Harvest Monday March 26, 2012

We had over six inches of rain in 24 hours last week. Now, that sounds like a lot of rain. And it is. But it has been so dry that we only had one day of standing water. (In normal years, we have what looks like small stream going through the back of our property.) It has all been absorbed into the ground. The ground does not even feel spongy.

The grass grew mightily in all this rain, much to my husband's disappointment. (The grass is his department.) But so did my tomatoes, and my beans. Even though I had been watering regularly, the garden has just perked up with the rain. The tomatoes look like they grew two inches. And they have put out flowers!

White Eggplant I tried in a pot. I forgot
to bring it out of the rain and it seems
2 inches bigger than before the rain.

Ruth Bible Beans-100% germination

The flowers on the cherry tomato

Scarlet Runner Beans after the rain.

Lazy Wife Beans

Trail of Tears Beans

See what others are growing, and harvesting at Harvest Monday. 

Seeds, Seeds, Seeds Harvest Monday 3/19/2012

Scarlet Runner seed that I pre-germinated. 

This has been a very big seed planting week for me. I planted Golden Bantam 12-Row Corn down the middle section of my 20 Foot Garden, a total of 48 seeds. I had almost 100% germination.

Newly sprouted Golden Bantam 12-Row Corn. 

I also planted all the Scarlet Runner seeds that I planned to plant in the 20 Foot Garden. You might remember that I planted a 14 foot row of Scarlet Runners in the front yard a couple of weeks ago.  In the 20 Foot Garden, I am using them to separate between the different types of green beans I have planted.

I planted Lazy Housewife green beans, Trail of Tears beans, and Ruth Bible beans this week, as well. The Ruth Bible beans seem pretty amazing to me. They are already up out of the ground!

Ruth Bible Beans are the 4 little plants to the left of the
picture. The greener plant in the top right is Scarlet Runner. 

I also planted 12 cucumbers. I don't know how many cucumbers one should plant. After looking at pictures of cucumber plants online, I began to think that 12 might be too many. Any thoughts?

Cucumber seedling

I planted zucchini and squash.

Squash seedlings. 

I also got the eggplants out into the garden this week.

The tomato plants are looking good. Three of the four plants have small closed flowers on them.

White eggplant to the left of the picture in the red trellis. Next
over on that row is an Aswad Eggplant. And just barely on the
right edge of the picture is the other Aswad Eggplant.
The tomatoes are the plants nearest the board at the bottom.

That's it for me this week, but I sure am looking forward to fresh vegetables from the garden.

You can see what other people are doing in their gardens at Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Mondays. It is always a real treat to read what other people are doing in their food gardens. Some have fruit trees. Some have only a little space. Some garden in the deep South. Some garden in the far North. Some garden from Australia. It's really very interesting and I always learn a lot. 

Humor

I found this on Facebook.

Harvest Monday--Finishing Beds and Sowing Seeds

This has been one busy week for the garden. I dug a hole so the kids would have a place to put the gladioli. It ended up being 14 feet long, 6 inches deep and 1 foot wide. (I had them use different lengths of measuring instruments to measure: foot ruler, yard stick and measuring tape. That's how I know how big that hole was.) Then they planted 24 corms with the pointy side up six inches apart. Unfortunately, it was such a big responsibility to keep up with my three kids, and keep the two year old from running into the road, that I got no pictures of this event.

Here are the younger two pretending to garden. You can see
the new 20 foot garden in the background behind them. 

Then I strung my squares for my 20 foot Square Foot Garden. That turned out to be a little harder than I expected because I broke the reel that stored the fishing line and then I had tangles at every turn. It was also surprisingly hard to keep the fishing line on the little nails by myself. My son came to the rescue, holding the line tight so that I could go to the other side. We made much better progress that way.

I planted my tomato plants. I have a Cherokee Purple, a Juliet (hybrid) tomato, a yellow tomato and a big red beefsteak tomato. I am trying to get away from hybrids, but none of my cherries lived from my seed starts. Ce la vie.

The top left plant is a white eggplant.
On the bottom row, from left to right are Cherokee Purple Tomato,
Juliet (hybrid) Tomato, a beefsteak tomato sent to me by a friend, and
a yellow tomato sent to me by the same friend. 

After planting the tomatoes, I started reading about my shungiku-edible-chrysanthemum seeds. Yikes. They say that they do well in Alaska because they are so cool weather tolerant. I ran and put them into the ground with the help of my middle daughter.

It rained about half an inch Friday. After consulting my new favorite gardening tool, the Mobile Press Register's Planting Wheel, I decided to plant the heirloom corn I bought from Baker Creek Seeds. Because of the earlier rain, I didn't have to water it too much. It was nice and damp.

I also planted my dill seed this week.

The scarlet runners I planted last week in the front yard have started to peek through the soil and I couldn't be more excited. I feel like a kid at Christmas. I can hardly wait until they start climbing the trellis my husband installed for them. I think they will be very pretty. They attract hummingbirds, and pollinators, and they are situated right in front of our dining room table, so we will be able to watch the hummingbirds every night at supper. (I am also looking forward to tasting the beans. :) )

Stop by Daphne's Dandelions to see what others are sowing, planting, harvesting and growing this week.  It's always great fun.

Cloudy Today

The view from my front door

Cloudy today. And I am thinking about gardening. It would be great to plant those tomatoes today. On a cloudy day like this, they could get all happy in the soil without the pressure of the sun beating down on them.

But, I have other things to do today. There is housecleaning, always there is housecleaning. And I homeschool, so I really am supposed to be teaching my children. But it's cloudy today. And I want to plant my tomatoes.

Digging it out and Starting Over

Well, it feels like we are starting over. In the past two weeks, I have dug a 17 foot by 2 foot section out of my front grass. My husband installed an almost-invisible trellis. And, to top it off, I have been clamoring to get my Square Foot Garden moved from the area it lived last year into an area of our yard that gets more sunlight.

Unfortunately, only after spring gardening, summer gardening, and fall gardening last year did I realize that I had planted full-sun things in a part-sun location. Maybe you admire my perseverance, or maybe you shake your head at how hard it was for me to figure out what was wrong. (I tend toward the latter. Light. Duh. The most basic requirement for a garden.)

I decided to walk the property every 30 minutes from sunrise to sunset for a day and note the places that had sunlight at those times.  (For those of you who care about labels, this is called "sun mapping.")

This led to the discovery that there is only one place in my yard (besides the very front by the road) that I get enough sun to grow tomatoes, eggplants, squash, zucchini and all the other plants that say "summer" to me. The place I had planted my garden last year only gets between five and six hours of sunlight. Argh.

I didn't take pictures of the process of starting over, but here is the finished product.

Front garden bed with the almost invisible trellis lines. Look
for the shadow lines on the brick to see the trellis. The area
that has been mulched will be the path I walk to harvest my
Scarlet Runners. 

This is my new and improved Square Foot Garden! Thanks
to my husband's really diligent and hard work yesterday, I now have
a place to put my vegetables. They will get between 8 and 10 hours
of sunlight in this new location. My husband mis-measured and
dug out a place about 14 or 18 inches longer than the beds we had available.
He said I could plant something there. Yea! 

Here is the old bed location. Formerly, I had made these same
Square Foot Beds in a checkerboard pattern, because I thought it was
pretty. This same amount of Square Foot Garden boards
will make 20 feet of garden when laid end to end. Three beds to five
beds, simply because of layout. It pays to know your math. (My husband
figured it out, and explained it to me.) 

In other Harvest Monday news, I am busy hardening off my tomatoes to plant them outside. Bill Finch of the Mobile Botanical Gardens (Mobile, Alabama) posted this wonderful Plain Garden Planting Cycle for the Mobile area. I don't know if you can read it very well at the link, but it says that tomatoes should be planted as close as possible to the first of March in this area for best production before the sweltering days of summer.

As soon as I get my tomatoes in the ground, I plan to start hardening off my eggplants for transplant to the prepared beds. (Thanks, again, honey. Go take another Aleve.) The Wheel shows the eggplants should be planted abut 2 weeks after the tomatoes, so I will plant them as soon as I get the tomatoes ready to plant.

Joining with Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Mondays. Go check out what others are planting, harvesting, growing, canning, etc. It's really great fun to see what others are doing. We even have at least one who gardens in Melbourne, Australia.  I love to read her posts because it is summer there when it is winter here.

You Can Grow That: Peach Tree

Do you like to eat fresh peaches in the summertime? Does that sweet juicy nectar just get you going?

Eating a fresh peach, its nectar-sweetness dripping down my chin as I stand at my sink, is one of the small delights of life for me. It just sings summer in my mind. I love fresh peaches. I love the smell of them sitting on my counter, just begging to be eaten. I love that aroma at the grocery store or the farmer's market. I just love fresh peaches.

Perhaps you have heard about the "Dirty Dozen" fruits and vegetables. Well, unfortunately peaches are on that list.   There is an option, though. You Can Grow That! Then you can get your fresh peach without all those pesticides.

Here's a great website with information for growing peach trees in your own yard. It provides information about height requirements and growth habits, so you can choose a tree that will fit into your yard, whether you have a farm or 1/8th of an acre lot. It also has some great information about chilling requirements for your new peach tree. I live in South Alabama, so I don't get quite as much frost time as some peach trees need. By using this site, I was able to pick the tree that will thrive in my area.

My husband gave me a peach tree for Christmas. What a great guy! Here are the pictures.

This amazing little tree was already blooming on January 29.  As much  as it
hurt me, I took the flowers off to give the roots time to strengthen.

The picture at the top of this post is my peach tree this morning.

Whatever your motivation, whatever your love-- You Can Grow That!