Monday, May 30th

Didn't spend too much time at the garden this weekend in regards to the plots that we have. I did spend about 4 hours staining a section of the new fence that was put up last month. 

More time will have to be devoted to the garden when the rest of the plants make their way from western New York. 

Two of the poppies opened up over the weekend. They have such a short "flowering" time that it is kind of sad. I went there this evening thinking that I'd have the pleasure of seeing two of them open, but that wasn't the case.

This is the second poppy flower that opened. It opened sometime yesterday afternoon or today. There is one more to open...

This is the remains of the first poppy flower. All of the petals have fallen to the ground.

 

I mentioned that I was happy that the heirloom tomatoes that I picked up last weekend at Seven Arrows seemed to be doing well. They have really thrived this week.

Tomatillos are doing well but so many of their leaves are being eaten by what I think are Colorado Potato Beetles. This is a problem.

1. This isn't Colorado, please go back there. Leave Lil' Rhody alone, you bugs!
2. These aren't potatoes! These are tomatillos! Go eat what your name suggests that you eat!

I'm going to go to Home Depot tomorrow on my way home from school to see if they have any organic method of trying to persuade these bugs to go elsewhere.

I should have mentioned before, but all of those pictures above are from #10. 

The picture to the left is from #12u. 

Hmm, this is interesting. 

It appears as though there is a robin egg in plot #12u. 

I didn't do anything with it figuring that I shouldn't. I came home and did a little research on finding a robin egg and discovered that I should just leave it there. More than likely it's been abandoned there for a reason. I'll keep an eye on and figure out what to do with it in a few days if it is still there. 

Other things in #12u: The peppers seem to be doing well. Perhaps there will be a flower on the hot cherry pepper plant by the end of the week. If not, then I suppose it will be the pepper forming.

I attempted to transplant some radishes that had started as a small investigation at school, but they are looking sad and pathetic. :-( 

This plot will look much better when the plants that Tera is bringing call #12u "home".

Deep Root Seed Starting System

The weather was pretty nice on Tuesday, May 24th. It put me in the mood to do something about the seedstarting system that I ordered back in April. Ideally this would have already been put to good use, but so far I haven't had the ideal time to get things started for this gardening season.

The system itself is cool. It has a little water reserve underneath a small plastic tray. On top of the tray lays a piece of a felt-like fabric that absorbs the water and keeps each cell nice and moist. (The directions state that there's enough water in the bottom that you'll only have to worry about water every five days or so.)



To start the seeeds in the seedstarter, I filled each cell with a potting mix and added warm water creating very damp soil (almost like a mud!).

I decided that the Burpee Organic Mesclun Classic Mix was going to be started this way. Using my finger I dug a small hole in the center of each cell so that I could drop seeds in.

I know that it wasn't necessary but I took the mix and tried to sort the seeds by type so that each row in the seed starting system would have the same type of greens growing in it. In my mind this made sense, but clearly it's not what was intended of the packet, the seeds are small!!
















When the planting was all done and the dirty was put away, the seedstarting system came inside and took a place on the plant table (we're not calling it a coffee table anymore) in front of the large window).

Tuulikki checks out the progress of the Mesclun Mix after 3 days. What's pretty cool about this is that the seedlings were to emerge in 10-14 days according to the package. However, with this cool system (thanks to some warmer temperatures and the sun too) the dome on top creates a little greenhouse effect and the seedlings pushed through in ALL 15 squares in just 3 days!

 A shot of all 15 cells. They all have greens growing in them! :-)

Cute!

Thursday, May 26th

FINALLY!

We have had a few spring days here in Providence this week. Days where I've actually had the pleasure of the sun in my eyes as I drive east to work in the morning and again as I head west in the late afternoon. This not only makes me happy, but makes the plants in #10 and #12u happy, too!

The other night I ran over to the garden and gave the heirloom tomatoes their ladders so that they will have plenty of support when they choose to make a "grow for it"!

I had just read a section from my new garden book of the season, "All New Square Foot Gardening" about using a single stem method for tomatoes. So I took it upon myself, without asking my expert gardener (Tera), to prune the branches that were on the bottom of each stem. I brought them home and am waiting to see if they root in water. If I'm so lucky that it happens, then we'll have more tomato plants.

Well, much to my surprise this single stem method seemed to do just what the book suggested! All of the energy the plant had was able to be spent on fewer branches and in just a few days, I have a few flowers on this plant! Yay!

Johnny Jump Ups are still looking good.

They are so simple and yet make me smile when I see them in the corner of #10. Still waiting on the poppies to open up.

On Monday when I stopped by the garden (nearly dark as you can tell by the flashy picture), I sent a picture to Tera asking if we had weeds or tomatillos. She says they are tomatillos! This means that the few tomatillos that fell at the end of the last season, ended up providing #10 with some volunteer tomatillos! "Cool", is what this new gardener has to say!

So, considering that wonderful news, I went back to the garden tonight and tried to the best of my ability to dig up the clumps of tomatillos and put them into rows.

Here are some of the tomatillos that I've separated and put into little rows. We may end up with nothing but a tomatillo plot! It's okay if they don't all make the transition to rows since Tera has started from seed and will be bring them to RI soon.

I didn't take any pictures of them, but I'm pretty confident that the little holes that you can see in the leaves here are the result of Colorado Potato Beetles. (I KNOW, hello these are tomatoes, not POTATOES!) They lay these little yellow eggs at underneath the leaves. I tried to remove any eggs that I found this evening.

The other annoyance tonight throughout the process was the White Grubs. I remember only seeing a few of these all last season... not the case for 2011. I think that I saw at least 5 tonight! I don't like them. They look nasty and I wanted to know more about them. I learned that they are the larvae of the June bug. So they don't really do any harm as long as their is organic material for them to eat...from now on, instead of throwing them out of plot #10 and #12u, I'll remove them and put them in our compost piles. Seems like there's plenty of food there for them.

Peas, Patchouli, and Peppers - oh my?

Peas

Tera planted peas in early April in #10.

Slowly but surely they have made progress and seem to have survived all the rain that we have had in the last few weeks. Today I guided them up our amazing purple trellis. Let's hope they take this guidance and don't become defiant little pea plants!

Patchouli

One of Tera's favorite scents would be Patchouli, so today when Kelly and I found ourselves at Seven Arrows, it was requested that I find a new plant. It does smell great! Located in #10 in the same location as last year's patchouli plant.

I believe that in the background there are little volunteer lettuces from last year, but I could be wrong and they could be weeds!

Peppers

Today I also planted some peppers. The peppers are located in #12u. I planted 5 jalapeno plants, 5 banana pepper plants, and 1 hot cheery pepper plant. We didn't grow any peppers last year, so we'll see if we have any luck. Kelly tells me that the previous renters of #12u had a great deal of luck with peppers last year. (Fingers crossed that the luck is still with #12u)

Despite the title of the post there are other things of note for this entry.

I planted 3 heirloom tomato plants in #10 today. Bought them at Seven Arrows, where I couldn't resist considering the note that was left near the plants...."Awww, man! Every nurseryman's nightmare-Gremlins removed the heirloom tomato tags! If you want to take a chance here's a list of what your tomato might be: Green Zebra, Red Cheery Small, Cherokee Purple, Tall Vine Striped German, Rose, Nepal, Moskvich, Japanese Black Trifele, or Great White."

Strawberries in the future?

I wouldn't complain!

That does it for now. Hoping the weather this week is appropriate for the end of May and I find sometime at the garden to plant a few things. Tera's started things from seed and they are growing nicely in a little green house in western New York... hoping that they make their journey east soon! ;-)

Happy Belated Garden Season!

It's true. Garden Season is upon us and I'm behind. Fellow gardeners at the Community Garden at Davis Park keep telling me that everyone is behind and that with the weather, you just have to adjust anyway, but it doesn't make me feel at ease.

So let me start with news of the season before I report what's going on in the garden today.

This season Tera and I are the proud renters of two garden plots. We didn't opt for the "double-wide" because I didn't want anything to feel trapped in the middle. I also didn't want to have to walk through my garden plot. Maybe one day, we'll have a garden of our own with plenty of space but for now, I want to use as much of the plot space for plants and not for "tip-toeing" space.

I digress, so, plot #10 and plot #12u are both under our care this season.

Plot #10. Unfortunately our orange bucket went missing during the garden expansion. On the right there, that tree looking thing... was the remains of our tall sunflower from last season. It's been removed since this picture was taken at the end of March.

The newly acquainted plot before we removed what was left in it from its previous renters. #12u is the name since it's technically an "upper" plot space.

Plot #12u cleaned out and ready for the season. Tera added our trademark "watering system" to the back of this plot. Its not our original idea, but I don't believe anyone else in the community garden is using this method. You can see that the plot is on a slight incline as it's built into the hill. Our plan is to have some vine plants near the back of this plot that will then naturally grow up the hill throughout the season.

In the process of cleaning out #12u we found some strawberry plants from last season, along with some carrots. We haven't tried to grow carrots before but maybe we'll give it a shot this time around?