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!

"Get My Hands In Some Dirt" Syndrome

I know I'm not the only one who is excited by this just-warm-enough-to-get-my-hands-in-some-dirt weather!

I moved my sad orange bell pepper into his permanent home for the season, a self-watering container made out of icing buckets from the local grocery store. Doesn't he look sad?


Hopefully he'll perk up soon. The weather is probably still too unpredictable to have him outside permanently, but he's too much of a monster to fit in the makeshift poly tunnel anymore, and it's colder inside than it is outside most of the time, so outside he will stay.

I also got the first tomatoes out in their permanent homes, self-watering containers made from Home Depot buckets. (This was before I learned that I could get buckets for free. Live and learn.) They're stylish, aren't they? Bonny Best on the right, and an unknown on the left. The wind was blowing pretty hard today, they aren't leaning like that "just because". Guess I should get to work figuring out how I'm planning to stake all of these things this year!


Finally, happiness that Spring REALLY is here. The first strawberry blossom of the season!


These strawberry plants are in a self-watering container (of the Rubbermaid variety) that they were grown in last year. I let them overwinter, and they've come back like gangbusters. Hopefully by the end of this year, I'll give them a permanent home in the ground.