There's Good News and There's Bad News

Let's do the bad news first, okay?


SIGH. I found some in the bean bed too. Break out the Sluggo.

Now for the good news...

The first round of anemic snap peas, that I was pretty sure that I killed, are not only flowering...


...but I found a couple of pods on them too!


Speaking of flowers, check out my orange bell pepper plant.


And in the new growth report of the day, I FINALLY got some Amish Pie Pumpkin seeds to germinate. I tried them with the paper towel in the baggie method, I tried them in little seedling pots, and I gave it one last shot in the reused grapes container. Since these particular seeds were REALLY hard to find, because of the bad pumpkin season last year, I was going to be really upset if all of my seeds were duds.

May 16th Update

Yesterday, the weathermen, er, weatherPEOPLE, were all freaking out and saying that we were going to have massive storms, hail, flooding, the end of times! I don't know if the problem is that our stations cover such a wide viewing area, or if our weather people are just not good at their jobs (I am reminded by the horrible predicting...and not predicting...of snow this past winter), but when you are a gardener, you rely on relatively accurate weather predictions. If the weather calls for rain, I'm not wasting tap water on my plants.

So, I worked eight hours on Saturday, and kept hearing the weatherman on the radio predicting scattered, isolated storms. Having worked in radio, I know that the weather predictions for the weekend are taped sometime on Friday, so the taped weather prediction couldn't see the not-a-cloud-in-the-bright-blue-sky weather that happened all of Saturday afternoon. I guess the storms, if there were any, were very scattered, and isolated to areas outside of our county.

I picked up the kids from the babysitter and we decided to play in the yard for awhile. At about seven, there were a couple of rumbles of thunder, four drops of rain....aaaand that's about it. I was kind of annoyed, since I've got plants in the clay that gets scary after a day or two of 90 degree heat with no rain. (I think there were reports of hail two counties away. So technically, they were right, but maybe they don't realize that most of their audience lives close to the city.)

This morning, it was kind of dreary looking outside. We have a 1st birthday party to go to at a playground today, and the little one's mom said we'd be partying rain or shine. (My fifth birthday party was at a park, and I distinctly remember pretend 'fishing' with a stick off the edge of the pavilion, where the water was puddling up. Such is an outdoor birthday in Florida in the afternoon on any given day.) I was hoping, for her sake, since this is her first child, and your first child's first birthday is a big deal to you as a mom, that it wouldn't rain. On the other hand, I was hoping that rain would fall at some point, so my plants would be happy.

We just got about an hour's worth of a good, steady rainfall. We'll bring a few old towels to the playground, to mop off the slides for the kids, but all will be well in party land, and all is well in garden land as well. Here's some proof -

Tomatoes are still going strong.

Tamina (two different plants)





The unknown first tomato...


...now has some company higher up on the plant.



Lida


Campari



Tommy Toes, making the first appearance on my blog.


Cucumbers, with their new mulch.


Remember that double dug "bed" for my squash? Here's what they look like now that they've been mulched.


Peppers

Orange Bell is growing a few flowers!!

Things are going in full swing around here. The weather is still a big ol' mess - freezing to broiling in two days or less - but the plants don't seem to mind much.

Blueberries are filling out. (The one with the beads on it has been decorated by my 4 year old.) They are in 5 gallon buckets right now, but I think next year I'm going to move them to the ground. Anyone know when would be a good time to do that? (After I pick the berries? Sometime in the fall? Before/after winter? Next Spring?)


Remember that green strawberry I showed you last week? Something ate it, and it wasn't a human. I'm kind of depressed. I have the stuff to make a cover, I just didn't get around to putting it up. There are some deep in the container that are ripening, and the birds can't see that they are red. (Or at least, they haven't caught THIS one yet!)



My peppers are also chugging along. Here is the orange bell...it looks like it'll be flowering in the next week or two. (Those 90 degree days interspersed with the random cold ones must make for happy peppers?)


...and the sweet banana got moved into his permanent pot for the season. He's just blowing in a little bit of wind. That plastic container in the background is holding some soybean seeds. It originally held cupcakes for a child in my daughter's daycare class. I watched as her teacher started walking it to the trashcan, and then I laid claim on it before it was tossed.


Speaking of reusing plastic containers, here's an old strawberry container, now holding Black Seeded Simpson lettuce. What I find odd is that this lettuce was seeded after the stuff in the clay pots and in the hugelkultur beds, and it's grown like a weed. I thought maybe the hot temperatures were the problem with the lettuce (and the pots and the hugelkultur bed are in a part of the yard that gets dappled shade throughout the day), but that's not the case, I guess. Live and learn. This stuff will get split up and moved to larger containers sometime this week.


The basically worthless hugelkultur beds -

That's celery in the lower right, and romaine lettuce sproutlings that are probably a month old, and haven't gotten any bigger.

I gave up on the second one, and transplanted the swiss chard into it. Hoping it'll be happier there.




Here are the cukes, still snug in their SWC, and growing, slowly but surely.


My second round of snap peas...since the squirrels and/or the birds annihilated my first round. These will be transplanted...somewhere. Haven't quite figured that out yet. It's my understanding that they don't like heat, so I'm debating whether to put them in the part of the yard that doesn't get the lion's share of full sun. Although, when I tried that with the lettuce, well, obviously it's not working.

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.