Month: May 2010

The Lettuce Patch

During this last weekend, we had some good friends of ours over for dinner.  We had a wonderful time visiting, and I loved all the wonderful gardening advice I got as well.  One of those bits of advice was to take this small strip of dirt along our screen porch, and turn it into a lettuce patch.  The strip gets very little sun- but it does get some, which is enough to grow lettuce.  My friend suggested that by using that piece of dirt, I could potentially have lettuce all summer long- without the hours and hours of direct sun, my lettuce wouldn’t decide to bolt and go to seed so quickly.

You don’t say?

I couldn’t stop thinking of this, so yesterday I took a pitchfork to the dirt to see what was there- and what do you know, there was nothing there.  I was too tired to do much else, but today I managed to find a bit of energy.  I robbed the main garden space of some newly acquired compost, worked it in, and wasted no time in scattering some lettuce seeds.

I planted some lettuce out a few weeks ago, but with the cool temps, I’ve had nothing come up yet.  Much of the seed is older, so I was wondering about viability… I decided to not plant lettuce in the SFG way, and instead, just sprinkled a whole lot of seeds in the ground.  I will thin if needed, but I figure this way I can at least ensure some measure of success with the lettuce.

I planted several varieties here- all different types of romaine, which is my absolute favorite.  I planted some Vivian which was an old packet from Burpee- don’t know how successful that will be.  I also planted Little Gem, a small variety, Verte Mar from Seeds of Change, as well as Jericho- my favorite romaine, and then last but not least, some Cimarron- a red romaine.  I tossed the Jericho and the Cimarron together in the dirt closest to the front of the house- I have visions of this beautiful patch of red and green tantalizing from the sidewalk.

I had planned on sowing some spring mix, but lo and behold, I couldn’t find the seed packet.  I was puzzling over this when I remembered that last year I’d given an ample supply of my seeds to someone who was growing a garden to donate to food pantries and whatnot.  Mental note: When donating seed, remember that, so you don’t count on having it on hand when you go to plant.

Time will tell if this is successful.  I swear I can taste the lettuce already.  I’m looking forward to updating with success!

Hardening Off

It’s finally warmed back up here!  The sun has come out to play- and seems to plan on sticking around for a while.  My tomato plants, while still growing, just have not seemed anywhere near as healthy as last years plants.  I’m going to have to do some researching and learn how to properly grow plants via grow lights.   In the meantime though, it was time to upgrade my tomato plants one more time to larger pots.  These are the last pots they will be in before planting in the ground.  They went this time from 2-inch cell packs to 4-inch stand alone pots.  I used a basic potting mix for the soil that I planted them in.

Now that they are in larger pots, there is room for their roots to spread out, which is what we’re really hoping for in this last phase of potted plant.  In a perfect world, at this stage, the tomatoes would be watered from the bottom of the plant, allowing for the roots to reach and try to suck up the water themselves.  The problem I have with bottom watering is that it can leave the soil too wet if you don’t do it properly.  So I will probably just continue watering from the top.

Which brings us to the ever-important subject of hardening off.  All garden plants grown indoors need a period of time where they can adjust and become acclimated to the elements outside.  My plants have been pampered inside the house- but just setting them outside for good can cause dozens of problems with plants.  A good gust of wind could topple the tender stems over, the leaves could become sunburned, and the plant could not know how to react to bugs.

So yesterday I assembled my portable greenhouse rack- minus the plastic cover.  I set it under the apple tree in the yard, where it would still get a good deal of sun, but that for part of the day, the sun would be dappled by apple tree leaves.  My plants are out there right now as I type this, getting their first taste of late-spring sunshine.  They will sit on that rack for just two hours today.  Tomorrow I will extend that to three, four the following day, and so on.  When they are not on the rack in the sun, they will be moved to my screen porch, where they will not get any sunshine, but will still have the benefit of the warm air and the gentle breeze blowing through.

The peppers will join the tomatoes later this week in being potted up and hardened off.  But for now, I’m very happy to see the progress towards the final planting in the ground.  Now my focus returns to the yard full of weeds- and the ever-present task of clearing out the beds for planting in just a few weeks.  I have a long way to go yet.

Potted up and Planted!

This last week was quite the week, I am still sore!

I started out Monday night potting up all my tomato seedlings.  I started at 9pm, and ended up finishing up cleaning up at 2:15am.  It took a bit longer than I anticipated.   When I was done I had to take a count, it looked like a lot more than I thought I had.  I potted up 98 tomato plants, and 96 of those are growing well a little over a week later.  There are 2 that are questionable (both Dr Wyche’s yellow, which is actually an orange tomato, go figure), but they weren’t looking very good when I re-potted them either.   I have room for 24 tomatoes in my garden, and 8 of those will be from Erika.  I will have quite a few to give away this year.

Peppers

My peppers are still not doing very well.  I have what I would call 5 healthy plants, and 3 or so that I might be able to plant but they will be pretty small yet when I plant them.  I learned my lesson for next year on starting peppers, so now I can’t wait for next year’s pepper planting (I know, there is a whole year yet).

The basil is doing pretty well, I should end up potting them up this week too.  Looks like I will have between 6 and 8 each of Sweet Basil and Basil Genovese.

On Saturday I tilled the garden.  That was quite the workout.  My garden this year is 25×12, and I found that all the area that we claimed from the lawn is pretty heavy clay.  I amended the soil a little, but it will need a lot more work next year to grow things better.  I am hoping that dropping a shovelful of loose dirt and compost in the hole with the tomatoes and peppers will help.

Tilling

After tilling we planted onions (100 each of yellow and white long day), carrots (mix of rainbow and purple haze), and 4 types of lettuce.  I followed that up on Sunday with 70 radishes or so, then measured and placed stakes where all my tomato and pepper plants will end up.   I am hoping to see some sprouts by the end of the week.

Onions

May 1st: Erika’s First Planting Day

I spent a good deal of time both yesterday and today pulling weeds from my garden.  Today they came out really easy, due to a lovely spring storm that blew through last night.  I set myself a goal, and told myself that if I could clear from post to post, I could permit myself to plant.  So I did it.  I pulled and raked and pulled some more, and surprised myself by clearing nine feet of garden bed.  With all that space just sitting there, how could I not go ahead and plant something?

The thing about this particular space is that although it is about four feet deep, only the first 19 inches are plant-able, due to sun requirements.  This particular piece of yard will get between 6-7 hours of good strong sun, so it’s great for lettuces, greens, and other things that would bolt come summer time and hot, scorching temperatures.  Given that it is only the first of May, and we could potentially still see frost for a few weeks, I planted frost-tolerant vegetables first.  As I get more garden cleared, we’ll plant other delicious things, all leading up to Memorial Day, when I can plant the tomatoes and peppers in their permanent beds.

So today I started with snap peas.  I’m using a tomato cage as a trellis, and when the pea tendrils get close to the top, I will invert a second tomato cage and zip tie it to the top of the first one.  Voila, instant six-foot pea cage.  I also planted some cherry radishes in with the sugar snap peas, since I had plenty of room in the space yet.

Next I planted Broccoli Raab.  I’ve never eaten broccoli raab even, but it’s reputed to be wickedly easy to grow, and can germinate in the low forties- a perfect spring vegetable.   I followed that patch with one each of red and green romaine lettuce- our favorite around here.  Next came a foot of beets and a foot of my favorite Swiss Chard.  Next went a patch of scallions, but it occurs to me that my scallion seed was a few years old- I may need to go buy some new seed and start over, as onion seed doesn’t save too well.  After the onions came a patch of French Breakfast radishes, and finally a patch of spinach.

I almost feel a sense of bliss, knowing that there are seeds growing in my backyard.  I definitely didn’t think I’d be getting anything in there yet.

I also got my compost bin cleaned out.  There was already one here, except that someone filled it with sticks and wood.  I pulled out the sticks and dumped my first bucket of compost.  I’m really excited about being able to compost- I go through a lot of kitchen garbage, and it’s always bothered me to throw it out.   Now I can use it to create new nutrients for my garden- free fertilizer- now that’s a great thing!

I did scare away a big fat bunny yesterday.  As I thought about that bunny, I thought it would be really easy to line the fences of the property with chicken wire, and keep the bunnies out.   But then I also thought that maybe I should try keeping them away naturally first, so while Zander and I were out we stopped and picked up some onion sets, and as I plant, I’ll be lining the back of the garden with red and yellow onions.  I also have intentions for marigolds.  We’ll see if we can keep the rabbits out of the garden this year.  And if not- I know where to get chicken wire.

Happy Gardening! I expect I’ll have a whole series of planting days, as I get bit after bit of my garden cleaned up and ready for planing.  And just last night, as I laid in bed, it occurred to me that I have a perfect spot for some Scarlet Runner Beans- I can’t wait to give those a go!