Plot status - baby carrots and radishes

The warm weather and lots of rain as led to more beans coming up as well as carrots (below left) and more radishes coming up.  Not much done today.  More trimming of tomatoes and peppers, watering, and bug dust application.  I'm going to try to stagger the planting of the carrots and radishes so we consistently have them through the summer.

Plot Progress - bean development, pruning tomatoes and peppers, bug dust

I made it to the plot today in the hopes that I could go again at the tail end of the weekend.  Trying to expand beyond my once-weekly visits as often as I can.

I was pleased to see that the green beans are doing well.  Even a few of the reseeded beans are coming up.

The runner beans are starting to get to the height where I need to give them something to climb on.  The snow peas are also slowly developing.

The onions are doing quite well.  They're getting ready to start putting out bulbs so they can earn the Walking part of their name.

Even the radish seeds I planted at my last visit are starting to come up where I've interplanted them with the peppers and tomatoes.

The flower seeds that I broadcast into the flower box are also starting to come up.  I have no idea what the variety is given there are 5 types of flower seeds in there.

It's also interesting to see how many volunteers are around the garden.  I've already transplanted some borage into the borage box.  I saw tomato volunteers as well as some cosmos.  I'll be trying to transplant the cosmos once they get a little bit bigger.

I was happy to see that the potted tomatoes and the lone pepper are taking to their new homes.

Once I checked out the status of everything, I did some pruning on the tomatoes and pepper plants.  I'll follow up with a separate post about why and how I do that in case anyone has need of that.  I also laid down some of the bug dust to fight off the Mexican bean beetles that love my bean plants.

The final touch was a panoramic picture to show how things are as of today.

Lack of plot visits makes Greg something something.....

With Wifey doing a lot of tutoring these days, I find that I can't get to the plot Monday - Thursday.  That drives me nuts because I want to go out and check on things and do some of the little projects I need to tackle.  Thankfully, the school year is slowly wrapping up.  As long as I can keep things going until she's done tutoring, I'll be good to go.

Similar to Homer's madness from many years ago, no plot visits and no blog posts make Greg something something.....

Plot progress - beans, snow peas, kale, peppers

Two plot trips this weekend.  Yesterday we made it out to the plot to see how things are doing.  It's nice to see that everything made it through recent rain reasonably well.  The tomatoes look fine.  Nothing fantastic or worthy of pictures.

I was happy to see that the green beans and snow peas are all coming up.

The kale has settled in pretty well.  Also worth noting is that some pepper plants are starting to develop flowers.  I'll be doing a separate post about what I'm going to try to encourage pepper growth this year.

Today I went out to the plot to do some work.  We purchased some organic plant starters this morning at a farmer's market.  As a result, I added three okra plants and four hot pepper plants to the plot.  The okra are in with the kale since I doubt the kale will develop due to warmer temperatures being here and the temps only getting hotter. 

I also added more beans (scarlet and green) and snow peas to fill in gaps where some just haven't come up.  I was quite pleased to see that many/most of the seeds I'd planted came up.  It was particularly gratifying given these were seeds we'd dried for the first time this past fall.

Lastly, I planted a few more tomatoes.  This time, I put them in pots.  I'd originally intended to put snow peas in there, however, with the extremely abbreviated spring, I decided I didn't want to waste time on that.  We also use a lot of tomatoes fresh, canned, stewed, and as pasta sauce.  We will certainly use them.

I'll be sure to take more pictures the next time I come out.

Tomatoes, Peppers, Kale are In!

The Boy and I spent a few hours at the plot this afternoon.  The tomatoes and peppers are now in their boxes.  We have a lot of dehydrated cayennes from last year, however, I wanted to have some fresh growing.  Unfortunately, ours are still quite small so I don't want to transplant them just yet.

The kale is in its box as well.  I also added a few basil and marigold plants for companion planting purposes.  Once all was planted, everything was watered.  I was glad to see that some of the beans are starting to come up, too.

Unfortunately, The Boy broke off one of the remaining sides of the broken box.  So more repairs will be needed.

Still to do:

• Repair the carrot and radish box
• Attach the fencing to the watermelon trellis
• Plant the carrots and radish in their box
• Plant flowers in their two boxes
• Plant items in the four pots at the plot

No planting today

Although I'd intended to go back to the plot today to transplant my starters, Wifey made an excellent recommendation that I followed.  She said that with the cold winter and late spring, the ground temps likely aren't what we'd normally be expecting.  Since we're supposed to have some very warm weather this week, she recommend delaying transplanting them until later in the week.

Smart Wifey.  So other than more hardening off of the plants, I didn't do anything else with the plot since Friday.

Spring has sprung: the first work day at the plot this year

I made it to the plot for a few hours yesterday after work.  It was really nice to make some headway.  As I found out a few years ago, the more work that's done early on, the easier it is to maintain during the year.

First on the agenda was to turn over all the boxes that weren't already populated by onions, shallots, and garlic.  I also cleared some soil away from the end of a box I need to replace due to rot.

While turning over the boxes, I did some weeding as I came across stray plants.  I quickly came to realize that the far right corner of the plot became infested with mint.  I'm sure I didn't get all the mint roots, but I sure did remove a lot of them.  As I was pulling them out, I continually ran into more and more.  It reminded me of a scene in the movie Aliens where the colonial marines first encountered the monsters and Hicks exclaimed, "they're coming out of the walls!  They're coming out of the [gosh golly] walls!!!"  Man, there were a lot of mint vines.

I was happy to see that some shallots (left) were coming up as well as a number of the garlic bulbs (right) that we'd planted.

The Walking Onions also looked great.  As I expected, the established ones from last year (left) look awesome.  The new ones that Wifey transplanted in the fall also look very good.

Lastly, I planted sugar snap peas, green beans, and scarlet runner beans in their boxes.  In the case of the green and scarlet runner beans, I used beans that we'd grown and dried last year with the idea of trying to do seed saving.  This is the first time we've tried growing beans from saved beans.  I hope they germinate.  In an attempt to improve the odds get have some come up, I double planted each location.  Sorry, no picture.  Didn't think that empty boxes would be all that impressive.  "Yup.  That's dirt in a box, alright."  I still need to plant beans in the far right box in the corner.  It's currently populated with garlic.

I hope to do some transplanting tomorrow.  We'll see.  Not sure if the plants have been hardened off enough.

Status of the plant starters

I started most of my seeds in mid-February.  As is inevitable, some didn't make it.  Disappointingly, the basil got really leggy before I was able to transplant it to larger pots.  It's still alive, but I'm not sure whether to count on it or not.  I guess I'll transplant it this weekend and see if it makes it.  If so, I'll let it live.

With all that in mind, it occurred to me that I need to harden off the plants.  Yikes!

The tomatoes are generally doing very well.  There are some that aren't doing as well as others, but for the most part they're quite happy.  The ones in the picture are generally about 10" tall despite my attempts to keep them from getting leggy.  They should do well, I'd think.

Although I don't have pictures, the bell peppers look very good.  The cayennes are stunted for reasons I don't understand. 

The kale looks quite good, though.  I would have transplanted it sooner if the weather hadn't been so unpredictable over the last month.  Oh well.

An update on the Gojis and Raspberry plant

We bought a container raspberry plant in the fall followed up by two goji berry sticks (yeah, that's what they were) for my birthday.  They were transplanted in mid-March and lived indoors for quite a while.  I've had them outside for a few weeks.  They received a little bit of a shock (I didn't do a good job of hardening them off), but are doing well.

I need to look into putting them into larger pots, but they're quite happy.

The raspberry plant is also doing well after wintering in the garage.  Even with all the severe cold we received, it's waking up quite nicely, too, and even is sending out new shoots.

I've been delinquent in updating things

It's been almost a month since I've done any updates.  Now that we're finally appearing to be done with frost and rain deluges for the near future, it's time to get back to some gardening.

There will be a number of updates coming in the next few days.  I intend to rotate the watermelon trellis 180 degrees to try growing cucumbers in the shade that'll provide.  I'm going to turn over the garden beds and plan seeds this afternoon -- carrot, radish, sugar snap peas, and beans.  At some point over the weekend I'll go back out and transplant stuff, too.