I love getting my hands into the dirt and working with God to make beauty come out of small seeds and transplants. I share the experiences of an ordinary gardener with photos and words.
This past week has seen temperatures rise into the triple digits on more than one day, and high nineties on most of the rest. I have watered faithfully each morning. Sunday morning, against all moon planting advice, I planted one of my green pepper seedlings. Monday morning I planted the other two.
On Sunday my first group of radishes in the ground by the Patty Pan Squash was overtaking the radishes in the raised beds in size. When I went out to water this morning, they had all disappeared and were replaced by a large gopher mound. The good news is that the other Patty Pan seeds had sprouted. It appears that a cople of nasturtiums are in the process of sprouting, as well. We'll see when morning comes.
Vegetables planted in the two oldest raised beds are still struggling and not growing much. I gave them some more fish emulsion to encourage them. The two weakest zucchini plants are on the right on either side of the wire cage in the middle. The two strongest in this bed are in the corners on the left. You can see the difference in size, though all were planted at the same time. The eggplant sits squarely in the middle of this picture, and it appears no bigger than when I first planted it.
The gophers have rejected my bubble gum and throw it out of the holes. I have put it back and plugged the holes from my end.
This morning I watered everything that needed it and planted some more seeds as companions for the vegetables. These included some nasturtiums, dill, basil, and Pastel Carpet Alyssum. These are not only supposed to help the vegetables by attracting beneficial insects and repelling or attracting the pests away, but they also make the garden look beautiful. The dill seed is eight years old, so we'll just have to see what happens.
I suppose gardeners are always seeing in their mind's eye how the garden will look, not just how it looks at the moment. That vision of tomato vines loaded with plump red and orange tomatoes, squash and cucumbers and sweet peppers growing large enough to eat, all surrounded by colorful flowers -- that what keeps us watering, weeding, and and hovering over our gardens as often as possible.
This afternoon I took a tour of my vegetable garden, as well as the orchard and the flower and herb gardens, video camera in hand. Over the next few days I'll be sharing some of the videos with you. Today we will look at the raised beds and the container gardens, with special attention to new growth. Let's start with the container garden and the vines. I would like to correct one error in the video. I accidentally called a coreopsis flower a calendula in that first group of three container herbs.
The raised bed tour is much shorter, since there are only three of them and you've already seen them in still pictures earlier.
Every new season I am eager to try new varieties of tomato, as well as the ones I've been happy with in the past. Since nothing -- not even tried and true varieties -- grew for me last year, I'm not counting their failure against this year. So once again I'm growing one each of these: Cherokee Purple, Principe Borghese, Yellow Pear, and Anna Russian. I'm going to give Brandywine another chance, even though I've had trouble with it two years in a row and it's so far not looking as healthy as the other plants this year.
Note: For the first time this year I am going to keep a photo record of each important plant about every two weeks. This will help me not only record progress, but should give me a basis of comparison at each stage of growth with the last so I can catch problems early and begin to deal withe them. The Brandywine has only been in the ground for about ten days. I am watching it carefully and trying to understand why it is not seeming to thrive as the other tomatoes are.
Tomato varieties I'm trying for the first time this year are Royal Hillbilly, Amana Orange, Japanese Black Truffle, Oxheart, Tigerella, Zapotee Pink Ribbed, Moskvich Red, Taxi Yellow, Korkik Red, Ace 55 Red, Roma Rio Grande, and New Big Dwarf Pink. The ones I'm growing in containers include Taxi Yellow, Korlik Red (which is an early cluster tomato, Anna Russian (which did well in a container in a previous year), Ace 55 Rd, Roma Rio Grande (I've grown other Romas in containers successfully), and New Big Dwarf Pink. The rest of the tomatoes are in the raised beds.
Traditionally, tomatoes grown in the raised beds have not produced as much as those in the containers. I'm blaming the soil, since I've normally used a potting soil in the containers, but a mixture of soil, compost, steer manure, and sand in the raised beds. Although I've not emptied and replaced all the soil in the raised beds this year, I am adding plenty of Miracle Grow Organic Choice Potting soil to each raised bed and mixing it with whatever is there. The one that has the least room for amendments is the middle and most shallow of the raised beds. I have not put any tomatoes in that bed this year.
I am also trying to make the most of companion planting in the raised beds. Here's what's in them. First, the oldest raised bed, and the deepest. It contains these tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Royal Hillbilly, Amana Orange, Japanese Black Truffle, Oxheart, and Brandywine. At the near end of this bed you will see a stone between the two tomato plants marking where I've planted some borage, which should be sprouting soon. This bed also contains two Simspon lettuce (not yet in bed when picture was taken), two French marigolds, and two Italian sweet basil plants.
In the middle bed, which I believe has the worst soil mix, is a clump of chives that is left over from previous years, four Yellow Summer Squash, one Melrose sweet pepper, one Italian Sweet Basit, two marigolds, two Simspon lettuce, two rows of seeds for French Breakfast Radishes, and two very tiny Calendula transplants from the herb garden.
We added a new bed this year, though it was mostly filled last summer after the planting had been done. I noticed the man we hired did not mix the soil well as he was instructed and most of the potting soil was on top with almost a one-to-two-inch layer of sand underneath. I mixed as best I could as I went along. This bed now contains one Burpless Cucumber, one Principe Borghese tomato, one Lemon Cucumber, one Tigerella tomato, one Zapotee Pink Ribbed Tomato, one Moskvich Red, and one Yellow Pear tomato. Companions include two marigolds, one basil, and two of the tiny Calendula transplants.
Although the potting soil is supposed to feed the plants for two months, on the advice of nurserymen, I also added a shake or two of Natural and Organic Dynamite Mater Magic in the hole of each tomato and a a tablespoon or two of Whitney Farms Tomato and Vegetable Food (Organic) to the hole of each squash, cucumber or pepper plant in the raised beds and more if in the pots.
Weather has been mild since I planted. Lowest night tempertures were in the high 30s, but averaging in the 40's, whereas lowest day temperatures were in the high fifties, but averaging in the 70's, hitting low 80s on a couple of days. Today is in the mid seventies. I'm hoping for a great season this year. If I get it, I'll need this mug. You can get yours by clicking on it.
I acquired about 17 bags of mostly dead grass from dethatching a lawn at our other house this week, and I finally had a chance to spread it today. It hasn't been a great year for gardening this year because of our wacky weather. I have written about my poor frostbitten tomatoes and their slow recovery here. They only really began to get as green as they should be after I used some organic tomato food, watered well, and added some mulch. But I didn't have enough good mulching material because there haven't been any grass cuttings to speak of. That's why we had to get rid of the thatch.
As soon as we brought the first batch of about ten bags home, I applied mulch immediately (after a good watering) to the raised beds on Thursday. Today was overcast, so I watered well again and added more mulch to the container plants, which hardly had any.
I just reread my blog from July of last year, and it's interesting to compare. Almost all my tomatoes have blossoms, but only two that had been set back by the frost have produced ripe fruit so far. We do have lots of peppers about the size of ping pong balls and smaller, and lots of blossoms but few fruits yet on the cucumbers. I'm hoping the lemon cukes will start bearing fruit soon. We had two very small cukes which resemble picking cucumbers, one of which was bitter. I can't remember what variety they are, but I think they were supposed to be bigger. The leaves have never looked healthy, and I don't expect I will get much from it. We have a large variety growing in one of the raised beds, but it isn't producing yet, either.
I have had to slip parts of old pantyhose over my green tomatoes because something -- probably a bird -- is eating them from the top before they start changing color. I'm hoping this will protect them somewhat so they can ripen. I'm not trying to grow anything else but the tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet bell peppers at the moment. The lettuce and radishes I planted in the spring never sprouted. When I bought some lettuce seedlings, we had a heat wave almost as soon as they were in the ground and they bolted. I did harvest some garlic that I planted last fall, and it is very good. As usual, the zucchini is only pretending to grow, so I'm not even counting it as a crop this year. Maybe someday I will learn to grow summer squash here, but not yet. The picture at top shows the attempt to grow summer squash (left pot) and the lemon cucumber as of last week (August 15). The lemon cucumber is about twice as big this week and full of blossoms. The summer squash is still sick, but it is a bit bigger than when this picture was taken. I'll be taking more pictures with the added mulch soon.
