The Garden is *Almost* In

We have had a lot of rain this spring and, of course, the rain usually happens on the weekends when I'm off work. So getting the garden going this year has been a challenge. However, as you can see, my early plantings are loving it. In the picture above I have red cabbage, green cabbage, spinach, swiss chard, kale, and three kinds of lettuce.

Jeff has been working on getting the ground dug up for me. Last weekend I went to the Bloomington Farmer's Market and bought hot pepper plants, tomato plants, and zucchini plants. Today I planted flower seeds along the southern most edge of the garden: sunflowers, nasturtiums, and verbena. Here's a picture of my perennial coreopsis that grows in one of the front corners of the garden:


My fourteen year old mowed the lawn so I used the clippings to mulch the plants that are in the ground and established. Working out in the garden today was difficult. It was really hot and humid and miserable. So I didn't do everything that needed to be done. Other things I still have to do to consider the garden ready to go are planting bush lima beans, planting green beans, trimming around the garden fence, and mulching the walkways. I'm getting close.

Here is the garden this evening with the shadows being cast as the sun is low in the sky:


Today's weather:
High temp: 90 degrees
Low temp: 70 degrees
Very sunny and humid.

First Plantings 2011

Last weekend I bought some organic garden soil to mix into the soil in the first area I planned to plant this year. Yesterday, I had planned to head down to the Bloomington Farmer's Market. It's my favorite place to buy seedlings in the spring and they are more likely to have organic than places locally. But Mother Nature had other ideas. It rained all morning so I skipped the farmer's market.

This morning Jeff and I headed out to Cox's Plant Farm and bought green and red cabbage seedlings as well as some head lettuce seedlings. Jeff talked me into getting a rhubarb plant and trying it. It will take up a good size portion of the garden and is a perennial that won't be ready to eat from until at least the second year. But I think we've proved we're in for the long haul when it comes to gardening, so we are ready to commit to perennial vegetables. Asparagus can't be far behind...

Anyway, there were other plants I wanted that Cox's didn't have so we headed back to town and went to the Garden Center at Lowe's. Something bugs me about buying garden plants at a Lowe's, but I've got to give them props. They had a lot more variety than Cox's did for the things that I wanted. I bought kale, swiss chard, spinach, and two more kinds of lettuce.

In the picture at the top you can see the spring bed that I've planted today. On the left side of the bed are 12 head lettuce plants, 4 Buttercrunch lettuce plants, and 4 Red Sails red leaf lettuce plants. Then next to the lettuce from top to bottom are 4 spinach plants, 4 swiss chard plants (Bright Lights), and 8 Winterbor kale plants. Finally, on the far right are 6 red cabbage and 4 green cabbage plants. They look a little wilty and it is really windy out today, but I've watered them and hope they perk up soon.

It is unseasonably warm for April. The average for this day in April is 59 degrees. Right now it is 82 degrees and the record high is 84. So there you go. For my plants' sake it needs to cool off just a tad. Plus I'm afraid I got too much sun, first time being back out in it and all.

Oh, and here's the rhubarb plant Jeff wanted. I imagine it will eventually take over the northeast corner of my garden.



One last thing. Return readers may wonder how the vole situation is going. Well, I did a lot of thinking about my options and our commitment to being as organic as possible. I guess I basically decided to do nothing. I've been checking the area quite a bit and it looks like the vole tracks are not new. I really haven't been able to see any evidence that makes me think they are still there. Of course they could be. But I am going to take a wait and see attitude. If they reappear, I will probably use mousetraps. But until then, I will just keep a close eye on things.

Today's weather:
High temp: 82
Low temp: 67
Very windy, chance of rain/thunderstorms overnight

The garden is in!

It is as hot and humid as late July outside! I worked out in the garden for about an hour and a half this morning and I finally had to come in. I can't take the heat! But the good news is all of my plants are in. I still need to plant the bush bean and pole bean seeds and I plan to toss a few pumpkin seeds on the compost pile and see if anything comes up. But the transplants are in. All total I spent exactly $50 on plants this year. I don't remember exactly what I spent on seeds, but I think it was in the neighborhood of $6 or so. I still need to buy supplies to make a cucumber trellis as well as bean and tomato supports, but expenses so far have been relatively low (thankfully!).

In the top picture today you can see how my two broccoli plants have grown since I put them in. Also, the nasturtiums I planted between the broccoli are up and growing. Behind the broccoli are the two cucumber plants I bought this weekend. I went back to the variety I tried two summers ago: Burpless Hybrid. They were long and skinny and the taste was the best I've ever tasted in a cucumber. I think my trellis-building will have to wait until after graduation next weekend. Oh, and also in this picture you can see the snow peas flowering and climbing up their trellis. The chives are still in bloom although I think the flowers are on their way out.


Take a look here at my root crops. The beets are really growing. And the green onions and carrots are starting to make a respectable showing.


Here are my hot peppers tucked in behind the flowering sage. I have planted one banana pepper, one poblano, two jalepeno, and four serrano. Also toward the back is a rosemary plant that I tucked into the only available spare place in the garden.


So here is the garden today. Jeff mowed the lawn this morning so I had him pile the grass clippings in the back. Once they cool off and start decomposing, I'll spread them around my plants (tomatoes first!) as mulch. Other things I've added to the garden today that I haven't mentioned yet are Beauregard sweet potatoes (twice as many as last year), two Italian oregano plants, two curly parsley plants, two butternut squash plants, and four Big Bertha sweet bell pepper plants.

Today's weather:
High temp 86 F
Low temp 65 F
Sunny with 10% humidity (which feel like a lot more than that if you ask me!)

After the Frost

We were hit by frost on Tuesday night. We've been busy and hadn't tried to save anything. I just shrugged and figured whatever gets zapped, gets zapped. Today my garden looks like this.
At least my lettuce (mostly Red Sails), carrots, onions, mustard and collards and cabbages still look pretty good.

My tomatoes are all done for and the bell peppers look sad and wilty.

And my basil has turned brown.

We are on fall break from school and are about to go on our annual fall/Halloween camping trip. When we get back, it looks like I have lots of clean up to do in the garden.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 64
Low temp: 46
Partly cloudy, showers overnight.

Shading Fall Plantings

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday I planted mustard and collard greens, spinach, and broccoli and cauliflower for fall crops. According to the August/September 2008 issue of Mother Earth News, the heat this time of year can be torture for plants, particularly new plantings for the fall. I learned that many established plants won't pollinate once the daytime temps are over 86 degrees. And seeds will not germinate if the soil temperature is too high. Apparently if daytime temps reach 90 degrees, soil temperatures can be 110 degrees - too hot for germination.

So this morning before the heat set in, I dug out some extra lattice we had stored in our minibarn and laid it down over the areas where I'd planted seed yesterday. I used bricks to prop them up so that air can circulate underneath the lattice. Once the roots are established, I'll either remove the lattice or replace it with a more appropriate shading for seedlings.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 83 F
Low temp: 66 F
Abundant sunshine

Lots of rain makes the garden grow

This has got to be a freakish year as far as precipitation goes and I will not expect future years to be so wet. We have gotten so much rain since the end of May. I think I have watered my garden once maybe twice in all that time. Every couple of days it rains...a lot...and fills up my rain gauge!

My first muskmelon today:


Meanwhile, my garden is growing out of control. This is a good thing overall. My zucchini plants are producing a zucchini a day. (And those zucchini are huge now that I have started hand-pollinating them.) My muskmelon and watermelon plants have vined out and taken over their entire bed. My pumpkins have vined and filled their beds. My spaghetti squash is stretching out, filling about 1/3 of their beds so far and this morning had blossoms for the first time. And my tomato plants are becoming too big and heavy for my trellis to support them.

Just one branch of a cherry tomato plant today:


Between the non-stop rain and the holiday, I haven't had much time to work in the garden for a few days. I need to see what can be done to support the tomato plants and I need to get some weeding done. The vining plants that I mentioned early are starting to reach out into the walkways and I'm afraid it won't be long before they swallow up the entire path way around the bed. Eek!

My muskmelon (far left) and baby watermelon (near right) bed today:


The exciting news is that now that the pumpkin vines have grown long enough, there is finally a female blossom opened this morning. I was so excited to finally see it! I used one of the many male blossoms to pollinate it. I hope it is the first of many. With all of these vines taking over my garden, I'd at least like something to show for it!

My pumpkin patch today:

Hail Damage

Yesterday we had a storm come through and it started out with about 10 minutes of pea-to-nickel sized hail. I stood helplessly at my sliding glass door watching my garden get pelted with ice balls. This morning I went out to investigate the damage.
This is a pumpkin leaf that obviously became perforated by the hail. Several of the large leaves were like this.
Here you can see how one of my cucumber plants was damaged. It has the same holes in the leaves as the pumpkin, and it also has a broken vine. I hope that doesn't keep it from growing.

Overall the damage could have been much worse. Most of the plants showed no damage at all and those that were damaged look like they can probably shake it off and survive. I was lucky. This pumpkin still looks pretty good, don't you think?


Today's local weather:
High temp: 75 F
Low temp: 56 F
Sunshine and mixed clouds with slight possibility of thunderstorm

Signs of life

I just took this picture about 15 minutes ago. It is one of two zucchini plants that are getting huge. They each are 2-3 feet in diameter and now this morning this one has a huge flower. Yesterday I also saw these signs of life:
Two weeks ago I thought this cucumber plant was a goner. The base of its stem had gotten white and brittle. I posted a picture of it at its worst at the top of my May 31, 2008 post. However, I noticed that the leafy growth on top was still green and growing so I left it alone. Yesterday I noticed two healthy-looking yellow flowers on it. The other plant has flowers too. Talk about Phoenix rising from the ashes!

This muskmelon plant also has several flowers.


One of my garden tasks yesterday was to tie the tomato plants to the trellis. They are getting big and bushy (thanks to the fertilizer I added a couple of weeks ago) and will topple over soon without support. Anyway, while twining I found this - my first green roma tomato. See it there in the middle just below the horizontal trellis bar? All of my plants have blooms on them and one of the grape tomato plants has three little tomatoes. I'm expecting more every day.

I'm so overjoyed because I've tried gardening in the past, but I just wasn't doing it right. My plants, if they lived at all, were spindly, unhealthy, and bore little fruit. This year the plants are doing what they're supposed to! Everything is getting bigger and bigger each day. The things that I think have made the biggest difference are 1) the fence has kept rabbits out of the garden, 2) the organic fertilizer has really fed all the plants, and the neem oil soap has kept the little bugs off of the plants.

We have recently been deluged with rain. In fact, south of us towns were underwater. We lucked out and only got drenched and then the water ran off. It has been raining a lot more than usual for several weeks now. While this has had horrible consequences for many homeowners in my area, my garden has benefited. I haven't had to water my garden for a couple of weeks now. Mother Nature is taking care of it for me. And those steady, deep rains are far better than anything I can do with my hose.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 90 F
Low temp: 72 F
Partly cloudy, hot and humid.