Typically 4th of July does not count under the “major gardening project” umbrella. We usually save that for Memorial Day or Labor Day. Most people would be out on a boat enjoying the sun and celebrating. Me? I’m not so fond of the 4th of July. Sure, I like the getting together with friends aspect of it, but any holiday that forces me to stay up past my bed time is no fun. It doesn’t get even semi dark until at least 9:30 and by that point I’m ready for pajamas.
This year the 4th of July falls on a Sunday so that means many places give employees the Monday afterwards a day off for observance. Really, bankers just want an added day off in the year. It just so happens that my husband also has Monday off so I convinced him to take Friday off and make it an extra long weekend… so we can do projects.
We broke down and hired a gardener to come and clean out the corner bed. She did a marvelous job and they even spread the last bit of Tagro I had. This means I have space to plant the growing pile of plants on my front patio. My husband and I are 1/4 of the way finished with weeding another section of the garden so that means even more space to plant things. So the weekend will consist of lots of weeding and runs to the landfill. There are some irrigation system things that need to be wrapped up and possibly a fence that needs to be mended. We won’t run out of projects that is for sure.
So what projects do you have planned for the weekend? Any? Or do you plan to sit around and enjoy your day off?
I currently have about 7 different varieties of lettuce growing in my garden. I have seeds for about a dozen varieties, but 7 are consistent in germination. All have distinct flavors, but just looking at the masses of color it is simply beautiful. Rather than giving you a run down on the flavors of the varieties (believe me they are all good) I thought I’d share with you some photos of the different lettuces.
Cross posted at Life of Elle.
My neighbor went out of town for two weeks (please don’t rob his house). Before he left he asked if I could collect his mail and recycle his papers. I agreed since he is a nice guy. If he were an asshole I might steal some of the plants in his yard and replace them with crappy ones. Good thing he doesn’t have very many good plants and that he’s nice. Anyway, he also asked if we could use some fresh produce. Um, yes. We can always use fresh produce (she says as she ignores the 3200 square feet of vegetable garden and that every other week box of organic produce that comes to her doorstep). Why YES! Bring it on. He said that he gets a weekly CSA share from Zestful Gardens and that we are more than welcome to pick it up for the next two weeks. He would let them know that it would be us picking it up and that we would collect it at a church in the North end. The next day he arrives with a note about where to pick up the produce and other things. The note says he gets a full farm share, a greens share and 2 dozen eggs… on Tuesdays. As in every week. We weren’t sure what we were in for and we went to pick up the share and then to the farmer’s market.
The Zestful truck parks in a church parking lot and like any other CSA they put out their wares and a board that says what that week’s share is. You then go through and fill your bags. We walked away with 2 giant bok choi, 2 head of endive, 1 bunch of radishes, 1 bunch of chard, 1 bunch of chives, 1/3 pound of snow peas, 1/2 pound of snap peas, 1/2 pound of salad greens, 1/2 pound of spinach (that was the farm share). We also got a Chinese cabbage (the greens share) and 2 dozen eggs. Needless to say we didn’t buy any vegetables at the farmer’s market.
To add to it we have bunches of spinach (leftover from his last week share and our garden), 3 bunches of radishes (leftover from his last week share and our vegetable box), mustard greens, salad mix (from our vegetable box and the gobs from our own garden), kale, spring onions, spring garlic and carrots.
The question is, what do I do with all of this? I’m going to get another farm share next week and our vegetable box and I have stuff coming ready in my own garden. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, but I can only eat so many salads a day. I may have to add a 3rd breakfast salad.
So give me your best suggestions. Given everything in my fridge, give me your best recipes. Help me out here. What would you make with all of this stuff?
This year our weather has been about 30 days behind. In February and March we were 30 days ahead, but due to the abnormally cold May we are now 30 days behind in planting. I just put out my tomato plants the first weekend in June. Shortly thereafter we had a rain storm like none I’ve seen before and I was sure that my tomatoes were goners. Luckily they were not and the weather warmed up. With the warmer weather the tomatoes started growing and I started to panic about support.
Last year my tomatoes grew to nearly 7′ tall and they snapped metal stakes. I am taking no chances this year and went with the grand-daddy of all tomato supports. No, it isn’t a Texas Tomato Cage. I don’t think those would even work. I’m a do-it-yourself kinda gal and used an idea I found at the Puyallup Fair last year.
Since I’m not taking any chances on a reduced yield because of the weather so I added 5 more plants to last year’s 10. That is 15 tomato plants in all. Only two are the same variety.
To create the supports I used 1×3 lumber and 2×2 lumber. I used a 8′ piece and cut 18″ off. I screwed the 18″ piece to the top of the the long piece and used a 12″ piece of 2×2 to make a diagonal support. My husband then dug 12″ holes and attached the uprights to the raised beds. I (my husband) attached eye bolts in the cross piece and ran a string to the bottom of the tomato plant. I used bamboo stakes and zip ties to hold the string down and taught. I then attached the tomato plant with tomato clips from Johnny’s Seed.
The tomato section of the garden looks rather strange, but I’m hoping it will work to keep the tomatoes upright.
Here are a few photos to illustrate.
We are on track to have one of the coolest Mays on record. We were spoiled by the amazing weather Mother’s Day weekend and ever since I’ve cringed when I’ve woken up in the morning. At the nursery we are selling tomatoes to customers for the second or third times. I am personally on my second round of Thai Basil. I didn’t have time to put out tomatoes the weekend after Mother’s Day (my usual time to put them out) and I am very thankful for that. I lost a cucumber plant over the week and some of the summer squash isn’t looking too good. I lost at least 2 broccoli plants and I am down to 2 cauliflower. The rain and cold is not doing my garden any favors.
We looked at the long term weather forcast and the 10 day outlook is pretty bleak. There is the possibility of warm weather starting on June 9th, but that is still quite a ways off.
In the past week I’ve sold gobs of copper spray for a wide variety of fungus. I fielded more questions about insects and diseases in the past month that I probably ever have in my whole career. The oddest one of the bunch was about a gelatinous substance found at the base of a rhubarb plant. Research showed that it was likely a fungus that attacks the crowns of rhubarb.
I can only hope that the weather will warm up and Summer will eventually come. For now I’ll do a little sun dance and try to protect my limping along garden.
Over the years I have tried every possible method of supporting my vegetables. I am married to a frugal husband (aka cheap Swede) and I have a bit of a budget when it comes to… well, everything. This isn’t always a bad thing because it keeps me from spending willy nilly on things I don’t really need to spend money on.
My peas have always been a bit of a pain for me. I love the pole style snap peas and even my so-called bush peas and beans have needed support. I have tried using a single bamboo pole, a bamboo A frame, and other various support systems for my peas. All have failed and by the end of the pea season they are unruly and broken. I lost tons of peas due to heavy vines snapping in a light wind.
Last year I came up with a plan to use a more rigid structure, copper. I used copper tubing, some copper elbows and bird netting and made a fairly effective pea trellis. It worked mostly ok for the beans and moderately well for the peas. The peas I grow get so tall and heavy they push over most anything I build.
This year I modified my copper pipe system for the bush peas and my husband build me a new and totally improved pole pea system. Today I wanted to showcase copper pipe system.
My pea beds are 5′ wide by 10′ long. I planted my peas across the beds with rows 18″ apart. This was the first improvement. In past years I’ve tried to plant too much into these beds (as they were the only ones I had) and the vines intermingle if they are too close together. This makes harvesting quite difficult.
At the end of each row I drove a 3′ piece of 3/8″ re-bar into the ground so about 2′ was still showing.
From there I slid 5′ copper pipes over the re-bar and secured it with a copper strap. Last year I did not use the re-bar and just used the copper strap. Over time the strap will stretch and the supports will flex.
Once the base of the frame was in place I connected the two uprights with a 5′ cross bar and attached bird netting to the pipes with zip-ties.
So far the peas are grabbing the bird netting and the structure is sound enough that it won’t sway to badly. I am hoping that it will be sufficient for my bush peas. I am not confident that it will work for the pole peas so for that we’ve built a larger more substantial system. I’ll cover that for next weekend’s project.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how to support your garden.
The sun has come out around here and it is time to get planting. I am in a unique situation because I built myself a cold frame outside so I don’t have to hassle with lights, heating and indoor space. This week I started squashes and cucumbers in the cold frame and planted out a few things.
In the Cold Frame:
Pumpkins, Summer Squash, Winter Squash and Cucumbers
Planted out:
Broccoli, Cabbage & Cauliflower seedlings
Onion starts
Raspberry Canes
Strawberry starts
I was late in purchasing my raspberries and strawberries this season so I ended up ordering them from Raintree Nursery. I drool over their catalog every season wishing I could order on of this and one of that. It wasn’t until this season that I had a need to purchase. I ended up with Cascade Delight Raspberries and Jewel Strawberries. Both are summer bearing and sound wonderful. The quality of the plants I received was outstanding. The likelihood of me getting raspberries off of the canes this year is rather slim, but it was fun putting in a plant that will add a little winter interest in the garden.
What did you plant this week?
My schedule for planting this season has me planting something every week from the last week of March through the middle of July. I have to stop before the 15th of July because I will be leaving for China for 2 1/2 weeks and I’m not sure my husband will have time to harvest food, plant food, work and take care of our house and son. I’ll set him up with plenty of fresh food and the boys can have at it.
The reason I have something scheduled to be planted every week is that I want to have constant food. Items like lettuce and arugula don’t keep so I’m spacing out the plantings to have a continuous supply. I intend to plant lettuce and beets every two weeks and beans and carrots every two weeks. The theory is that I will be able to harvest a row and replant the next week. Of course this is only for the quickly growing items such as lettuce. I also prefer my spring beets small for salads and then I let the summer beets go for storage. Same with carrots.
I also intend to keep a record of what is planted each week and then update with germination rates and harvest dates. Unfortunately, I doesn’t look like anything will be planted this weekend since I happen to be suffering from a freak roller skating case of owwee.
I did get a few things thrown into the ground last Saturday.
Arugula
Carrots – Chantenay Royal & Amsterdam Minicor
Beets – Choigga (my favorites), Bull’s Blood, Ruby Queen & Early Blood Turnip
Spinach – Giant Thick & Bloomsdale Savoy
Lettuce – Ruby, Kagraner Summer, Tango, Summer Bibb, Yugoslavian Red Butterhead, Buttercrunch, Flame & Salad Bowl (my favorite)
I still do not have peas planted. I know that is terrible, but my Tagro pile is a long ways away from my pea bed and I simply cannot push the wheelbarrow that far. Hey, I can’t even bend over to tie my shoes. Cut me some slack.
Five yards of crushed gravel was delivered Friday afternoon and we spent the weekend laying landscape fabric and shoveling gravel. My husband also made a trip to the lumber store to purchase the cedar for the beds and those were also constructed. All but two that is.
Our Tagro was delivered Tuesday afternoon after I frantically spent an hour laying down cardboard and wetting it down. I then spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday shoveling Tagro. I did have help from my husband and son.
I didn’t have the opportunity to take photos yesterday, but this is the progress by the end of the day Tuesday. One half of the garden is complete and two of the beds are filled. I am go to go with planting the lettuce, beets, carrots and onions… finally. Theoretically I could plant pumpkins too since that bed is done. However, the weather is not that nice.
As things progress I’m noticing that I have much more space than I thought I would have. I’m considering designating a special part of the garden for my son to plant whatever he wants. I go back and forth between “oh dear lord what did I get myself into” and “holy cow look at how much I can grow!”
Now if the rain would stop and I can find more newspaper I can get it all finished.
Today we are officially starting the major garden expansion. I am going to start by ordering the Tagro and gravel necessary to lay the foundation for the garden and if I’m lucky I can get my husband to make a run to the mill outlet on his way home from the driving range (which is right across the street) to pick up the wood needed for the raised beds. I am going to take advantage of two days of nice weather and shovel as much garden material as possible.
I am finally going to share with you the plan for the garden. I had anticipated doing this sooner, but somehow I accidentally spilled coffee on my original plan rendering it unreadable to anyone who doesn’t understand coffee stained garden plans. Although, the coffee gave it a nice aged patina.
What you will note from the plan is that it is not your average garden. I do like the nice neat rows of a vegetable garden, but I also would like it to be aesthetically pleasing. This garden is going to be in my front yard so I don’t want to subject my neighbors to anymore boring than I have to. They already wish I would weed the front flower beds.
This garden also has to look nice in the winter so I do plan on adding a few perennial flowers about to add interest. I will eventually expand my blueberry plant collection and that will also supply winter interest.
Please excuse my handwriting. I am very out of practice with my technical writing.
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