April 2013

April was incredibly busy for me, so I had no time to post an update. Now that I'm a month overdue, I thought I'd better get busy!!


This is a little of what we harvested out of the garden at the beginning of April. Our cabbage heads ended up being 2.5-4 pounds each. Next time, I think I'll plant a couple every week instead of harvesting almost 10 at one time! 

The following photos show an experiment we tried. On New Year's Day, I harvested the main cabbage head and split the stump remaining in the ground. Four months later, I harvested the four smaller heads you see.

These are our three newest beds. This on is furthest south and contains 5 tomato plants, basil, bell pepper and a lemon cucumber plant. We just added the tomato cages and trellises, which took a couple of hours and 3 people to build, but I love them. I won't have to be buying tomato cages for the next 10 years or so!
 
In this bed there are 3 indeterminate tomatoes and 2 determinates.

This is the center bed. It has 3 determinate tomatoes (one which had to be replanted and is much smaller than the rest), including Papa's Homestead tomato. There is also eggplant, butternut and acorn squash planted here.

And in the bed the furthest to the north are our poor squash and zucchini plants. The poor things can't catch a break from the powdery mildew! I keep spraying and cutting off any leaves I find it on, so they get regular haircuts every 3-4 days!
You'll notice the large empty area- I jerked 2 zucchini and 2 squash plants out of the ground that were beginning to lose their battle with the mildew. I refuse to let that stuff take over my garden this year!!

Our potatoes are doing so well!! On the left are the Yukon Golds with new potatoes on the right.

Ah, our Sugar Baby Watermelon! I've never seen a plant look this weak before, but no amount of water, fertilizer, nutrients seem to change that at all. It does have a pretty good little melon growing, though!

These are cucumber (top) and cantaloupe (bottom) vines, along with swiss chard and carrots. The cucumber and cantaloupe will eventually be trained up the fence.

Two more varieties of cucumbers, along with flowers to attract the bees and beneficial insects.

And, finally, Leah's strawberry patch. Dean didn't exactly plant this using the square foot method, as you can tell from the sporatic placement of the plants!

March, 2013

We started off the month planting all of our transplants and are ending the month covering them up to protect them from a freeze we're expecting tonight. Mother Nature is so confused!! 

Once we got all of the beds finished, we spent several days working on the irrigation system. We have established 3 watering zones, each of them on a timer so that it will be watered for 45 minutes every other day. The two 16' beds are on a zone, the four 8' beds and two 6' beds are on a zone, and the three 12' beds are on a zone. Dean has worked incredibly hard to get this garden up and going this year- without his hard work it wouldn't have gotten completed.

Let me take you on a tour of our garden!

One of the original 16' beds containing spinach, carrots, lettuce & swiss chard.

The other 16' bed containing cabbages (planted at the end of December), onions and collard greens.

One of the 12' beds with straight and crookneck squash, zucchini and bell pepper.

This 12' bed contains heirloom tomato and eggplants. We'll be adding additional tomato and pepper plants to this bed.

This is the hybrid tomato bed, along with a lemon cucumber and bell pepper plants.

Ah, the potato beds. Closest to us are the Yukon Gold potatoes and in the next bed are Red Norland. Both are early season potatoes.

This is Leah's strawberry bed, the only non-SFG bed we have.

We also have three beds that I don't have pictures of right this moment. There are two 2'x8' beds with cantaloupe and cucumbers and a 2'x6' bed with watermelon.

February 2013

Dean was quite busy in our garden during the month of February, while I spent most of my time working (at both school and Lowe's), helping Mom and working on our seedlings. We started some of our seedling around the 11th of January and planted more on the 4th of February. My goal this year is to start everything in our garden from seed, especially after the disaster which occurred last year after I bought the Lemon Boy tomato plant home- the eventual destruction of all of my tomato plants.

This photo shows all of our seedlings on the 15th of February:

Background plants were planted in January (around the 11th), the foreground plants were planted on February 4th.

Planted in January.

Dean, along with some assistance from Joseph and Anthony, spent this month working on the expansion of our garden beds by adding two 4'x12', four 2'x8' and two 2'x6' beds, making our garden 360 square feet total. He also added the drip irrigation system we ordered from Drip Works, burying the 1/2" tubing and creating 3 watering zones. We eventually hope to put his citrus trees on a timed drip irrigation system.

While expanding the garden we added a gate on the north side, moved the garden shed to the east side of the house along with the 2 compost bins, and relocated the dog's water. He also repurposed the old soccer goal into a covered shed for things like our pipe and 5 gallon buckets.

Our garden area before the transformation. Photo taken the end of September.

The two 16' beds in the foreground, the three 12' beds beyond. To the far right you can see one of the 8' beds which run along the entire fence line. This photo was taken March 16, 2013.

The 8' beds and the corners of the two 6' beds. You can see the white pvc covering the 1/2" supply tubing which is run underground. The pvc is to protect the tubing from the weed eater.

Shaded garden from the east view.

Here you can see the garden shed, two compost bins and covered area Dean made from an old soccer goal. You can also see the double gate he made on this side of the garden.

This garden wouldn't look anything like this if it hadn't been for Dean. On January 25th, my 81 year-old mother fell in the garden center of Lowe's and broke the 2 bones in her wrist. The first few weeks following that accident, every spare moment I had was at her house helping her with basic living activities: bathing, washing hair, writing out checks to pay bills, etc. She was very determined to do everything she could for herself, so by the end of February (after the finally put her in a regular cast on February 18th) she was doing most of this for herself so I could help in the garden a little more.

January 2013

January 21, 2013

During the past 1 1/2 months, we have harvested all of the broccoli heads and have finished harvesting the side shoots. It is AMAZING how much broccoli you can get from one plant!!!

This is the first head of broccoli we cut, with a dinner plate for reference. We had almost a week of 80 degree weather, so the broccoli started to bolt. The florettes weren't even large enough to cut before they began to bloom. So, we spent Saturday pulling the broccoli out of the garden. We now have 1/2 of one of the 16' beds with nothing in it, which looks strange!!


We cut the first 2 heads of cabbage and had them for lunch on New Year's Day, especially since Granny went a gave the collards a serious haircut about a week before  and they hadn't recovered! We cut the third head on Saturday (2 1/3 lbs after removing the outer leaves) and will be enjoying it tonight for supper.

After cutting the heads, I cut an X in the remaining stalk. A couple of days later, these little purple sprouts appeared.

A week later, these little purple sprouts have developed definite cabbage leaves. Not only are these on top by the stem, but they are literally above EVERY LEAF that remained on the stalk! I'm thinking of removing the large leaves and see what happens on one of the 2 plants.






We are also in the process of planning next summer's garden. Our most recent development: seed starting! I used my Christmas money to purchase a grow light with 4 T5 bulbs ($99), 40
2" self-watering pots and lots of seeds!! Dean then helped me put PVC pipes into 2 shelves we already had, which he then attached chain to hang the light from. The lights are on a timer, giving the seedlings about 14 hours of artificial light per day.

From this view you can't see the little seedlings, but they're there!

We also have other seeds planted, which haven't yet sprouted, on top of the refrigerator.

 

Dean has completely revamped our water spigots and water filter in preparation for the addition of  a drip irrigation system. We have moved the garden shed outside of the fence and placed it at the far end of the house along with the composting bin. With the half-bare beds and missing garden shed, it looks really strange!

I'll be adding Papa's other composting bin, moving the dog's water to the other side of the shed where it will be shaded from all sun, and adding another gate so we won't have to walk all the way around the garden fence to get to the shed. We're also adding one 2'x6' bed, two 4'x12' beds, and four 2'x8' beds, along with something Dean is working on for strawberries beside the deck.  The 2' beds will be added against the fences and will be the new home for all of the vining crops: cucumbers, cantaloupe, and watermelon, along with whatever else we decide to plant. If you look closely in the photo, you'll see orange spray paint along the fence on the right side of the photo. This is marking out where the 2'x8' beds will be. The 2'x6' bed will be to the right of the gate as you walk in. The two 4'x12' beds will join the far bed, and it will move to the left and closer to the far fence. With all of these additions, we'll be going from 178 sq ft of garden to 348 sq ft of garden, not counting the strawberries!! WOW!! Almost doubling our garden space will really help us share our produce with Mimi & Papa. 

I also found out today that we can compost the "proceeds" from Bugsy's cage! So now she'll be helping by adding the "browns" to my composting pile- something I was definitely without this year! 

Now she'll be helping to produce what she eats!

This is the results of Dean's Fruit Cocktail Tree! Just after the first of December, we picked 3 of the lemons and made Lemon Merangue Pie! Delicious!!!

December 1, 2012

 We finished planting the last of the garden beds today! Last weekend we went to Lowe's and purchased some additional cabbage plants. If they were going to make it, they had to go into the bed today!! With all of the preparation for the freezes that we had last week, last weekend was too busy to do any planting! Besides, I certainly didn't want to have newly planted cabbage plants in the ground immediately before 2 nights of freezing temperatures.

Last weekend we purchased another roll of frost blanket fabric, which we cut up and I sewed together to create tents for our citrus trees. Frames constructed of pvc provided the needed support. We also removed the hot banana pepper plant since there was no way we could cover it and the broccoli in the second bed. Using bent tomato cages, old bed sheets and clothes pins, we managed to cover the beds without the pvc hoops. Two nights of below freezing temperatures, but everything survived. The broccoli in the second bed has some burn marks on some of the leaves, but nothing serious.

 Before planting in a bed, we always add a mixture of compost, along with time release fertilizer. In the first shot, you can see that part of the strings have been removed. The soil in the lower left corner, which still contains radish and beet plants, is lighter than the rest of the bed. We didn't disturb those 2 squares, but side dressed them after getting the strings back into place.

Here you can see Dean putting the strings back across the bed. When he built these beds for me, we experimented with different ways to mark of the squares. After contending with a very exuberant black lab puppy bounding through our garden beds to play with the dowel rods we had used, I took Dean up on his suggestion of using roofing nails and string.

 When we supplement a bed with compost, we like to add several bags. It's more difficult to do with the strings in place, so we simply unattach them from one side, toss them onto the ground on the other side, and add our compost, which we mix in using either a small tiller or a shovel. Adding the compost a square at a time may work for some, but it's faster and easier to do it our way when you have 4' x 16' beds!

Since the string has some flexibility, it's a simple matter to stretch the string back across the bed, then wrap the loop back around the screw. Dean used flat-head roofing nails and only left it high enough for the string to go around it, so it's even comfortable enough for me to sit on the edge of the beds without it hurting, which I do often.

As you can see, this planting of cabbage takes up just over 1/2 of the 4' x 16' bed. Here I am creating a depression in the soil where each of the cabbage plants will go. This will help water to be directed to the roots of the plants. We plant them 24 inches apart. Last spring, when planting the first cabbage plants, we spaced them every 12 inches and regretted it. I felt like the cabbages were fighting for space, so I gave these plenty of room to grow!

I like using a bulb planter when planting my transplants. It takes out just the right amount of soil and can easily be done with one hand.

You can see in this photo how root-bound these cabbage plants were getting

 Here you see my 2 assistants- Belle, my son's black lab that I mentioned earlier, and Sheila, my father-in-law's puppy who isn't quite a year old. Bell is waiting for me to quit messing in that black stuff and throw the ball, already!!

Sheila isn't helping, she just thinks she is supposed to be the center of attention AT ALL TIMES!!! :-) Once she saw that I wasn't going to stop messing with this other stuff, she was off to play with Belle. Those 2 are really good company for each other and we've spent many evenings sitting in Mimi & Papa's back yard watching them play.

These are the three broccoli plants in the first bed, closest to the house. The one on the top left has the largest head of broccoli, with the smallest head on the plant in the center. The plant below is on the very end and has the medium-sized head, about as large as you palm.

 As you can see, these broccoli plants are also planted every 24 inches, and believe me, they take it! Maybe if we needed more room for other stuff I'd consider growing them every foot, but since we have the space, I'd rather have larger broccoli heads.

These are the three cabbage plants in the same bed. Interesting enough, when Leah was taking these pictures, she didn't even take a picture of the largest cabbage plant. It is on the right edge of the photo, just out of the range of the camera.

 One thing we've definitely noticed this year is the abundance of yellow jackets visiting our garden. They have discovered that cabbage leaves make great water fountains!!

Our Swiss Chard is finally starting to grow! I picked one piece today and took it in to Bugsy and she loved it. In the empty squares on the left side of this photo, I replanted some romaine lettuce today. I had planted it at the end of September, but it was too hot for it to even sprout, so we decided to try it again.

 I experimented this year with Arugula, which wasn't much of a success. Dean and I just really didn't care for the peppery green, so it was replaced today with another planting of spinach, at Dean's request. Last year we planted 4 squares with spinach and had a bumper crop, so we're hoping for the same this winter.

After experimenting with Rainbow carrots last year, we decided to stick with Scarlet Nantenes, which had a great color and very sweet flavor. Dean really enjoyed carrying them to work in his lunchbox. All in all, we have 8 squares of them in this garden.






At this point, every square in all 3 beds is either planted, or under a plant (in the case of the squares under all of those broccoli and cabbage plants!). Since we have two 4' x 16' beds and one 4' x 12' bed, that would be 176 squares of winter garden, all planted. Our next goal is to get the other 2 beds equipped with the hoops and frost blankets, along with the pvc clips.

Dean's trees are doing well- we picked one Meyer Lemon yesterday, but we think we're going to wait a while on all of the others. We were checking his Fruit Cocktail tree out yesterday and found several more fruits had set than he originally thought, so he'll be busy babying that tree all winter!