Week 9 & 10

I have gotten waaay behind in posting.  So, here's a double-up on the weekly update.

The garden is now well over half full, and we still have a ton of plants in the greenhouse to put in.  We also have lots of remaining seed.  The seed will be used to fill in gaps where other seed didn't germinate.  The weirdest thing is the radishes...I think that maybe 3 plants have come up, and we planted a full row of radishes and another row of radishes and carrots mixed.  It's really weird, especially since the radishes were extremely prolific last year.

I also decided to put down black plastic.  The wire grass/crab grass is driving me crazy again, and I know that the plastic is one way to defeat it.  We did not buy the plastic...it was in the Batcave, another gift from Mr. C.  It's not enough to cover the rest of the garden, but between it and some black landscaping fabric he also left, we're in good shape.

This shot has the vining "trellis" we built for the cucumbers.  Zero cost...there is a bamboo grove within walking distance from our house, and last year Jacob, Will, and I cut a bunch of bamboo poles for garden use.  We need to go harvest more...there will be more tomatoes in the garden this year.

The fly in the ointment is the rabbit.  He's eaten nearly all the bean plants, peas, and has started on Angel's sunflowers.  We haven't been able to stop him.  More about that in a later post.  The goal this week is to get everything out of the greenhouse and into the garden.

Dollar Plants

My father has these plants growing wild in his yard. He calls them dollar plants because their seed pods look like silver dollars. He gave us two plants, and we put them in a shady spot next to a birdbath.

The plants went in about 6 weeks ago and the have flowered and are doing fantastic.

Varmints!

Well, they were bound to show up at some point this year...I just had hoped it would be much later, when the garden was more established.

This innocent Romaine Lettuce plant was attacked in the past couple days by an herbivore, and I suspect it is of the variety that hops around, has two long ears, and likes my delicious lettuce.

We had some sighting of it last year, but that was later in the season when its damage was easily missed. All of my Romaine has been hit.

This varmint shall not go unpunished (Evil laughter).

Strawberries

We have a round flowerbed in the middle of the back yard. It gets pretty good sun, and when we moved in we really didn't know if anything was planted in it. Angel bought 6 little strawberry plants and put them in last year. They produced during the summer, and this spring, they have taken off. There are a ton of blossoms on these plants, and the plants themselves are huge.

Week 8

The garden is half full.  I'm actually getting a little worried about running out of space.  We have a ton of stuff in the greenhouse that will go in, and a lot of seed left to plant.  This is a good dilemma to have.

Above is the current view from the front door of the greenhouse.  Everything has germinated except the moonflowers.  Some of this stuff has gone bonkers.  Two foot tall tomato plants, cucumber that's starting to shade out it's neighbors, and a pot of peppermint that just won't stop.

This week we added probably 10 rows.  The green stuff is 12 Park Early Hybrid Tomatoes, Sunflowers, and Romaine Lettuce that we started in the greenhouse.  In the foreground, the newspaper is my ill-fated attempt to mulch and recycle at the same time.  I laid down wet newspaper around squash mounds.  The paper dried, didn't stick in the wet soil, and blew around the yard.  Angel texted me at work to let me know that the wind had pinned much of it to the back fence. Oh well.

Angel tackled the flowerbed on the west side of the yard on Sunday.  Here she is putting in gladiolas, dug up from the Herb Garden / Evil Bush flowerbed.  It was a gorgeous day on Sunday.  I was in overalls and a T-shirt, and sweating.  I took the T-shirt off and was much more comfortable, but I'm sure pretty comical to look at.  I also got a really weird tan as a result.  It was a really enjoyable weekend in the backyard.

Herb Garden

On either sides of the greenhouse are flower beds. The west side is next to crepe myrtles, and it doesn't get quite as much sun as the east side. The east side bed was home to a shrub that I detested. Some sort of dwarf cedar evergreen, it would scratch me and make raised red marks on my arms every time I thought about getting close to it. This week, I donned gloves and long sleeves and ripped out the hated shrubs. They were probably very expensive and desirable, but they are now dead and in the woodpile to be burned. Good riddance. Underneath was a massive gladiola bulb farm. Yesterday I dug all but a few out...it wound up being three flats worth of bulbs. Today Angel planted one flat of bulbs in a different flower bed. Anyway, yesterday I turned the empty bed into an herb garden. I put in wooden dividers, and planted dill, chives, cilantro, basil, and my thai hot peppers. Some chives and Cilantro I'd started in the greenhouse, and all of the basil and peppers where from the greenhouse. Angel bought me some very cool herb garden stakes to go in it. It looks good, and the evil shrub is gone.
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Week 7

I'm getting a little behind on this.  I need to get posts done in a more timely manner.

Well, week 7 was pretty rockin'.  A little under a third of the garden was planted.  I'm adding rows from either end, a foot apart.  The East end looks like this:

On this end we put in green bunching onions, radishes, purple mustard greens, turnips, salad bowl lettuce, broccolli, spinach, and carrots.

On the west side, we put in Peas, Green Bush Beans, more carrots, another variety of Spinach, Romaine Lettuce, and the sunflowers that Angel started in the greenhouse.  Angel put the sunflowers in herself.  We tried to get the boys involved, but they were highly resistant.  

I really wanted a decent way to mark the crops, with the requirement that I spend zero dollars on the marking system.  So, I had some PVC and some tomato stake material.  I cut the wood into foot long stakes, drilled holes in the PVC, and cut them into inch and a half sections, and nailed them to the stakes.  We'll see how they hold up.

Repairs

Water Supply to Greenhouse - Fixed.

This winter, We did not run heat in the greenhouse.  One evening after a heavy snow followed by a sunny day, I went out to the Batcave and heard this odd "shhhhhh" sound.  It sounded like it was coming from the neighbor's back yard, so I walked towards the sound.  As I got closer, I realized it was coming from the greenhouse.  I opened the door and humid air wafted out.  I turned on the light and discovered a flooded greenhouse.  Inside the greenhouse, there is a spigot, fed by a plastic pipe coming up from the ground.  The joint where the plastic connected to the brass fixture was cracked and water was spewing out of it.  It had frozen and cracked the night before, and the sunny day had warmed it enough to melt, and a fountain ensued.  The glass was covered with mist, and the sunken floor of the greenhouse was flooded with 6 inches of water.  I had not idea where the cutoff was located, but I guessed that a good place to start was the house, which meant crawlspace.  No a fun proposition in the snow.  I got the crawlspace "door" popped open, got partially in there, and started shining a flashlight around.  I saw water pipes going to the corner of the house closest to the greenhouse...a place where there is no water in the house, followed the pipe back, and found the cutoff valve right above me.  Sweet.  Fountain stopped. 

New hose inside greenhouse. 

Well, I'm not exactly the most conscientious homeowner.  I procrastinate.  A lot.  So, I've been using the rain barrel and a watering can to keep the greenhouse plants hydrated.  No big.  However, the watering can method will be a serious pain in the ass for watering the garden.  The water supply in the greenhouse feeds the garden.  With seed and plants going in, I had to fix it.  So, a little hacksawing, a little trip to Home Depot, a little expert advice about CPVC and regular PVC, $3 for the part I needed, $12 for the purple primer and CPVC glue, and we're back in business.  I bought a 15 foot hose, and hooked it up to the splitter and one of Mr. Collins' watering wands.  Water for the greenhouse, water for the garden.  Done.