March 23, 2011 - See What I Won!

Fiona, at Rowangarth Farm, Had a contest on Valentine's Day, and I won!

I received the book, the seeds and a lovely handmade book marker in the mail today. Thank you, Fiona. I'll be sure to plant carrots with my tomatoes this year!

I had another full day out in the garden today. I dug out all my strawberries. That bed was so matted with plants....last year, their second year, should have been their best year. Instead, they got so many runners I couldn't keep up with them, and the berry production largely went to slugs. I separated out a few young starts, and replanted the bed. I didn't put many plants back in, just a dozen, leaving room for new runners to fill in. I'm changing my strategy on that bed, planting two rows, let three rows fill in with runners, then dig out the original two rows next year and let the 3 rows run. The following year I'll dig out those three rows and let the remaining ones run, effectively renewing the bed each year. I just have to remember which rows are the older ones! These are day neutral everbearing, so the new plants are quite productive. I hope.

I finished hoeing out grass and weeds from the north garden, then raked it all clean. Annie and Otto both got into the newly planted strawberry bed, so I decided it was time to install the 50' of plastic fencing I bought this week. I stretched it tight to the posts, and Mr. Granny used cable ties to hold it in place. It looks good, it's virtually invisible. Now the only way to get in the north garden is to either go through the shed or through the kennel gate. Or so I thought. I looked out just a few minutes ago, and Annie was in the garden! I thought maybe she'd got in there when I had the gate open, so I opened the gate and called her to come out. Instead of going through the gate, she just pushed her nose under the new plastic fencing and came out underneath it! Now I'm going to have to figure out something to pin the plastic fabric down to the ground.


Anyway, the north garden is all cleaned up and ready for spring planting, with the exception of the pole bean bed. It still needs some compost, then it will be ready, too. Tomorrow I'll work on sprucing up the kennel garden.

Tomato Buckets

I've had several people ask why I use those five-gallon buckets in my garden.

I use the five gallon sized BOTTOMLESS buckets for my tomatoes, simply to raise them up off the ground. That way I can plant crops (like lettuce, spinach, carrots, bush beans, etc)in the same bed, and they're not smothered by tomato foliage. In other areas of the yard, I use them to raise the tomato plants high enough that they aren't hit by the lawn sprinklers. I do fill the buckets with fresh compost rich soil and several amendments before planting my home grown plants. The buckets also make the plants really easy to hand water with the hose. I do build a trellising system for them, as the buckets alone would topple from the weight of the mature plants.

From my blog of July 1, 2010:

So many people ask why I plant my tomatoes in buckets. This is one reason why. There are four indeterminate tomato plants, in buckets, behind this row of green beans. On the other side of the tomato buckets are two rows of mature lettuce. The bed is only 8-feet long and 4-feet wide. If the tomatoes were planted directly in the ground, there would be no room for all these beans and lettuce plants, as the tomatoes would be crowding them out. I'm picking nearly 2 pounds of beans from this bed every other day. That makes using buckets for the tomatoes very worthwhile!

Photos from my blog of August 4, 2010, showing how other plants can survive underneath the bucket planted tomatoes.

Flowers blooming in front of the buckets. There are lawn sprinklers here, but the buckets keep the tomato foliage from being sprayed, while the plants still get watered.

Notice how the plants are staked right through the middle of the buckets, and the tops of the stakes are screwed right into the eaves of the building. Even though the tap roots go down into the soil below these bottomless buckets, they are still easily toppled by their sheer weight or a strong gust of wind. They must be safely secured to something.