Off to a great week
Had a bit of a scare this past weekend with the nasty storms that blew through. It knocked 3 of my mater plants down, and I rushed out during the rain and put cages around those 3 plants.
I had a hard time fitting them into their cages, so today I went and picked up a 150 foot roll of concrete reinforcing wire which I will make cages out of this week (it really was the plan from the beginning, I just had to improvise when the storm turned nasty). I think I will only be able to get 24 or so cages of the size I want, so I will figure out something else for the one or two extra.
All my plants were covered in mud and dirt, so I went out and brushed off all of the leaves on the tomatoes and peppers. It is kind of like a back rub for a person. They like to be rubbed and the dirt gotten off of them; they were much happier after that. 🙂
My first pepper pods of the year! The first one is a Purple Jalapeno (very pretty purple flowers that turn into purple pods) and the second is a Tam Jalapeno (a mild version of jalapeno, though most jalapenos are mild for me to begin with).
So the Golden King, Malakite, Cosmonaut, Monomak, and Brave General all have buds now, and so do 11 of my pepper plants. Yay for the garden!
I am also going to try foliar feeding this year, spraying the foliage with a watered down fertilizer. Plants apparently absorb about 90% of the nutrients this way, rather than the 10% or so that they get through the roots when you straight up water them with fertilizer.
The onions are doing well. I need to find time to mound up dirt around them before I leave for the 4th of July weekend. You can see the carrots behind the onions, and they seem to be doing very well too.
Our lettuce did well, and produced/is producing more than we need. The green oakleaf wasn’t our favorite, so I kind of just let it go to seed. I love the red and green grand rapids, great flavor, and they are supposed to produce all summer long without bolting. You can see some red oakleaf at the end, and they seem to be a little more heat tolerant than the green.
I think that is about it for now. We are supposed to have sun for the next week, so I wanted to make sure I got pictures out before everything grows like crazy 🙂
Yay! Look at that garden! I’m not the biggest fan of the oak leaf lettuces- I prefer to plant romaine types. But they sure look nice!
For the tomatoes, you don’t have to wrap each individual plant in it’s own cage. You could use the fencing more like a trellis- run it down a row using fence posts and tie the plants to it- they’ll grow right up it. That’s how I do my tomatoes. The ones that try to climb higher than the trellis get bamboo poles added on.
But I am excited to make the cages! 🙂
I am making them so I can unroll them and actually store them for the winter. I am hoping they work very well. I do need to get out and find a few bamboo poles. My sungold in a 5 gallon bucket will need it before too long.
Nice looking Garden, Love the row of lettuce!!!! My garden is soooo behind this year, new location, new enemies, new soil to amend, although I do finally have the first zucchini of the year and my tom’s are finally starting to blossom. Nice job, and I agree on the cages, it’s a man thing I think, so obviously your sis wouldn’t understand….LOLOLOL kidding Erika!!!!!!!!!!!!
Boys and their cages.
I got 16 of my cages built tonight. Hopefully my tetanus is up to date, I got quite a few cuts and scratches when bending those things into shape. They are 22″ round and 54″ tall (sunk the bottom 6″ into the ground instead of trying to stake them). 🙂
I swear my plants doubled in size the last 5 days! I will try and take some more pictures tomorrow, Wednesday if I get too busy. In the semi-dark and rain here I saw a tomato on one of the plants (Golden King of Siberia, and only looked from outside the garden), but I am sure I must have others 🙂
I came home to find blossoms! I guess the plants like the muggy weather!
I need to take pics soon because I actually have blossoms starting on my very emaciated scarlet runner beans. What pretty flowers!