Planting the plantation

Today was the big day. Tomato plants are now in the ground, shielded from the remaining frost by the Wall-O-Water. I buried each of them up to the last stem, cutting off all leaves and branches below to encourage good root growth. I also put some composted cow manure in each hole before the plants went in to provide a good source of nutrients when the roots get going. The ground was VERY soft as we've had over two inches of rain over the last three days

In addition to the tomatos, I also planted two varieties of hop vines. Hops are planted as rhizomes, which are technically stems not roots that have been harvested from a cultivated variety. I obtained mine from Northern Brewer online. The Cascade variety went into the newer bed by the playhouse. When the vines develop, I'll train them up the old rope ladder to climb. The other variety is Brewer's Gold and was a much bigger, thicker, and heartier looking rhizome. I don't know if that's the variety or just the particular cutting that I received. These went, one each, at the base of the A-frame footprint. I'll have to post a string to train them up the legs of the A-frame when the time comes. If they really take off, I'll then tie another string at the top of the A-frame to the top of the playhouse where they can mingle with the Cascades. The flyer that came with them said not to expect too much in the first year since they will be mostly establishing their root system. However, in subsequent years the vines can grow to as much as 25-35' long in 120 days. Flowering is in late July or early August.

Fencing solution

After blogging the problem this morning, I decided to figure out a solution. I went to Home Depot with the intention of buying some chicken wire but when I got there, I found a product called "Deer Netting". It's a 100' roll of 7' plastic netting meant to enclose the garden from the four legged pests. Unfortunately, HD didn't have the requisite posts to hold it up so I had to go to Lowe's as well. I bought ten (two at each corner and one in the middle of each long side) but six would have been enough since it's very light netting. The posts were 4' tall with a blade on the end in the ground for stability. They're painted green and the netting is almost invisible from a distance so it doesn't make the garden look like some sort of maximum security prison. The poles cost about $2 apiece so for a total of $35, I have what I hope will be a very effective protection against the nocturnal munchers.

Where do deer go when it rains?

A storm front has been dumping rain on our area for the past three days. I keep wanting to get outside but things just won't dry out enough to spend much time without getting wet. I don't mind so much but since my outside time is often accompanied by a toddler and infant, it's not really much of a possibility to drag them out in the rain. And so we sit inside...

However, the local deer are definitely not taking a break. As the lettuce and carrots in my garden begin to grow, their presence is becoming more of a nuisance. Hoofprints in the raised bed are the giveaway and I know I've got to do something about it. A fence is in the planning but I'm still not sure how to construct it so that its easy for me to access the 4 x 8 raised bed without totally taking it down and putting it back up each time. C'mon, blog readers. I need a suggestion here.

Basil on the move

I transplanted the basil seedlings into a third terra cotta pot today but left them under the lights to grow. This way I'll have two terra cotta pots of basil and one of rosemary.

The other two are doing nicely in the kitchen window, which is now getting quite crowded with pots awaiting the hardening off process in the coming week before planting outside.

Salad Section II

As previously posted, my romaine varieties of lettuce weren't doing so well so I re-seeded the forellenschluss variety. While I was at it, I decided to go ahead and develop my second bed as a salad section as well. This way I can keep the greens growing in their own bed when they are done in the big one and use that space for summer plantings of other vegetables. Thus, I sowed all the same varieties in the smaller bed, save for the arugula. There's enough of that already.

If it "just happens" why does it cost so much?

I purchased another two bags of topsoil and three of composted humus and manure today at Kmart. The total came to $8.32 which brings the running tally up to $424.50.

Up From the Ground It Arose (OR Easter Weekend)

No blogging (or gardening) this weekend as it was a holiday and we were traveling. What a difference three days can make. When I left, the spinach and arugula were just beginning to peep through the ground but when I got out to take a look today, I was greeted by a lot of growth, especially from the rocquette, which required some careful thinning. I'm less enthused by the performance of the two types of romaine lettuce which seems to be struggling by comparison. I wonder if the deer or birds got to it or if it had some trouble germinating. I'm planning to re-seed and hope for better results.

After the kids were put to bed tonight, I finished transplanting the final five tomato plants from their cells into larger terra cotta pots. I'm still not sure who will want them but I don't see any reason to stop their growth at this point since I have the space and they're already doing great, even if they are a bit leggy from being under the light too much.

The cells are going to be used again in the coming week to get the melons and pumpkins started. They won't go in the ground until after last frost but according to the book, it's ok to sow them now and give a head start rather than wait to go directly in the ground.

The basil seedlings are pushing up nicely under the light while the plants I bought are flourishing in their larger terra cotta in the window. I can almost taste the fresh pesto.

In other yard news, the flowering redbud tree bloomed while we were away this weekend. It was dark when we got home so my first look at it was from the kitchen window this morning. I was stumbling to the coffee pot when its brilliant color caught my eye down the hill. I got inspired to go mow just so everything was perfect afterward. The oranmental cherry is still in full bloom with light pink flowers that blew all over the green of the freshly cut lawn. Beautiful. We even had a short but intense shower of .5 inches so I didn't have to water the garden afterward. All in all, it was a great day to be outside in my backyard.

Herb immigration

With all the news lately about immigration reform, I thought I'd move some Italian and Greek herbs around. Today, I transplanted the basil and oregano that I had purchased a couple of weeks ago as seedlings from Lowe's nursery. I've had them under the grow lamp in their own little pots but they were getting too big and I needed the lamp space for some more seeds anyway so across the border to a larger terra cotta planter they went. I mixed in about two cups of sand with each terra cotta to improve the drainage of the potting soil since herbs like a well-drained footing. The oregano will now reside in the window until it's safe to put them on the deck in the full sun for the summer where they'll be happy. I still had enough space to keep the basil terr cotta under the grow lamp but that may change soon. That last frost date can't get here soon enough.

I then re-used the plastic pots and grow lamp space to sow some more basil seeds in seed starting soil and put them under the lamp. We'll eat a lot of basil so I'm planning a third terra cotta planter from these seeds. I'll probably sow some directly in the garden as well just to see how it does. I've got a pack of oregano seeds but at this point, no more space to sow them so they'll just have to wait a while.

Salad section

I had the camera outside today so I thought I'd take a shot of how the lettuce and spinach is just beginning to peek out of the ground. This is nine days after planting.

Carrot planting and making my bed

I planted the first row of baby carrots today. These are the minicor variety from Cook's Garden which has this to say about them in their catalog:

This is our top choice for the small, tender, baby carrots. My grandmother always kept a bowl of baby carrots in ice water on her kitchen table for us kids to munch when we came in from the garden for lunch, and it was always empty by the time we left. The quick growing roots gain their color and flavor early, and their uniform 3 to 4 inch length also makes them great for canning. Very small core makes them super tender and juicy.

My planting was about 1/4" to 1/2" deep (these are very small seeds). The 20 Minute Gardener recommends planting them with some ashes from the fireplace to sweeten them up but I just scattered a bit of pelleted lime across the top and figured it would do the same thing to raise the pH.



I also did a good bit of digging to ready another smaller raised bed that is a part of my son's playground set. This is where I'll put one of the hop varieties (the rhizomes arrived today in the mail and are stored safely in the fridge with some moisture in a ziplock bag) to climb what was a rope ladder before the wooden rungs got rotted and broke off. I used the same mixture of soil elements as in the other bed. I still had lots of sphagnum peat from the first bed (I bought two bales because it was cheaper and I knew I'd use it eventually), some sharp builder's sand, and a bit of composted cow manure. I had to make a quick trip to Kmart (why Southern States closes at 3PM on Saturday in springtime is beyond me) for some more topsoil to mix in. A few minutes with the eggbeater tiller and it's ready to plant the hops after the last frost is passed (May 10-14 says my local ag extension agent).



I wasn't done yet. I dug out four holes in the mulched area of the playground and filled them back with the soil mix. One of these will be for the other hop variety which will climb the swingset. The others will be where I'll plant pumpkin, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Their vines will have plenty of room to spread out and run around the playground without being much in the way or getting on the lawn where I won't be able to mow.

After all this digging and mixing, my back hurts. Advil to the rescue.

Miscellaneous accounting

I realized that there have been some expenses I've not recorded. On 3/25 I spent $25.45 at Southern States for odds and ends like a measuring cup, seed starter soil, powdered Miracle Gro fertilizer (two kinds, one of which is a tomato specialty formula), a trellis netting that I'm planning to use for training hop vines, and some pole bean seeds for James' bean teepee.

The rest of the seeds were ordered off the internet and came from The Cook's Garden. With shipping, that totaled $55.35 and includes the Wall-O-Water and some peppers that will be shipped later not as seeds but as plants. Other than that, I've spent $9.95 on a box of 75 landscape fabric pins (I already had the fabric which I'm planning to use for weed control), $6.77 on five more bags of topsoil for the new smaller bed (more on this later), $23.01 on four hop rhizomes from Northern Brewer, and about $5 for a bag of mulch (can't find the receipt even though it was only about eight hours ago). That brings my project total to $416.18.

Gullywasher

Like most of the rest of the southeast, we experienced some major storms yesterday and last night. At least five people were killed near Nashville in the town of Gallatin due to tornados. The line of thunderstorms arrived here in southwest Virginia about 10:00PM. The lightening and thunder was impressive but thankfully no tornados were reported that I'm aware of. It rained all night and I'm sure there will be some problems with flooding. We live near the crest of a hill so flooding isn't much of an issue for our yard or garden. However, the raised bed is on a slight incline and I was fearful that the intense rain would erode channels in the soil and wash out some of the lettuce seed. I also had two Wall-o-Water solar plant insulators out warming the soil for tomato plants to go in when the seedlings get big enough. A week ago, a much less intense storm blew over a third so I figured these were probably down as well.

When I got up this morning I went out to the garden to check it all out. Surprisingly, they were still standing and no erosion had washed out like I had feared. The rain gauge was full to 1.8 inches so it was quite a downpour overnight. The lettuce and spinach sprouts even look like they've grown since yesterday so I'm very pleased. I had hoped to get some carrots out this weekend but it may be too wet to plant and the weather is calling for even more rain. Carrots may have to wait until the sun comes out a bit.

Tomato maintenance

Yesterday (4/6), James and I thinned the tomato seedlings to one per cell pack. We had planted 3-4 seeds in each one and I was pleased to see that almost every seed had sprouted. Nevertheless, each cell can only support one seedling without being crowded out when the root structure expands so we carefully selected the heartiest looking one from each cell and clipped off the rest with scissors. Afterward, we repotted two of them into larger pots. These were the first two that we had planted two or three days before the rest. All these went back under the grow lights inside until it warms up a bit more.

I mixed up some more liquid fertilizer today (18-18-21) and applied it to the seedlings as well as the basil and oregano I've got under the lights, awaiting repotting.

One of the three Wall-o-Water solar tents that I've had on the planting spots for the tomatos blew over in the wind the other night so I just took it down. I'm only planning on planting two tomato plants anyway. The others, I'll try to pot and give away to good homes.

Oh my Deer!

I'm less than a week into planting the garden and we're already getting our first pests. I went out yesterday morning to check the rain gauge and noticed some distinct deer hoofprints. There's nothing for them to eat yet but I don't want them getting in the habit of browsing my garden like their personal produce section. Looks like I'll be constructing some type of barrier, most likely a chicken-wire mesh. I'd like to find some design that I can easily remove for tending the plants once they've grown higher. I don't want to be bending over all the time. Fortunately, the garden isn't big enough to worry about them jumping a high fence. There would barely be space enough for them to land, much less stand and graze. 4 x 8' just isn't that big. If anyone has such a design, please let me know.

The rain came again last night. About .4" fell after I watered yesterday afternoon so the peat moss in the mix should be really soaking up the moisture by now. That's good, because I've started to worry that I mixed in too much sand with the mix.

Precipitation

Last night we had a light rain, just after I planted the lettuce and spinach, just before dark. The rain gauge this morning showed .3 of an inch. Today is sunny with high clouds and temps over 70. I'm thinking this was just ideal timing for these seeds to go in the ground. Maybe I was right to wait this long after all.