April 11, 2012 - Good Thinking, Granny!

If I could grow tomatoes on the counter all year, I wouldn't have to clean the kitchen.

You can't even see it!

Yesterday I decided the four indoor tomatoes might be outgrowing their 1-gallon pots, so I up-potted them to a 2-gallon size. Three of the four came out of their pots in one solid piece. The roots were beginning to show on the outside of the root ball, but not bad. The fourth plant didn't want to leave its home, and half the roots stayed in the pot. It looked a little droopy all afternoon, but by this morning it had perked up and looked healthier than ever. I brought a little table out of the shed, and set it up next to the wire shelf on the corner of the patio, where it gets morning sun (when there is such a thing). I let them stay out all day yesterday, and brought them in last night. Out again this morning, back in tonight. That will probably be the routine for the next three weeks.

I'm getting my exercise, that's for sure. I counted the trips.....15 times to get most of the seedlings from the bedroom to the patio, one trip to get others from the laundry room to the patio, and four trips to carry the big tomatoes out. Then it's all repeated in reverse in the evening.

Today I planted 32 small plastic cups of corn. I've never started corn inside before, I've only direct seeded it, so this will be a new experience. I've planned two small corn plots this year. The first will be a 4'x8' and hold 32 plants on 12" spacing. The second, to be planted a couple of weeks later, will be 4'x10' and hold 40 plants. I need to plant another half dozen cups tonight to ensure I end up with a full 32 plants.

April 10, 2012 - Getting Back in the Groove (part two of two posts)

In the garden:

Jenny, from Simple Garden Made Easy, was sweet enough to send me some strawberry plants, both Cabot (June bearer) and Alpine. I do hope they survive, as the Post Office managed to completely mangle the heavy Priority Mail box in which they were packed. Both ends of it had been completely ripped open, allowing the soil to escape from around the roots of the plants. I soaked them well and planted them immediately, now I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I finished cleaning up and amending the soil in the old 4'x8' strawberry bed, and planted two 6' rows of spinach, one 6' row of beets, and three 6' rows of carrots lengthwise down the center of the bed. On each end I put in two rows of radishes, which are way too many considering I have radishes coming up elsewhere in the garden.

I had planned on demolishing all three of the old half-barrels in the garden, as they were rotting and falling apart. The first one was done, but barrel #2, being in better condition than expected, was moved to the center of the garden to be the future home of the butternut squash. I think I explained, in an earlier post, that there is the remaining base of the old maple tree stump and some huge surface roots in that area, which make it impossible to garden. A perfect place for a deep container and room for vines to sprawl all around! It's still three weeks too early to plant the squash seeds there, but I figured what the heck. It's only six seeds, and I probably have a lifetime supply left, so I went ahead and planted them. I covered them with a layer of row cover, and then started some more seeds in the house.......just in case. In fact, if they all grow, I can probably find some plantable pockets of soil around the outside of the barrel and have a double amount of butternut squash plants. Have I mentioned how we love butternut squash? Can't have too many!

I pulled the tomato buckets from next to the shed and cleaned out that bed. I think I'll plant the tomatoes directly in the ground there this year, so I need to haul in more big buckets of compost and get the bed prepared. I'll be putting four indeterminate cherry tomatoes there next month. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the plants don't develop fusarium wilt, which has been a real problem in this soil. I'll also need to replan my sprinkling pattern so the bed next to it will get overhead sprinkling, but this strip will get drip watering. I may also remove the wood surrounding the bed to allow the sun to better warm the soil there.


I planted a few more tiny lettuce seedlings in The Thing. They were some I'd started in the potting mix that is producing nothing but stunted seedlings. I also planted out the eleven stunted dwarf cabbages, three of the stunted broccoli and three of the stunted Chinese cabbages. I still have at least a half flat of stunted seedlings that will be planted out this week. I've started more seedlings to replace the cabbage and broccoli if necessary, and these one week old seedlings have nearly caught up with those that were started a month ago.

I've never had much of a problem with weeds in my garden. I'm quite diligent about using the hoe for a few minutes every day or two and not letting the weeds get ahead of me. This year it's going to be a battle to keep the volunteer sunflowers, giant cosmos and alyssum (in photo above) hoed down! I (stupidly) left the sunflower heads on the ground for the birds and squirrels to enjoy through the winter. Mammoth sunflowers are popping up everywhere! I do not want mammoth sunflowers. I'm still trying to dig out the tree trunk sized stems and roots from last year's mammoth sunflowers. Same with the forest of cosmos that grew 10' tall and overtook the entire bed behind the shed. At least they were shallow rooted and easy to pull, and hardly any flowers bloomed on them, so there weren't a lot to go to seed. The alyssum will be allowed to grow in some areas, but there are millions of tiny plants growing among the onions and potatoes that will have to be hand pulled eventually.

Inside, the seedlings are growing beautifully. Yesterday it was warm (70F) and overcast, so everything got carried outside to the back yard to spend the entire day, then brought in at dinnertime for a good watering before being put back on the grow shelves.

I put the four large tomato plants on the front porch, where it was even warmer but maybe a bit breezy for them. I noticed the biggest one was suffering some sunburn on the leaves when I brought it in. It also looks like it needs a dose of fertilizer. I really need to tip it out of the pot to see if it might be getting root bound, it's getting so large.

I have over a dozen tomatoes on the plants, but nothing getting ripe yet. Maybe a few more days on the sunny porch will help ripen them.

They actually got so tall they wouldn't fit in the window, so I had to clip off their tops last week.

Today it's overcast again, so the seedlings are back outside. It's supposed to get up to 75F later in the day, so I'll have to make sure the tables get moved back onto the patio and out of the strong sunlight when and if it happens.

The perennial bed is really growing well this spring.

Sugar snap peas are growing in front of The Thing, which is filled with lettuce seedlings of various sizes and varieties.

Shelling peas growing in the triangle garden, with radishes around the edges. A tiny broccoli plant struggles to survive.

The seedlings I planted earlier aren't doing much. I have a feeling the ones I direct seeded yesterday will probably overtake them. If you look closely you can see the turnips popping up in the foreground, germination looks to be quite good on them, I see maybe two or three that didn't germinate, so I'll stick in a couple more seeds today.

Yesterday I got the raspberry bed amended with more compost. It's ready to grow!

April 10, 2012 - Getting Back in the Groove (part one of two posts)

Give Granny three days off and she'll try to take a month....really! No, I promise I won't stay away that long, but sometimes it's hard to get back into the blogging mood when one is away from it for a few days. Today I have so much to share with you, I'll break it down into two posts, family and garden.

Family

Sunday was Mr. Granny's 77th. birthday, so I had the family here for dinner. Our youngest daughter quipped that her father was so old, they dedicated a religious holiday to him!

There were 16 of us consuming a dinner of baked ham, scalloped potatoes, baked beans, tossed salad, pasta salad, Alicyn's special deviled Easter eggs, birthday cake and ice cream.

The weather was warm and sunny so the two little ones, Remington and Alicyn, played outside all day. At one point, both of them had to be retrieved from the garden manure pile, where they were happily shoveling it into the buckets.

The teenagers always seem to disappear to a bedroom or the TV room, only to reappear when food is served.

At the end of the day, I was tired but happy. I swear I didn't touch a drop of that booze on the counter, I just look loopy! And my kitchen isn't yellow :-)

April 2, 2012 - What to Do, What to Do?

I'm leaving for a short holiday tomorrow. I'll only be gone three or four days, but I'm already worrying about my seedlings. I'm wondering if I should have my granddaughter, who will be dog sitting, turn the lights on and off and risk drying out the plants, or leave the lights off for 3-4 days and be assured they won't dry out with just the natural light in the room (very little). I don't think having her water them would be an option, as it requires packing them all into the kitchen and removing each one from its carrying container, then watering them in the kitchen sink and letting them drain before returning them to their carrying containers and back to the shelves. I suppose I could just have her spritz them with the spray bottle, which would be of some benefit over letting them dry out, but I think the 3-4 days of no artificial lights might just be my best option.

Speaking of those seedlings......I have been out in the garden, digging, hauling, hoeing, building and planting for many days this late winter/early spring, and my old body has held up pretty well. I haven't suffered from very many aches and pains through it all. But yesterday I spent a few hours standing at the kitchen sink, up-potting a bunch of zinnias and some veggies, and the burning pain between my shoulder blades was relentless! I had to take Tylenol every four hours just to make it through the day!

The zinnias had grown so quickly in their soil blocks made of "the potting mix that shall not be named", that their roots had grown inches out of the blocks! Normally I don't have a problem with that happening, as the roots usually air prune. Not these. I ended up potting each one into a 5-oz. plastic cup, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that will hold them for another four weeks. I really do not want to have to up-pot them into the 16 oz. cups, there are way too many.

Zinnias

More zinnias, and a few of the later planted tomatoes, peppers and my four (count 'em) marigolds. Marigolds have been replanted, but these were old seeds so may no longer be viable. If I don't have marigolds growing by the weekend, new seeds will be purchased and planted.

A dozen peppers in various stages of growth.

A dozen of the medium sized tomato plants. With 4-5 weeks left until planting time, I wish they were all this size.

Seven of the tomatoes had to be up-potted to the 16 oz. cups already.

And that was the end of the day's up-potting.

Seedlings in various stages of growth.

This flat of seedlings isn't showing much growth. They were planted in a different potting mix and fertilized with fish emulsion, but they are all laggers. I planted more seeds of the broccoli and cabbages yesterday, using "the potting mix that shall not be named", and I have a feeling they will soon surpass this bunch in growth.

March 28, 2012 - Strawberry Beds & Junk Corners

It was a warm and lovely day today, so I headed out to get some work done in the garden. I had decided this was going to be the year to renew the strawberry bed, so I went to the nearby nursery to check out the varieties. Most of the ones they carried were Tristar, which is what I already have, and the price had increased to $10.99 a bundle for 25 bare root plants. I think I paid about $6.99 a bundle in 2009. I decided I might just as well scrounge my own garden for young plants, and I'm glad I did. I amended a newly dug bed with compost and some 5-10-10 organic fertilizer, and managed to find 30 young plants to fill the plot.

I dug some small plants from this old bed, as well as a few from the flower beds.

The new bed is planted with 30 young strawberry plants. I sprinkled a couple of trowels of compost around each plant, then watered them in with fish emulsion. The over wintered oregano, in the container, also got a drink of the fish fertilizer.

Then I tackled the junk corner. Remember this, from the other day?

My junk corner, with its bird protected lettuce bed.

The lettuce was moved to "The Thing" yesterday, so I dismantled the old bed and cleaned up the corner. A lot of soil was bucketed to the new future squash container, and the rest was raked to try to get the area semi-level. I had quite a bit of old straw left from last year, so I made a new narrow bed along the fence for planting....???? Maybe it can handle the tomato plants that I know I'll have left over. For now, the garlic will have to stay right where it is. It's just beginning to recover from transplanting shock, after being moved from the east garden, so I'm not moving it again. Even with it sitting smack dab in the middle if the area behind the shed, the removal of the lettuce bed does give me room to get the garden cart out the back door and into the garden. I just have to carefully maneuver around the garlic.

March 27, 2012 - Ginny's Back!!!!

Ginny blogged!

Gingerbread's House

March 27, 2012 - "The Thing"

I've been building on it for two days. That seems like a long time for something so simple, but I had to buy a few new materials, and repurpose some old ones. Then, right in the middle, the new drill seized up, so I had to find alternatives for predrilling and putting in the screws. Of course, there is always something that has to be done, then undone, then redone when I find it doesn't work as planned. But it is finally finished! I present to you...............

*THE THING*

OK, so it's just a structure to protect the lettuce from being eaten by the birds. It's covered with the same plastic fencing that I use to enclose my garden. The top netting is only attached at the back, and hooks over the heads of three screws at the front of the cage.

The little seedlings have been moved, and nothing can eat them now. There is 12 square feet of planting space, and I set my lettuce plants in at two (or more) to a square foot, so the bed will hold a minimum of 24 plants at a time. That's more than enough for our use, now that we don't have a rabbit to feed.

I hung three S-hooks from the chain link, so the plastic netting can be raised and hooked to them for easy access to the bed.

It's pretty ugly now, but I think, as the new wood weathers to a soft gray like the cedar fence, it won't stick out like a sore thumb. I'll plant some other veggies by it......there's still enough room for some broccoli plants nearby. That should help hide it, too.

What we don't go through to keep our precious gardens safe from predators.

March 27, 2012 - A Message From Jeff (aka EG of Our Engineered Garden)

It’s an honor to address you on Granny’s blog, and I thank her for the opportunity to do so. All of your kind words and thoughts shared on her recent post about me were greatly appreciated, and sincerely touched my heart. As most of you know, my life is full of pain and sorrow right now due to great losses, and blogging would only create an outlet for the reader to experience the suffering with me. Rather than let that happen, I choose not to write about anything until brighter days return. January and February were very dark months for me, and thankfully daily life is beginning to improve once more a little at a time. Some days are quite difficult to get through, but still I trudge onward. As can be expected during personal grieving, I have had some considerable weight loss. In September I weighed an unhealthy 262, and now a lean 215. Of course my entire wardrobe had to be replaced, but now am as small as I was 25 years ago. Jude is my sole companion these days, and at least once a week I take her to McDonald’s to get a vanilla soft serve ice cream cone. We just pull over in the parking lot and I hold it out for her while she bites the entire end off as onlookers gaze in amazement….. She loves it, and even expects it when I go to pay the utility bill now….. I don’t know what I’d do without her in my life right now, and of course we spend lots of time together outside in the garden…Speaking of which, the garden is going to be the best one yet, and maybe Granny will allow me to share a picture or two with you later in the season. It’s a little different from gardens in the past, mainly because of the crops being grown. Only tomatoes, corn, melons, squash, peppers, and cucumbers are in this one, and the orchard is going to produce a bumper crop as well. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that albeit in pieces – the mad scientist gardener is still here. I’m mending my broken heart and will again someday have things on display for you to see. My building is far from being over, the ideas in my mind hardly tapped out. It’s just that I lack the motivation to use my hands right now….However, I will again dust off my tools to construct things even greater than before when healed. People driving by will know that it’s not just an ordinary, everyday person that lives here….instead, they will understand that the most complex backyard gardener ever to be born in the state of Alabama has put some of his greatest work on display for all to see. I will be whole once more, and wish the best for each and every one of you.

Jeff (aka EG of Our Engineered Garden)