May 5th Garden Update

Has this been the world's weirdest Spring, or what? Bitterly cold winter, a week's worth of 70 degree weather, then alternating hot, cold, hot, cold. Hey, Mother Nature, Spring is supposed to be IN BETWEEN hot and cold.

The good news is, the garden is in full swing. I've got dirty fingernails 3-5 times a week, and I'm loving it.

Here's what things are looking like now...

I went ahead and started watermelon seeds. Yes, I'm dumb. But I leave 'em under a big clear plastic tub that is propped up slightly, so that it has to get pretty hot in there for air to be escaping out the bottom. This seems to have made the little melon seeds happy. These are Sugar Baby. The Ali Babas, for whatever reason, just haven't come up yet.



The hugelkultur raised beds, for lettuces (and some celery in the corners), and I transplanted Swiss Chard in the one where the lettuce was simply refusing to germinate...well, I'm not all that convinced on these things yet. I think all the wood underneath makes the soil drain way too fast, and maybe that's why things aren't growing quickly.

The red lettuces aren't doing much either. :(



I know that the rule with cucumbers is to direct seed them, but I was going back and forth on where their permanent home would be. So, I started them in cups, and finally moved them to a self-watering container, and they seem to be adjusting just fine. This variety is Japanese Long.

I found luffa gourd seeds at Target, of all places. I still haven't figured out where their permanent home is going to be, so they are stuck in their cups for the time being.

The blueberries are starting to form fruit - woohoo! This is my first year trying blueberries, and, given the prices at the grocery store, I think I'm going to get a few more plants for next year, and try them in the ground rather than in containers. Rumor has it that they like Tennessee clay soil?



I moved my Stevia plant inside. For whatever reason, I think it's safer in here.


I've got three pepper plants this year - Sweet Banana Pepper, Jalapeno, and Orange Bell. I've got California Wonder seeds from last year, and I'm debating whether or not it's too late to get one started. I'm not a huge pepper person, and neither are my kids, but I do love a good fajita in the summer.

This is Jalapeno, in a bucket.


And Orange Bell, in a self-watering container. He was planted in there AFTER I found out that peppers are into dry soil. Too late now, and he really doesn't seem to mind that much.



And now, my precious babies, the tomatoes. Three of my plants are in bloom, and baby fruits are forming on a couple of them. Here are the biggest plants - Bonny Best on the left, and Tamina on the right.



Tamina flowering

So is Bonny Best

And Amish Paste

And the first fruit of the season, on an unknown tomato plant. (I try my hardest to keep things labeled, but, you know, I'm not really known for my organizational skills.)




Speaking of tomatoes, look at how many I have left to pot up. Yikes. The grocery store never seems to have buckets when I stop by. And since I'm stopping by practically every day, this has started to become annoying. I think I might end up having to bite the bullet and buy more Rubbermaids, and do things that way. We'll see.


So, still lots to do around here...making more SWCs, potting up tomatoes, finding locations for different things, double digging the beds around the house to hopefully house the beans, squash, and pumpkins. Hopefully the weather doesn't get crazy hot, so I can get some of this accomplished before it's too late!

Spring Has Sprung!

Slowly but surely, the weather is helping my little veggies along. Here's a quick tour around the garden-in-progress.

Romaine lettuce and spinach in containers. (That blue stuff is tulle, to keep the birds and the squirrels away.)


The lettuce seeds in the hugelkultur beds finally sprouted. Hugelkultur is a german gardening technique, where you build a raised bed on top of rotting wood. Supposedly, the wood provides lots of nutrients to the soil as it breaks down, and also helps to aerate things, since it's not compacted down. So, I took some of the tops of the Rubbermaid containers from making self-watering containers, and decided to make mini hugelkultur raised beds with them. The celery in the corner had been growing in a pot, so I moved the seedlings to the corners of the hugelkultur beds, and spread lettuce seeds in the middle. We'll see how well things grow.

Here's the swiss chard, getting bigger. It's in a prefab self-watering window box. And now that the weather is warming up, it seems to be much happier. I still haven't figured out where it's permanent home is going to be, since my front yard is a big mess of stuff right now, which is why it is halfway on the driveway, and halfway on the weeds that I call my lawn.

Blueberries are flowering! These are some of my food stamp blueberry bushes, that my four year old has decorated with one of her Easter necklaces.


And the strawberries are flowering more and more...


I know that the rule is to direct-seed cucumber, but I'm a big fan of starting seedlings in little pots before moving them to their permanent home. I don't know why, but that's just how I like to do things. And it's early enough on that if these die, I can always direct seed some new ones. In the pink container are Japanese Long Cucumbers, and in the containers next to that are luffa seeds that I pre-sprouted using the paper towel in a plastic bag method. You can barely see it, but there is a clear Sterlite container in the lower left hand corner, and that is propped over this little grouping to provide a greenhouse effect in our unpredictable spring weather.

Last but not least, the orange bell pepper, much happier now that he's settled into his new home. To the left, under that juice bottle "cloche" is a jalapeno.

Do you see all that mess in the background? That's mostly tomato plants that need to find permanent homes.
I had some issue in my worm bin, and couldn't figure out why I was having such a massive die off. I still don't know what the problem was. These guys seem happy with these apples that stayed in our house for a little bit too long.