My Final Thought For May

My final thought for this weekend, and for the month is this: This time last year I was thinking gosh, I wonder if it’s too late to plant a garden? And this year? A sense of great satisfaction and accomplishment...Ahhhhh!!!!

Hay Part Two and Some Beautiful Moments

My eggplant has put out a beautiful purple bloom. I first discovered how beautiful a blooming eggplant is last year. I just love it.

Well, after getting half the garden covered with hay (that bale doggone near did half the garden) I thought wow, this is great. I had already worked up a sweat working that hoe on all my weeds before putting the hay down – I thought, maybe I won’t have to do that anymore.

And they hay covered half looked like – well – a working garden. I’m starting to think that all of a sudden, I’m going to have a lot of food on my hands! The marigold that I thought died didn’t – it’s just taking a break. I was going to replant that mound; now what the heck am I going to do with 6 little crookneck squash plants? I’m thinking I need more potting soil, and I need to haul more pots up onto the deck.

I fed the heirloom tomatoes, which are getting HUGE, and I fed the topsy turvey, which already has a nice tomato on it.

The melons look great. I have thinned them some. Last year I had 5 plants and as much as I could eat for a few months there, so I’m going to have cantaloupes to spare, I think. The cucumbers are thriving, as are the zucchini. I’m very glad that my ignorance and carelessness didn’t kill them off.

My radish greens are gigantic, and I expect they’re busy forming nice big roots. My red beets are doing great, and so are the yellow (pictured).

One of my nasturtium is finally blooming!!!!!

I felt so good after checking all this out, that I went back and got a second bale of hay! This time I lined the trunk with trash bags. I also ordered myself a special treat – The Backyard Homestead, a Mother Earth News Book. Because I think that in the not so distant future I’m going to have to get on with my summer project of learning to preserve food. I’m really trying to get my husband to agree to a couple of chickens……

Potato Cages and Hay Mites

Potato cages first…as I mentioned a few days ago, hindsight would suggest that initially planting my potato seedlings in a mound was probably not a great idea. They need to be hilled up a few times as the foliage grows, and after the first time that I hoed dirt up around the already-existing mounds, I kind of ended up with pyramids and nowhere else for dirt to go for the second mounding. My solution was to build these “potato cages”, just some retaining walls around the potato mounds that would allow me to hill up some more dirt around the foliage. I think that this should do them. I used two kinds – cardboard boxes, because I happened to have a few from a recent shipment that were the right size. That made four, but I needed 11. So I built a few short cages out of leftover rabbit guard, and lined them with black landscape fabric so that the dirt wouldn’t fall out of the openings in the wire grid. I don’t know if it’ll work, but at the moment I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t.

As for the hay mites….after weeks of procrastinating, I finally got some hay. My reasons for procrastinating were various: the place where I knew I could get it (which wasn’t, in the end, where I got it) is not on any of my usual routes; I drive a small compact car; and perhaps most of all there was the sense of unease at doing something unfamiliar. Well, enough of all that. I finally bucked up and got serious this morning, and went in search of the hay.

I drove out to the out-of-the-way place where I’ve seen bales of hay for sale, and no one was there. It was about 9:15 in the morning – too early, apparently. So I made a huge loop back towards the house, with the idea of stopping at the couple of country road nurseries not too far from my house (I’m in a pretty rural area) to see if they sold hay. I’d been to the first nursery a number of times and never seen hay, but today as I pulled into the lot, lo and behold a guy was walking out towards the parking lot carrying a big bale of hay!

I asked him if he could get me some hay, and he looked at my car, and then back at me, doubtfully.

“In that?”

“I can put some in the trunk,” I told him. I opened the trunk and he peered inside. “Could I get two bales in there?”

“You might be able to get one in there.”

“I can put some in the front seat too,” I said. And some in the back.”

“With a child in there?”

“Well just in the front seat then. One in the front and one in the trunk.”

“In your car?”

“Yes.”

“Sure, if you want to. If you want to get mites in your car, I’ll put it in there for you. You know hay has mites it in it. You’ll get mites all over your car.”

Hmmmn. Mites???

“Well, just give me one then. Put it in the trunk.”

So he went and got the bale of hay for the dumb blond, and I picked up some slow release organic tomato food (something else I’ve been avoiding doing) and a few yellow crookneck squash plants and headed home, thinking all the time about mites.

I appreciated the information, but gosh, he could have been a little nicer about it.

Well, let me tell you something – when I got home and pulled that bale of hay out of my trunk, I was astonished at the mess. Boy am I glad I didn’t fill my car up with hay. I doubt I’ll ever get all that out of the trunk of my car. Geesh.

It didn’t do much for my sinuses either…or maybe I just have mites up my nose.

So here’s the lesson learned for anyone else that’s new to hay and contemplating the exotic – unless you have a pickup truck – have it delivered!

Zucchini abounds!

Well, the verdict is in on the non-hardened and semi-hardened Zucchinis that I sprouted it the house - they choose LIFE! There's two in the garden, and one in a pot on the deck sporting a sunny yellow flower this morning, which means that the first zuke of the summer is not that far away!

Please ignore the weeds...sigh. I still haven't gone for hay. Though I did do some substantial weeding yesterday afternoon - about half the garden. Too rainy and wet to venture out there this evening.

Thinning....

Here's the topsy turvy tomato!

I did some thinning of both red and gold beets today. The red ones are getting pretty big. They kind of tended to clump together and grow on top of each other, sometimes 2 or 3 in one spot. The seeds must have run in the rain. So I diligently thinned them, which I hate to do, but I forced myself. It was interesting, pulling up the greens, and seeing just the tiny little red and gold tendrils...and yet even that small they all had the very distinct and recognizable smell of beets, the red ones smelling different from the gold. If I mess around the base of the turnip greens with my thumb I can see the tiny telltale purple tops and white bottoms just starting to fill out. It looks like the transplanted, non-hardened off zucchini and cucumbers in the garden are going to make it. And the couple I did half-heartedly harden off and put in big pots look great too.

I have tomatoes on my yellow taxi!

Eggplants inside still going strong....

I thinned some eggplants today - truly painful. I hated to do it. I had 3 in one pot and 4 in the other, now they are 2 and 1. Compared to what I put out this past weekend, these babies have a long way to go....

Below is a shot of the garden these days - starting to look like something. Under that: turnips, happy bush beans, and beautiful beets!

A few pics of the tomatoes and peppers doing nicely....

Potato hilling, bush beans sprouting, and more...

Well, it's been a transformative week. I have potato foliage high enough now to start hilling it, although now that I'm at this point I regret having planted the potatoes in hills to start with, as I'm not sure that I've left myself anywhere to go....We'll see.

The big news is that as I mentioned last week I transplanted some zuchinnis and cukes outside, and the very evening I did that I thought to myself, uh-oh, I don't think I was supposed to do that. The phrase "hardening off" comes to mind. I have lost one cuke and one zucchini, the rest of the zucchini seem like they might make it after all. They have new growth leaves still coming in green and pretty, so we'll see. Where I lost one of them I planted a big, beautiful and robust looking Ichiban eggplant that I bought this week. The remaining cuke and 2 zuchhini I introduced to the out of doors slowly over the course of the week, and yesterday I put them in pots on the deck. We'll see if they do better.

Speaking of pots on the deck, I have some snap peas coming up beautifully. I put a trellis around each pot for them to climb. I don't know if it'll work or not. I also put one bush tomato in a pot, the other in a Topsy Turvey tomato planter out by the garden - no pic yet as my camera battery keeps dying on me. I'll get that up soon.

I planted bush beans in 4 mounds last week and they've come up beautifully this week. The sweet potatos are upright, and it looks like I only lost 1 or 2 (out of the 26 or so I planted). The tomatoes look beautiful, and I have peppers getting large on almost every pepper plant. The beets, radishes and turnips are still going strong. These days when you walk out to the garden, it actually looks like there's something going on out there!!!

Garden Plan

I apologize the the mixed up descriptions of what's in the photos. No matter how careful I am the actual post never looks like the preview. The pictures above are (L to R) sweet potatoes, beets, radishes, melon and potato on the bottom! More pictures are forthcoming.

Wish I could figure out a way to show you this garden plan as an image, but I'll have to settle for text. Now that everything is in, here's what I've got in the grid (6 across, 13 down):

Row 1: Banana Fingerling (BF) Potato, Daikon, BF, Red Beet, BF, Marigold

Row 2: Sweet Mini Red Pepper, BF, Marigold, BF, Bush Bean, BF

Row 3: Black Beauty Zucchini, Sweet Potato (SWTP), Bush Bean, SWTP, Red Beet, SWTP

Row 4: Black Beauty Zucchini, Bush Baby Zucchini, BF, Red Beets, BF, Yellow Italian Bell pepper

Row 5: SWTP, Bush Bean, SWTP, White Spanish Onion, SWTP, Bush Bean

Row 6: Marigold, BF, Onion, BF, Daikon, BF

Row 7: Orange Mandarin Pepper, SWTP, Carmen Pepper, SWTP, Marigold, SWTP

Row 8: Red Beet, Marigold, Touchstone Gold (TG) Beets, TG Beets, Daikon, Pepper

Row 9: Marigold, Red Beet, Marigold, Anaheim Pepper, Red Beet, Cucumber

Row 10: Turnip, Marigold, Nasturtium, Turnip, Marigold, Cucumber

Row 11: Marigold, Black Krim Tom, Green Zebra Tomato, Nasturtium, Old Melon, Muskmelon

Row 12: Jalepeno, Nasturtium, Marigold, Black Plum Tomato, Muskmelon, Old Melon

Row 13: Yellow Taxi Tom, marigold, Orange Russian Tom, Pineapple Tom, Old Melon, Muskmelon

Everythings coming up...well, veggies!!!!

Here are some new photos (clockwise from top left) red beets, radishes, melon, the Beuregard Sweet Potatoes standing upright now (a sign that indicates I think that most of them will probably make it!) and the Banana Fingerling Potato leaves. Every mound has something in it now, so any new planting will be in pots. I got a jalepeno pepper plant yesterday and put that in. I also put the two Black Beauty Zucchini and one Bush Baby Zucchini in, and two cucumber plants. I planted Bush Bean seeds in about 5 mounds that hadn't had anything in them. I got the tomatoes caged, and weeded, mostly with the hoe, which makes it a little easier. I still need to get the mulch. But I'm starting to feel pretty good about things!

Sweet Potatoes

The Beauregard Sweet Potatoes arrived this week. Unfortunately, they sat in my mailbox for about 24 hours before I knew that they were here, so hopefully they'll be okay. They were pretty wilted when I pulled them out of the box - though the literature I got with them said that was normal. I was taken aback to see plants and foliage at all; I guess I thought they would be "seed potatoes" like the banana fingerlings. I followed the directions and planted them. A day later a few of them looked perked up. However, we've had almost incessant rain and overcast weather for a week and a half and I don't think we're expecting to see the sun before Monday. I'm worried about everything outside getting all this rain. But it's nature, so I guess it'll all work out....I have a few Serrano peppers coming in now too...

Everything is in the garden now except the cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant and bushbeans...

Banana Fingerling Potatoes!

I went out to the garden this evening and of the 12 mounds planted with banana fingerling potatoes, I can see the potato vegetation has come up through the dirt on 9 so far...yippee!

The eggplant also rises!

Looks like I've got three or four the the Hansel Eggplant showing thier beautiful little heads! (Only 2 pictured)

Also making its grand entrance this weekend are potato sprouts up out of the dirt in the garden. I've got twelve mounds planted with potatoes, and only seeing them up through the dirt on one so far. They've been in for a little over two weeks now. I must confess the only reason I know what I'm looking at is because this past weekend in the name of science I DID finally dig one of those mounds up - gently, with my hands - just to see what the heck was going on down there with the potatoes. I was surprised to see long whiteish sprouts growing out of them, that just hadn't yet made it up through the dirt. I didn't disturb anything, I just covered them carefully back up. Then a few days later, a few mounds over, I found this (look carefully in the center of the picture at the two white things that look like bean sprouts), and I'm reminded once again that patience is a virtue. But I figure so is curiosity, because if I hadn't dug up one of these mounds I wouldn't have known what I was looking at. :0)

Speaking of patience, the zucchinis are doing quite well. They no longer look wilted, one of them is fully upright, and the others are turned up towards the grow light, but kind of laying like vines. All are beautiful, perky and healthy.

Here's a few recents shots of the Daikon radishes and the red beets growing. The beets definitely seem to grow slower than the radishes.

I did poke a few seeds in pots on the deck this weekend. More on the container garden later. I'm turning my attention in the ground garden this week to tomato (and possibly pepper) cages, mulching, and locating an organic, slow-release plant food.

Everyone's alive and well....and more surprises!

As you can see, the zucchini (in right of picture) seem to have made it through thier gardener-inflicted trauma! They're not as upright as they were previously (though one has righted itself), but they still seem healthy. All the little cucumber sprouts (in left of picture) are doing great too.

I mentioned in my last post that I found a Black Beauty zucchini sprouting up out of a pot that I had given up hope on a week or so ago, and that I had brought it in and put it under the grow light too. During the course of that first day, after a few hours inside under the light, this happened - another little sprout lifted its head up out of the soil, with soil still clinging to it! I was astonished. It's so big! It was like one moment it's not there and the next moment it was. Amazing. A few hours later, and I had this.... TWO Black Beauty Zucchinis coming up out of that pot. How cool! So for the time being, I'm just letting them all be!

I'm so glad that I decided to throw caution to the wind and just try a few seeds inside. I have learned so much doing it. Still no visible action on the Hansel Eggplant seeds, but I'm not giving up yet.

World's biggest klutz gets a pleasant surprise...

Sigh.

Yes, I have a lot to say today.

I consider it my responsibility in particular, having volunteered to do this blog, to chronicle the DUMBEST things that I do - so here goes - bearing in mind that it's probably too soon to know if it was really dumb (feels dumb right now). I'll have a better feel for it tomorrow, when I see whether the poor things are going to die or not. This is another indoor seedling story.

The picture on the left is my beautiful (though leggy) bush baby zucchini sproutlets as they appeared yesterday, with their full new leaves coming in. In my zeal to do something (anything!) I thought that they might be getting too big for the little pots that they were in, though now that I have seen what was going on in there root-wise I can see that this was not the case. Can anyone say, "how to learn the hard way?"

So I found some bigger pots and transplanted them. I knew immediately that this was a mistake, it occurs to me as I write this, because they had no rootball, so they couldn't just be slipped out of one pot and into another. Though robust looking in the before picture, they proved themselves to be very limp and almost impossible to handle once out of the original pot. To add insult to injury, when I was carrying them back inside I dropped one of them. Ack!

So I set them back in under the grow bulb looking quite sad - them and me. We'll see what happens. They'll either perk back up or not. All I can say in my defense is that I have a really difficult time being in process with physical things. I can cultivate an idea over a long period of time in equanimity, but in any instance where there's physical evidence of what I'm doing I want to see PROGRESS - I'm voracious for the finished product. I think this is what I find so unnerving about sticking seeds into the ground. Moving on....

As for the surprise part...when I went outside to get the bigger pots from my collection of little pots, I found this!!! A few weeks ago, whcn I decided that half of what I'd put in hadn't come up, I took the pots outside and dropped them into a bigger pot without emptying out any of the dirt, which I figured I'd get to eventually. I just wanted to save the pots. But when I went out there digging for a bigger pot this morning, this beautiful little Black Beauty Zucchini was sitting in the bottom of a big orange pot, in a puddle of water, looking just as perky as can be. My miricle baby. It would be nice if I ended up with the Bush Baby AND the Black Beauty, which was my original intention. I'll keep you posted.

I did stick a few of the Hansel Eggplant seeds in pots again about a week ago, bigger pots this time, that I intend to KEEP them in until they can be satisfactorily tranplanted outside - into either pots or the garden. I have them on the seed mat with the Ziploc bag domes. When they start to sprout (and I think I may be getting one sprout up in each pot) I will transfer them to the grow light.

Beautiful peppers...

Here's a few close-ups (I apologize for the slightly blurry one) of the peppers that are developing. They are Anaheim (far left), Carmen (close left) and Orange Mandarin (below).

Tomatos and pepers and more....

I put the tomatoes and peppers in this week. And I did something radical, crazy and new....I went to my local garden store and bought a bag of compost manure! I mixed this into the mounds where I planted the tomatoes and peppers. Now that I know that I can buy it, and how easy it is (go figure) I think I'll make mixing in compost/manure a regular part of my garden routine. I probably should have bought more, but I had enough to put one good full shovel-full in each mound. I already have a beautiful Carmen pepper about 1.5 inches long.

While I was at the garden store I got a few nasturtiums, which are supposed to be good companion plants for the tomatoes and melons and put them into that side of the garden. I ended up kind of changing my plan a little bit, so that one half of the garden has the tomatoes, marigolds, nasturtiums and the melon patch (I decided to plant all the melons together to try to help control the sprawl, rather than interplanting them in the grid as I had previously considered).

I saw a lone pot of white spanish onions, and thinking of Karen's blog (Mid-Northeast) about planting onions, I figured, what the heck. So I got them, and put them in too. I'm kind of excited about that.

What else...I went ahead and shoved a few touchstone gold beet seeds in the ground and we'll see what happens with those. Muskmelon and Old Melon seeds too - the lady at the garden store told me it was okay to put these in.