Garden Update.

Potatoes have sprouted! See 'em? Yay!! They're growing FAST.



Ground tomatoes. They look small, but they have grown in just seven days.


Onions have gotten longer, and the poblano is doing fine.



Cucumbers have sprouted!!! Might end up thinning them out to just one plant. I hear they take over the world.



Container tomato - he's gotten bigger too. Took the other one out to prevent over-crowding.


Green pepper. I'm seeing growth in this one too.


Lettuce is looking good. I was wanting more of a romaine though and this is just looking like loose leaves. And I'm not quite sure when it's ready to pick/eat it. Hmm.

No sprouts yet with the cilantro or basil so I didn't take pictures of them. I did notice, however, that their containers were VERY DRY. I hadn't watered them in a couple of days and it showed. Guess I'm going to have to water those daily.

And the potatoes have all sprouted (some quicker than others) and are growing really quickly. Jim bought me some more dirt so I could start mounding around the stems. This needs to be done so the tubers don't see sunlight. If they do, it's not good - something about acid. Can't remember.

Making Cloches.

To keep the squirrels out, I made cloches using chicken wire. It took me about $8 and an hour to make six of them. They're kind of an eye sore but it's worth it to have piece of mind that the squirrels can't dig up my seedlings. (One year they totally ruined my potted basil.) They're pretty easy to make. All you need are wire cutters, leather gloves, and chicken wire. I can easily take them off to weed. When the plants get big enough, I'll toss the cloches and mulch around the stems using grass clippings and dried leaves.

Cucumbers, Poblano Peppers, Bell Peppers, Tomatoes, Basil, and Cilantro.

Been awhile since I posted. That's because we went on vacation over Spring Break and it was raining all last weekend. Finally - a dry Saturday so I can finish planting. But the weather forecast said heavy winds and storms starting around 1PM. So I booked it over to Lowe's at 9AM and picked some stuff up. Already had cucumber seeds from last month - was just waiting for late April to sow them. Just your basic average cucumber:


Last time I planted green peppers, I ended up with one, tiny, sad, little pepper that I couldn't even eat. I think the spot was too shady for them. They need full sun. Which I don't have. So I didn't go hog-wild with the pepper plants - I only bought two. HAD to have the Poblano! I eat tons of Mexican food and love stuffed pablano peppers. I'm the only one in the house that will eat them, but so be it. I also picked up a sweet bell pepper plant, and 4 tiny tomato plants. LOTS of different tomato plants to choose from so I went with the Better Boy variety as they are supposed to continuously produce fruit until the first frost:


I've had really good luck with sowing herb seeds outside, so I picked up some sweet basil and cilantro (again, very big in Mexican dishes):


I also picked up a new hose, a hose hanger, a hose sprayer, and some chicken wire (to keep the squirrels out). By the time I got home and unloaded the car and got started, it was 11AM. Time to prepare the pots since all of these things will be container plants. For the why on that, check out older posts. Thanks for the giant yellow planter, Mom!! LOVE it. :) Found some more containers in the garage. Didn't have to buy any new ones. Phew.


Turns out this is the hardest part of gardening. Preparing the pots. I had forgotten. Since my dirt is in HUGE bags in the wheelbarrow, I had to fill up a bucket and drag the dirt up the stairs to the pots. Took a long time. Erik kept me company:


After I got the pots filled, I planned out what I would plant where:

By now it's been a couple of hours and I'm getting pretty tired. I haven't planted yet and I haven't begun maintenance on the plants I'd planted before, like my onions:


...or my lettuce:


But I keep going and eventually get everything planted. At this point, I notice that I've got four tomato plants in that large yellow planter and they're supposed to be spaced at least 18" apart. So I decide to dig two up and plant them along the fence (where those Cannas bulbs were):


I figure they've got a shot there. Although it's a semi-shady spot, a large cherry tomato plant did really well there a few years ago. Worth a try! It'll actually be interesting to see which tomato plants grow better since they're the same exact plants just in different spots - one inground and another in a container. Time will tell.

Finally I was able to begin maintenance on my onions and lettuce. My onions are growing really quickly! I was surprised at how much they'd grown just a week after I had planted them. My lettuce is going a little slower. And my potatoes are still underground. Haven't sprouted at all yet - and it's been 3 weeks since I planted them. Not sure what's going on there... Anyway, I took off all the plastic bottles, put some more rocks in (mulch) and added broken-up egg shells around the lettuce containers to keep out slugs. Jim said he'd be surprised if slugs traveled that far to get to the lettuce in a container, but I'm thinking what else have they got to do??



By the way, check out Jim's fabulous job with the lawn this year. I can barely see the dirt!! When Erik started to whine later, he layed in it.



Jim's pretty sick today with a fever and a bad cold but he STILL helped me out today. He went to Ace and bought me another bag of dirt (took three 56lb bags to fill everything this year) AND he hung up my hose hanger!! What a guy!!!


By the way, our old hose was kaput. Plus I didn't like the roly-poly container holdy-thingie it was in. (Technical term.) Bugs loved to hide in there and the hose always got tangled up. So I went from this:


....to this:


However, it turned out to be just as much of a pain in the butt as the other one. And I wish I'd gotten the more expensive hose 'cause this one kinks up a lot even though it's "kink resistant." But I AM really proud of my nozzle:


Funny story too. Another gal was looking at the many hoses and nozzles at Lowes and we started talking about how confused we were with all the choices. (She got the better hose but I got the better nozzle.) I chose it because out of all the nozzles, it's box was the most empty. And now I know why. Instead of a trigger to release the water, it has a thumb switch. NO MORE TIRED HANDS! And when I was watering my plants, I really loved that I didn't have to press that trigger forever. Just flip the switch and you're good to go. So next time: I'LL GET A BETTER HOSE. But I'm keepin' my nozzle.

Here's what my deck looks like right now:


With the exception of sowing more lettuce and cilantro seeds later (and possibly onions), I'm done until I plant garlic in the fall. I'll update as the plants grow bigger. One more picture though - - of my homemade wooden fence around my non-existent potatoes. I'm pretty proud of it! I recycled branches that we trimmed at our house and from my mom's poor lilac tree. (RIP)

Potatoes and Onions

Planted my potatoes yesterday. We've got some unseasonably warm weather right now - yesterday it got up to 85! I only planted about 8 of the tubers that I had since I had a space about 5'x2' and the rows are supposed to be 4' apart! I gave them a good drink and then covered them up with a mulch made up of old leaves and grass clippings.



The lettuce is sprouting! (You can see some in one of the pictures above...) I've still got seeds and a little bit of room left in one of the planters. I'm having a hard time collecting enough plastic 2 ltr bottles to put over the top of them. But I figure staggering the plantings will be a good thing. Lettuce doesn't like hot sun, so I figure I'll get another few "heads" before the July heat starts.

Started planting onions today. Used a large terra cotta planter on the deck - but once again ran out of bottles before I got the entire thing planted. So I guess I'll stagger those too.

Jim had chopped down some branches to give the backyard some more sun this summer and I had all of these twigs laying around. So I made my own little garden fence around the potatoes. Turned out pretty cool!

First taste of success.

Well it took a couple of weeks but my lettuce has started sprouting! Only one problem. The soda bottle "squirrel protectors" I buried around the seeds - - got buried a little too deep. When I tried to move them, I uprooted all the dirt and seedlings! So I guess I shouldn't have stuck them in so far. By the way, they're working really well (other than that). They keep moisture in and the squirrels OUT. I just had to pull them all up a bit so I won't disturb the young plants when I take them off later.

Also, my onion sets and potato tubers arrived today. So I'll be planting them this weekend if we get a rain break.

Lettuce planted.

Today I went ahead and planted my lettuce. I've gotten mixed information about when to plant, but just decided to go for it. It's just a Burpee Lettuce seed pack from Lowe's. Red and green leaf lettuce. I read that lettuce actually likes partial shade so it doesn't get leaf burn in the summer heat and considered planting it in the ground by our fence...


But the more I dug, the more bulbs I found from the canna plants I planted last summer. My mom gave me some bulbs and told me they were great growers - - and they were, albeit a little unsightly. They have flowers at the top that show up in early fall, but until then, they're just great big stalks. They're supposed to look like this:

And they grow really tall. Anyway, Jim thought he had dug all the bulbs out for me a couple of weeks ago, but when I started digging again, look what I found:


Close to twenty more bulbs of this stuff!! I think I got them all, but I wasn't sure, so I decided against this area for plants until I know I got all of them. They look like dirt clods in the picture but when you break them open...

They're ready and raring to go. Ugh. So on to plan B which is to plant them in containers. So I prepared my two new containers with some smashed up pottery in the bottom for drainage and then put them on either side of the soon-to-be potato bed.



I found these rocks at the dollar store! Using them as a weed barrier in my containers. I bought out the store. Pretty decent too since they were almost $5/bag at Lowes!


Next, I planted the seeds. Lettuce seeds are super tiny. I just put a few in each hole. I'll have to thin them out later when they start sprouting. Then I put 2 liter plastic bottle halves over each group of seeds to 1) form a protective barrier against squirrels, and 2) guard against upcoming frost. So here's what the planters look like:


I'll let you know later if anything happens!

Dang. First set-back.

The only problem with being a beginner veggie gardener (the only thing I've grown in the past were cherry tomatoes and basil) - - is figuring out WHEN to plant and HOW MUCH to plant. There are tons of resources out there - websites, books, the almanac, etc. But they all seem to be giving me different information. I wish someone made a ZONE 6 PLANTING CHART that was consistant with all the other information out there - but they don't. I tried to make my own but now I'm finding out that, once again, I had false information.

Yesterday, when I googled "growing garlic" - a website told me to plant cloves in early spring. Today I looked again, found a gal in St. Louis MO, who had this to say in her blog:

SO HERE'S THE RIGHT WAY, IN SHORT, TO GROW GARLIC IN YOUR OWN GARDEN. To grow your own garlic, plant cloves in the fall, not the spring. They'll pop out of the ground in late spring. When the tall scapes appear later in the spring, snip them off right away.. A month or more later, pull a test garlic out of the dirt to see if it's ready for harvest. If it is, carefully dig up the heads. Wipe clean the heads with a paper towel (a very thin papery layer will come off), cut off the roots, store in a dry dark spot. Cook/eat as normal but use less until you understand its potency. From A Veggie Venture. And here's a picture of her first garlic harvest:



*sigh* So no garlic this summer.

On the bright side, my mom suggested using pinwheels around the garden to help keep the squirrels away. I'll try anything. We have TONS of squirrels and they love, love, love to dig.

Onion sets and potatoes ordered.

Found a pretty good website called Gurney's Seed and Nursery. This means planting will be put off another week or two until I get the sets.

Preparation for early outdoor planting.

Today I made a pdf file of every veggie I wanted in my garden, how/when to plant, harvest, and misc info for each. Armed with this info, Husband and I set off to Lowe's on this crisp 55 degree Saturday. We were on the look-out for cucumber and lettuce seeds, good dirt, and a couple containers. I was also hoping to get some young onion plants - but the only plants they have right now are tulip bulbs, roses, blooming trees, and pansies. So no onions. And it's kinda too late to start them indoors so I'll just keep hunting at Lowe's and plant them a little later than usual.

So this is our backyard after winter:


Normally the pots would be cleared out but for some reason the cold snuck up on me last fall and I didn't get to it. That's Husband back there in the yard, digging up a small 2'x6' plot for the potatoes. I've decided to put them in the ground and try my luck.

Now before you say, "WHOA THERE, you have PLENTY of room for giant garden!" Our yard barely gets any sun. This early in the spring, we're lucky to have 2 hours of sun in any one spot. 2 measly hours of sun does not a great garden make. Typically my deck is sunny, but today, it didn't get a speck of sun until 3PM. Whatevs. I'm planting anyway.

This is the spot that gets the most sun...


It's kind of hard to see, but there's a 1'x4' plot there in front of the fence - - which sadly doesn't get much light during the day because of the fence. BUT - - Husband had a great idea of using hanging tomato baskets on the other side of the fence, hanging over our driveway. This is what would be the sunniest spot in our yard. Perfect for sun-loving tomatoes! I also like the idea of the hanging baskets because we won't have to trellis/cage them.

Okay, this is what husband dug up for my potatoes:


Notice the shade. BUT, this spot had at least 4-5 hours of sun first thing in the morning. So I'm going to try it. (This pic was taken at about 2:30PM.)

Now there is a long strip of tied off space along our back fence - - but when the leaves come in on the trees overhead - it'll be the shadiest, wettest part of the yard. The only thing that would grow there well would be hastas.

Here's Erik, saying to himself, "God mom, this place looks like a DUMP:"


But after a good hour or so of raking, trimming, mowing, pulling, and trashing (in the case of that rotting, wooden planter back there), it now looks like this:


I found these two plastic planters at Lowes for $18 each, and I may end up putting them in the yard on either side of the potatoes:


I also bought a couple large bags of quality (HEAVY) dirt:


....and a couple packets of cheap-o seeds:


When I came back in from cleaning up the yard - - I promptly took a two-hour nap. And now it's 6:30 - - so the planting will have to wait until tomorrow. But I still feel like we got a lot accomplished!