Garden madness
Mar. 22nd, 2009 21:13![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillAfter the baking marathon yesterday, I didn't have enough sense to sleep all day today. :) Instead, I went gardening.
The threatened thunderstorms didn't materialize, so it was simply warm sun offset by lots of chill wind -- not the worst of conditions to garden in. I started out by planting garlic (finally!) in a trough planter, then planted a trough of multiplier onions... hopefully I'll at least have planting stock for October, even if there isn't enough of a harvest to eat much. Darned clones that must be vegetatively propagated every year. :)
I planted little red potatoes, from the bitty ones at the supermarket -- the quality is good enough for planting stock, and disease is pretty rare in the local fields. I had earlier half-filled the bed that was left open last year, by dumping in a lot of green weeds and covering them over with soil... so I sprinkled a few alfalfa pellets on the sunken bed, put eight little spuds on top of the dirt, and covered them over with about a foot of loose fallen leaves from the stash of bagged ones I grabbed in the winter. I diverted a bit of drip line to them, and they should be set.
The peas are producing, but as only half of them survived from the first planting, we'll only be getting snacking quantities until they get up to speed and the replacements can start producing as well.
I warmed up my shoulder muscles for the year by taking a mattock to some very stubborn weeds, then settled down to clear some of the rest of the plot by hand. I'm almost done with the main area; I need to do the rest of the corn patches (always the last to get cleared), clean up the miner's lettuce in the melon patch once it's done setting seed, and weed the borders out to a couple of feet. All of that is about a weekend's work, so it's not going to be hard to get to (I hope). If the melon patch doesn't get done, that's fine, as I won't be planting any melons this year.
I'm going ahead with containers for the tomatoes, as it means much less digging... my knee is much better, but I don't want to stress it. Besides, if the yield is much improved, I may continue the practice. I'll dig them into the ground an inch or two, so that the roots can expand into the ground, and I'll probably cover the outsides of the black nursery pots with white plastic to repel heat in the dead of summer. We'll see how it goes.
I should be able to plant out next weekend -- the tomatoes are still a bit wee, but they'll manage as well in a biiiiig pot as they would in a small interim pot, so why not. They're in the window upstairs, getting used to full sunlight. I have three sweet potatoes ready to go, also in the window; their bed is up above 55° and will just keep getting warmer, so I can get them going early this year. I'll beef up their usual raised bed with rotted leaves and some horse manure I have on hand. I think they'll like it. The rest of the slips will follow as I pull them from the master root I have upstairs. Finally, something going according to schedule. :)
I got only one pepper of all the seeds I planted... I'm crossing my fingers that it matures, as I need more Sweet Chocolate bell seeds. I'll have to write to my friend in Oz to ask for more of his pepper seed, since I had hoped to do a seed increase this year and struck out on the seed I had. At least there won't be any risk of crossing this way.
I never got my SSE Yearbook this year, though I know I'm listed because I filled two seed requests today. Someone from Northern California wanting melons, and someone from Wasilla, AK wanting Vorlon tomato seeds. I hope she likes them. I need to call SSE tomorrow and ask them to send me a Yearbook.
The garden looks messy and chaotic, but I've almost gotten enough done that I can go in and clean it up properly. It'll be small this year, but I think I've got things in order with what I have.
The threatened thunderstorms didn't materialize, so it was simply warm sun offset by lots of chill wind -- not the worst of conditions to garden in. I started out by planting garlic (finally!) in a trough planter, then planted a trough of multiplier onions... hopefully I'll at least have planting stock for October, even if there isn't enough of a harvest to eat much. Darned clones that must be vegetatively propagated every year. :)
I planted little red potatoes, from the bitty ones at the supermarket -- the quality is good enough for planting stock, and disease is pretty rare in the local fields. I had earlier half-filled the bed that was left open last year, by dumping in a lot of green weeds and covering them over with soil... so I sprinkled a few alfalfa pellets on the sunken bed, put eight little spuds on top of the dirt, and covered them over with about a foot of loose fallen leaves from the stash of bagged ones I grabbed in the winter. I diverted a bit of drip line to them, and they should be set.
The peas are producing, but as only half of them survived from the first planting, we'll only be getting snacking quantities until they get up to speed and the replacements can start producing as well.
I warmed up my shoulder muscles for the year by taking a mattock to some very stubborn weeds, then settled down to clear some of the rest of the plot by hand. I'm almost done with the main area; I need to do the rest of the corn patches (always the last to get cleared), clean up the miner's lettuce in the melon patch once it's done setting seed, and weed the borders out to a couple of feet. All of that is about a weekend's work, so it's not going to be hard to get to (I hope). If the melon patch doesn't get done, that's fine, as I won't be planting any melons this year.
I'm going ahead with containers for the tomatoes, as it means much less digging... my knee is much better, but I don't want to stress it. Besides, if the yield is much improved, I may continue the practice. I'll dig them into the ground an inch or two, so that the roots can expand into the ground, and I'll probably cover the outsides of the black nursery pots with white plastic to repel heat in the dead of summer. We'll see how it goes.
I should be able to plant out next weekend -- the tomatoes are still a bit wee, but they'll manage as well in a biiiiig pot as they would in a small interim pot, so why not. They're in the window upstairs, getting used to full sunlight. I have three sweet potatoes ready to go, also in the window; their bed is up above 55° and will just keep getting warmer, so I can get them going early this year. I'll beef up their usual raised bed with rotted leaves and some horse manure I have on hand. I think they'll like it. The rest of the slips will follow as I pull them from the master root I have upstairs. Finally, something going according to schedule. :)
I got only one pepper of all the seeds I planted... I'm crossing my fingers that it matures, as I need more Sweet Chocolate bell seeds. I'll have to write to my friend in Oz to ask for more of his pepper seed, since I had hoped to do a seed increase this year and struck out on the seed I had. At least there won't be any risk of crossing this way.
I never got my SSE Yearbook this year, though I know I'm listed because I filled two seed requests today. Someone from Northern California wanting melons, and someone from Wasilla, AK wanting Vorlon tomato seeds. I hope she likes them. I need to call SSE tomorrow and ask them to send me a Yearbook.
The garden looks messy and chaotic, but I've almost gotten enough done that I can go in and clean it up properly. It'll be small this year, but I think I've got things in order with what I have.
