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!

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?

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 25, 2009

Happy Memorial Day all. I hope you made use of the somber holiday to spread life throughout your garden.  Following my utterly exhausting day yesterday, I slept in and got a bit done at my folks place before heading to another BBQ, late as usual for this weekend.  We had fun, but thankfully for the garden's sake it ended early. When I got home I got out into the garden finally. 

I knew this weekend of beautiful weather would do wonders for the garden, and I was right.  We now have cantaloupe sprouts, watermelon and the corn is about 3 inches high.  What's even more special is that I even saw a few broccoli heads starting to form.  That's great since they're now shading the cauliflower and cukes behind them too badly.  Oops. 

Well, that's it for the cool stuff I didn't take pictures of.  Mainly I spent my time over at the potato bins.  I knew I was in for a bunch of soil adding with all the sun we've had.  I had left a bit more than an inch, maybe 3 last time I hilled last week.  Today I had another 6-8 inches of growth.  Amazing.  I'm not sure if it's bad or not, but there were even flowers starting to form.  That's not good if they're stopping growth and heading straight to potato formation this early.  Time will tell.  All I can do is continue to hill. 

I must admit that having 2 bins is about all I could stand.  My back was killing me after hilling each plant by the handfull.  It took two bags of Mel's Mix and another set of boards per bin.  I suppose I could use a scoop of some kind, but this works and I feel better, closer to the dirt my way.  Here's a shot of about how much I tend to leave.



All the lower branches of each plant got burried after I positioned them into a bare spot in the bin, hoping the potatoes grow where I want them.  I've had a few questions about my bins lately, and although I always try to personally reply to questions via email, I thought I'd share this pic with everyone as it seems to be a common issue.  Hope this helps.

While I was watering this part of my garden (I watered the raised beds yesterday), I couldn't help but notice the blueberry bushes are covered in flowers and/or berry starts.



And my other original planting...



Not bad for the second year in the ground.  I can't wait for these babbies to be 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide, hehe.

Speaking of tall plants, look at how well the garlic's growing.  I don't know what type garlic I'm growing, but I would love to know if I can harvest the greens for use as garlic flavored green onions?



I know it's tough to tell how tall they are, but that's about 2 feet.  This bed is constantly in need of weeding because I did a very poor job of it when I planted my blueberries.  My folks think I should use the front of this concrete raised bed for strawberries.  I may though I like the idea of containers for strawberries better.  If only I had room for them. Maybe I could hang them from the fence, hehe.  Go vertical?

Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend.  Mine was about as horrible as it could be with such miraculous weather and two parties attended.  I am going to be so exhausted at work I'll be useless, and still need to desperately mow my lawn.  Hope you enjoy your garden~!

May 20, 2009

Boy am I tired... /sigh too much time playing Farm Town on Facebook with my wife.  I should have known my addictive personality would latch onto it. Thankfully though my youngest and I did some real gardening before hand.  Actually I got a ton accomplished in about an hour outside with my son.  He sure had fun too. He misses his brother when he stays the night over at Nana's on Wednesdays. 

Let's see, when I got home I knew I wanted to plant the cukes I had over-grown in the house.   Their roots were sticking out from the soil blocks all over the place.  I was thinking on the bus that my cukes are way behind everyone around here, and I want them to be ready at the same time my brother's are so we can have a pickling party.  I hate making pickles alone. 

I'm not holding out much hope for them, although they do look pretty.



Yeah, all the rest of the ones I planted out died, or maybe got munche, not sure.  Anyway, I currently have a dozen or so seeds soaking overnight to direct sow in the morning.  It worked last year and nothing else has worked this year, so it's how it's going to be.

After these three were planted in bed #1 with some compost worked in before hand, it was time to take care of the peas in bed #4.  They've done much better than the ones in bed #3 because I had a cold frame over them for several weeks.  They're about 4 to 5 inches high right now and so it was time to build my trellis.  I'm using the old 2x2 one with twine laced between screws at 6 inch intervals that I used unsuccessfully this fall.  The peas in bed #3 will have the benefit of my 7x15 trellis. 



The 2x2s are just untreated pine, so they're slowly rotting away, and the twine is rotting too so it breaks easily.  You can't see it but I had to tie it back together multiple times.  Let's hope it doesn't break before the peas die back and I harvest some seeds from what we don't eat.  I would hate to have to do some emergency surgery on the trellis. Hehe.  You can't see it but a couple are starting to be trained to grab the bottom string.  Also, the re-seeding I did is showing good germination after soaking them overnight.

At the front of that bed is a mixture of Mokum and Purple Haze carrots.  They've come up well, but I'm a bit nervous.  I'm hoping that the foliage is radically different between the two varieties.  Not that I care which is which, I would love for the kids to be surprised when they harvest them, purple or orange, you never know, hehe.  What I am worried about is that I may have a bad weed infestation all of a sudden, since the stems are nothing like carrots are supposed to look.



Insane isn't it?  Looks like blades of grass.  Very odd.  I know I composted grass and some of it didn't compost all the way before I spread it over the garden, but it shouldn't have viable grass seed in it, should it?  I don't want to pull any carrots before they're even close to being ready.  Thoughts?

Of  course between the carrots and peas in bed #4 are my yukon gold potatoes that I showed you a sprout yesterday.  Well, made my way over to the other end of the yard where my Butte's are in my bins.  They were getting close to needing to be covered before the rain storms hit two days ago.  I admit I hadn't been out to check on them in the thunder storms.  Look what I found.



Oh my how you've grown, hehe.  Seriously, this is potentially VERY bad.  Those stems are way more than 4 inches tall. I may have missed the opportunity to grow potatoes this season.  If they think they're stems instead of roots, the game's over before it starts.  I could build up 5 more boards and fill it with more dirt than I have on hand, only to get potatoes in the bottom six inches just like they were early varieities.  I really don't want that to happen because I didn't want to go out in the pouring rain and lightning to carefully add dirt by the handfulls around each plant. 

Hoping for the best I did just that today when the weather was sunny and in the low 60s.



Here's my little helper who insisted on helping me drag 3 bags of Mel's Mix over to the bins.  He then helped spot the worms that had miraculously appeared inside sealed bags of Mel's Mix.  There were a surprising number.  Anyway, it's almost time to add another board.  I was getting hungry at this point and still had another bin to do, so I didn't do it. I will have to add a board before I hill anymore, which should be in a day or two.

The other bin was even taller than the first.  That one I absoultely needed to add a board.  It took a ton of dirt to fill in the blank spots and hill the plants, but here it is finished.



Yay! I finally have my second board.  My buddy Judy is close to harvesting her bins, but such is life in the "other" 8b (I hope you got Patti's newsletter and read our joint articles on the zone issue!).  Anyway, I'm excited even if I don't get squat from them.  If so, a painful lesson learned.

Well, that's it for tonight. Hope you enjoy your garden!

May 19, 2009

Well, I MAY have got rid of my virus problems on my computer. AVG (my fourth antivirus program I tired) finally found several viruses, and eventually I think I got rid of them.  Now I finally have time to post. 

Before I get into gardening, I wanted to say that I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my linking the Monsanto post to a recent one has caused a slew of new comments on that thread.  While I don't mind folks stating their opinions, including American Farmer, be nice folks.  If the petty bickering continues I'll be forced to edit some comments out.  I don't want to do that, but after seeing threads locked in other forums my wife frequents, it may be something I have to resort to... somehow.  Ok, enough of that nasty business.

Let's see, the big news in the garden over the last few days is the rain.  We've had tons of it.  I can't say it enough, thank you for Mel's Mix.  The beds are wet, but drain like a charm.  Oh, and the plants that were wilting in the heat the other day are back alive and well.  Go figure. 

I didn't do anything in the garden, gardening wise, due to the rain, but I did snap some garden pictures to share.  Things are growing like mad!  I think I mentioned in a previous post that the heat wilted my broccoli leaves?  Well look at what a little rain did to them...



Hehe, what I see in this picture aside from some monsterous broccoli leaves, is that I have some serious planting to do.  I need to get some cukes in the ground behind these so they can grow above the broccoli, and I need to plant some succession plants, mostly carrots because my son will go through what's planted in two days if I let him, hehe.

Oh, and the other wilted produce during that heat was the lettuce.  Look at it now!



I know KitsapFG is going to say I need to harvest it. I know, hehe.  If I think about it tomorrow morning I'll make a salad for lunch.  

Speaking of huge leaves...



That spinach could be used as an umbrella (and is for those carrots, so they'll be the first to go into tomorrow's salad!

And with that lunch or dinner I had better have some radishes.  They've grown quite a bit in a short period of time.



While I was out there I had to shap a shot of the potato sprouts that came up.  In almost every square I have one or more sprout.  I wondered if I would get multiple sprouts from those monster tentacles.



The rest of the garden tour is made up of my tomatoes.  First I wanted to show how not all tomatoes planted at an angle will immediately make a 45 degree turn and head straight up toward the sun.  Look at these poor souls.



They're growing strong but not up. So I added back the tomato cages that I removed after that wind storm we had a while back.  Then I forced them inside the cages so hopefully they'll grow up instead of out.  Sheesh, do I have to hold their hands or what? hehe.



And last, but certainly not least, the culmination of my garden tour.  Remember the potato leaf Bloody Butcher that was doing so well in the 2 quart pot but didn't like being transplanted into the SWC?  Remember the cluster of flowers that wilted over and looked dead, while the new growth shot up?  Well, I was pleasently surprised today to find...



A handful of baby tomatoes!  Gotta love that.  Those dying flowers actually produced. Yay!

I sure hope you enjoy your garden half as much as I do mine!

May 17, 2009

Boy, I am shocked at the strong opinions dancing around my Monsanto post half a year later.  I guess it must show up on some google search or something.  Anyway, I always appreciate gardening opinions, since there's never a right or wrong way to do things in gardening.  There are of course, 100 ways to grow a tomato, hehe.

Anyway, today's weather was even better than yesterday's.  It was 75+ today and the kids just about lived outside.  I too spent a good deal of time there after helping the folks again.  My brother couldn't help because his knees were killing him.  More on that later.  So it was just my dad and I, but I'm happy with the work we did.  Unfortunately it's just getting more and more time consuming as we uncover more work to do. /sigh.

When I got home, I checked out the yukon gold potatoes.  Some have already sprouted up from the surface, but I dug down anyway.  Surprisingly, there were root systems starting already, and I found that I had for the most part, planted the seed potato 5 or 6 inches down.  I think I have room for another 2 inches of dirt on top, so I plan on hilling the squares with either straight compost or left over potato Mel's Mix. I haven't decided.  The good news is I didn't need to replant them.

At that point, I mixed up some fish emulsion and watered the tomatoes with it.  Not only did I direct water the plants through the holes I cut in the red plastic mulch, but I also topped off the reservoir with fish emulsion.  Let's hope they like it.  Unlike EG, I was too ashamed to take pics today, hehe.  Of course mostly it was because my garden was showing signs of neglect.  Naw, I still weed, well there were some mushrooms growing that I hadn't picked out yet.  What really was bad was the hoop cover plastic thrown into the walkways between the beds, the garbage from the laundry clips I got, and the clips themselves.  Everything was just laying on the gravel.  So I took some time to tidy up the place.  I even had my boys help me lay out the plastic on the grass in the back yard to dry out.  Funny thing though, whenever I set it down, condensation would form on the bottom.  So I ended up folding it up wet anyway.  Whatever, at least they're put away in the shed. 

I left the hoops up in case the coons come back I want something to connect chicken wire or something to.  I may remove them and store them, but I do want to drill the holes for the cross beams.  I didn't do that today.

Finally, I had an opportunity to stop by my brother's today.  Recall that yesterday he was going to prep his expansion area for some new raised beds.  I wanted to share what he's up to becaus he won't, hehe, and I think it's very cool what he's doing.



Here is the side of his driveway essentially looking north.  The fence will provide morning shade.  What he plans on doing is to put 3 or 4 4x4 beds in here since the dirt area is 4 foot wide.  Using 4x4s with paths between will allow him to get to the backs without reaching so much.  Oh, and you should have seen the tam he had to remove in the front, the root ball doesn't do it justice!



Not sure why I took this picture, but if he wants to use this soil, even in part, to fill his beds, he's got a lot of work cut out for him, hehe.  I couldn't convince him to use Mel's Mix, despite the fact I proved it works last year and it's not just for seedlings anymore, hehe.

Oh, and as I was driving way, I decided to take some pictures of his future expansion area.  He wants to put 4 4x8 beds in his useless side yard.  It's where we laid 8 cubic yards of river rock a year or two ago.  My back still hurts just looking at it.



His goal is to have six 4x8 beds and 5 4x4 beds.  Eventually he'd like to get some chickens and build a Patti-style chicken tractor to fit the 4x8 beds.  I'd love him to have chickens so he could supply all three families with fresh eggs.  My wife will never let me get any.

Oh, and to give perspective to the area, here is the other half of the space for the future beds.



It's a very nice space with great southern exposure.

Anyway, that's it for me. Long weekend and it's still 75 in the house, so I'm cranky and tired.  Night all.  Hope you enjoyed your garden this weekend!

May 3, 2009

YAY! Today was the day.  The culmination of an adventure started back in early February.  After spending $5 per tomato plant to be shipped from Oregon (hybrids, one owned by Monsanto to add insult to injury), I decided to grow my own tomatoes from seed.  Thanks to the wonderful help of my readers, as well as the generous gifts of heirloom and open pollinated seeds, I planted mine on February 8, 2009.  Well, today, I planted them out.  Sure, I was a bit behind all of my PNW gardening buddies, but I was kind of glad I waited. 

During a pretty bad storm, the likes we don't normally see outside fall and winter, my plants spent time in the garage rather than getting blown around and pelted with rain.  I readily admit our storm wasn't anything close to those storms in other parts of the country.  The only reason I mentioned it was that it is totally out of character for us here in the Seattle area at this time of the year.  You have to admit though, having plants indoors yesterday, or at least under cover was a good thing.  I certainly wouldn't have wanted my tomatoes to look like my mustard greens.



I'm not too concerned, they're going to seed anyway, and way too fast.  Definitely not the variety for me.  Besides, the one I fell in love with was much frillier around the edges.  I'll keep looking.  The rest of my lettuce is really rockin'.



That, and some of my more leggy and tall plants survived the winds quite well.  Look at how good the broccoli is doing!



And...



Hehe, yeah, I've got tons of broccoli.  Shame since I was shooting for a similar amout of cauliflower instead.  In case you're wondering, the cauliflower is right behind the broccoli.  I had not intended them to be so small, but it took several attempts to get them to grow.  Oh, and those emtpy squares behind the cauliflower will be more cauliflower, followed by peas that are just now growing up a bit.  In between the two rows of cauliflower I squeezed a row of radishes.  I figure I could get two radish crops in the amount of time it will take the cauliflower to crowd them out. /sigh

Well, the mini-garden tour out of the way, it was time to plant out some tomatoes!



Hehe, I bet you're tired of looking at those sorry warped planks.  There was very little method to my madness when it came to pairing them up.  Since I can't figure out which is which (besides the Bloody Butcher which is a potato leaf variety), I went by similar looking plants, or ones that were similarly far along.  Not very scientific.

So bear with me while I share the process for posterity...



Notice how I created a ramp for the stem/root system to run up on it's way out the top.  I did that last year and it seemed to create nice sturdy root systems.  I used the virgin Mel's Mix until it was gone, then I switched to the used potato mix amended with coffee grounds.  When I empty the bins this year I will probably put them in with the finished compost to recycle it that way and then amend the compost with vermiculite and peat moss for the bins next year.  It's not the best way to avoid diseases and pests, but I hate to get rid of perfectly good growing material.

Don't they look silly sticking out at an odd angle?  And to think these were the two tallest seedlings!



I just love this shot of my working space, with everything laid out in unused squares of the beds on either side, hehe.



Now to add the red plastic mulch.  Jen had already pre-cut it at the SWC party, but actually installing it was the hardest part of the entire process.  Cutting the holes was done by marking it laying on top of the plants, then slit open on the cold-frame window with a razor blade.  Then came the really hard part.  Carefully workign each branch through the holes I created, then sliding it over the fill hole.  Thank goodness tomatoes are some of the most forgiving plants because the amout I man-handled them today, cukes would have keeled over for sure.



Not much of a change, but then I locked it all down with the lid.



I couldn't help thinking at this point, that these bins are slightly bigger than the Sterilite one I made last year. I'm not sure I will be able to install my 2x4s for my trellis with these in place.  It looks like I'll be moving them after all.  Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  Now all I needed to do was to fill the reservoir. 

Gotta love the cheap drinking straw overflow valve!  Works like a charm, and so easily replaceable.



In planting out the next two, I decided to position the branches for optimal spacing in conjunction with the other plant.  I know it won't make a big difference once they grow 5 feet tall, but it gave me something to do.  Besides, this picture just looks pretty with all the blooms.



I wasn't sure if I should prune the yellow, dying branches or burry them.  I made the executive decision to simply burry them.  They'll either revive themselves as roots or they'll compost in place.  Either way, I've read that tomatoes are narcissistic in that they like to be composted with their own cuttings. That and not to compost dead tomatoes as other plants don't like them.  Hehe, a little random trivia for today's post.

Lastly, the final two plants got put in their permanent homes on the other side of the yard (see why I can't use EG's creative siphon system).  Ah drat, looking for the link on his old blog, I saw how he used landscape fabric to cover the bottom holes to keep dirt out of the reservior.  I forgot to do that.  Speaking of the fabric idea, it would have been good to do that, especially since I had to take time to clean out last year's SWC with all the roots and dirt that had got into the reservoir.  Next year! 

Also, I noticed when cleaning it up that it didn't hold up quite as well as I'd thought from last year's planting.  There are several dings and scrapes on it, and it is far more brittle than I remember it.  I hope these will last several years as I don't want to be making new ones anytime soon.  Not that it wasn't fun, but it's a bit time consuming and costly.  Anyway, here's the final tomato planting near the potato bins.



You can't se it, but the SWC is sitting on a stump from one of the dead cedar trees.  The other SWC that I didn't install today that will eventually be planted with cantaloupe, will need to be leveled to sit on top of the other stump.  I figure I will use bricks to raise it up on one side.



I'm not set on it facing that way.  I don't like that I will have to reach over the back to fill it.  I will make the final call on the positioning when I install whatever trellis setup I figure out.  I may well just use Mel's configuration with galvinized conduit over rebar.  It would cost some money, but hopefully not much.

Well, it's been a long post, but it's par for the course on an active spring weekend! I hope you've enjoyed the continiuing journey of my quest to grow heirloom tomatoes and maybe even save some seeds this year.  I say maybe because now I don't know what I'm saving, hehe.

Enjoy your garden and week!