidding my time, mostly because it'd be a rush to get them now for spring and we're planning an extended vacation if I'm still not working for early summer.  Of course, if I am working, there's no way I'll have time for chickens if it's a high-pay, high-stress job.  Still, it's a MAJOR step in the right direction.

Enjoy your garden!

March 27, 2010

Well, spring showers has been an understatement since my last post.  It's rained off and on for the last few days.  That's probably a good thing for my plants since I don't have water outside at the moment.  I haven't re-attached the backyard hose and the front yard hose is missing a spiggot following the pipe freezing this winter.  Probably a project I should tackle soon.  Don't you think?

Anyway, I finally planted out my salad greens and cole crops.  They were clearly outgrowing their 2 inch soil blocks and beginning to wilt.



Compare that to two days earlier from my last post.  Note to self, start hardening off sooner so it doesn't get this far.  Oh, well, cool weather crops have historically been very resilient, so I'm hoping they bounce back.

Of course it had to start raining the day I planted these out.  So much for taking my time and letting my kids help.  I just threw them in the ground.



Sorry looking greens if I ever saw them.  Sure hope they ounce back.  Anyway, the picture above is my three foot wide bed, which works well for my lettuce since I have three varieties.  I'm more hopeful for the Italiensheir and Red Sails.  The salad bowl has seen better days.  Man they went downhill fast. 

Not sure if you noticed the bare space in the bottom right hand corner. I didn't plant anything there.  It's not the best space, so I threw in a handfull of radishes.  You can't have spring salads without radishes, hehe.

Lastly, I planted my cole crops. All four broccoli and cauliflower worked well for me, though they were getting a bit leggy despite my plans otherwise with the light system and fan to simulate wind.



I'm tempted to cut a toilet paper roll in thirds and ring these plants. I recall in years past I may have had something nibbling at them.  Never found out what they were, but now would be the time to try to thwart it.  Thoughts?

Well, Spring is here, so I hope you're thawing out and getting outside.  Gardening time is upon us. 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!

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!