The Sick Humor of the Vegetable Gods

Seriously. It's not funny.

I spent two days agonizing about just pulling my shelling peas and going ahead and planting my squash. The SVB and squash bug emerge in GA in June. Once they come, kiss everything goodbye. I got one, count them, one, zucchini last year out of two plants. I got a half a squash from another. The squash bugs and pickleworms got me every single time. I was determined to beat them at their game. I'm scrappy and I have more experience...(only because I don't think their lifetimes are as long as mine has been).

So I went to the garden. I steeled myself to uproot those bugger peas and curse them for not maturing fast enough. I thrust my hand into the square...and found the beginnings of the first flower.

Don't laugh. It's not funny. It's a conspiracy, I tell you. I'm thinking about holding a grudge. I'm a woman. I can do that really well. :)

So I acquiesced and let the little peas live for at least two to three weeks more. Maybe I'll get three or four peas out of the deal. I did, however, start the squash and zucks in little containers outside in the sun and not under lights so I can transplant them immediately after I get the nerve to pull the peas.

I also planted all of my heavyweight bush beans and my KW beans in my hanging baskets. I'm going to try to grow those to trellis around my deck railing. My cucumbers in the hanging baskets are just about to sprout, and my peppers have a flower.

My experiment with the tomatoes in the hanging basket seems to be working okay for now. I took some smaller Juliet Roma toms and I think Sweet 100's and planted them at 45 degree angles in hanging pots. Yes, they're growing toward the sun a bit, but I'm hoping as they grow larger and fruit starts to ripen, they'll dangle down. it's the easiest way to get them away from the serial tomato killer (Gibson, the dog).

Other than that, the eggplant is looking good.

The SS peas are starting to climb back up after being cut down by the winds last week.

The blueberries have tons of flowers. Some flowers got knocked off in the winds last week. I suppose those bushes are done for this year, right?

I had to pull two incredibly small red onions this week because they started to bolt. Who would have thought! Then I went to the black radishes and found one of those had bolted as well. Most of the carrots aren't doing much of anything, but what's really odd is that there are two shaded by the black radishes and those are growing with a purpose.

I'm really thinking about only growing broccoli, lettuce and radishes next spring. Broccoli is looking great....

However, everything else doesn't seem to have the stamina to mature in time. That's a heck of a lot of broccoli. I'll have to do some soul searching to see if I can stand empty squares until mid April.

Speaking of squares, here's how I strung the beds the other day. You can see it's only one piece of string . I still need to get out there and bend over the nails if I'm going to leave the grid up.
Well, sports fans, that's it for me. 4:30 AM comes pretty early and I'm about to turn into a pumpkin (one unmolested by SVB if it's all the same to you).

Y'all have a good evening. Sweet gardening dreams.

Stringing the Grid

Last night I strung the grid on the largest bed. I didn't want to do as before and just cut lengths of twine to fit and staple it down. The twine gets loose and the staples never hold. I had an idea this time to string it in one fell swoop, winding it around nails to go back and forth and change directions. It's probably something that others have thought of and done before, but it was such an epiphany to me that I was thrilled.

I started by putting nails all around the bed measuring for each square foot. Once I had all the nails in place, I started by tying the string at a corner. I then brought it up to the one foot marker, wound it around the nail and pulled it tight to the other end of the box. I wrapped it around that nail and brought it up one nail, wrapped it around and then back to the other side, parallel to that first line. I continued this until I had strung the entire length of the box and was at the last sq ft. I then brought it to the corner wound it around and then brought it to the nail next to it in order to begin the downward lines. I continued the process I did for the length of the box and tied the end of the string to the last corner nail.

Clear as mud?

I still have those tiny mite-like bugs in my new compost. I'm not sure if they're dangerous to my seeds or if I should let them be. I wouldn't know what to treat the soil with anyway so as not to disturb the seeds.

I pulled three more good radishes from the garden and one that was infested with some tiny, long, thin bug with many, many legs.

The boy and I planted his pole beans today and the bush beans and radishes in the side bed are just about to sprout. I'm thinking about starting the squash and zuch in pots today to have them ready to transplant soon. My broccoli is about at quarter size, so I'm hoping in about 4 more weeks they'll be good to harvest. No time to wait for the side shoots this spring. That will have to wait until the fall broccoli crop.

Storm and Seeds

A second round of horrendous storms passed through here today. We had quarter size hail on Friday (I need to get my roof examined for damage) and then today the winds were so fierce there are trees down everywhere.

We lost power at school from around 10AM to 1:50PM. We knew the storm was bad, but we didn't have a window to look out at that time. I was shocked at the damage on my way home. Entire trees were toppled, root ball and all. I suppose the drought has taken its toll on them these past several years. Huge beautiful oaks were fallen across the road. The traffic man said that he would "try to tell [us ]all of the roads you couldn't travel on, but it would be easier to tell which roads you COULD travel on."

Our neighbor on one side had a pine fall parallel to her house so close that you can stand at her front windows, reach out and touch the tree. She's amazingly lucky. Our other neighbor lost three trees; one came through our fence, but he was able to retrieve it because the winds had blown our gate wide open. Our gate is a double gate and the wind blew so hard it dragged the anchoring peg still in its hole along the ground. Amazing! Our rocking chairs on the front porch were in the front yard and our table and chairs had flipped over on the deck. It must have been some storm!

The peas are now completely off the trellis. I'm thinking about moving them to the deck and letting them spill over. I wonder if they'd still produce growing down instead of up. Everything else seems fine. The broccoli has a bit of a drunken lean to them, but that's easily remedied. They have the most beautifull little heads starting to form!!

I strung the grid for my large box today by winding it around nails just like I wanted to. It was amazing. I'll never do it another way again. I went ahead and planted my trellising cucumbers and bush cucumbers since our temps are looking fantastic. After I planted, however, I noticed little peachy colored things crawling in and over and under the compost. They're smaller than a pin head and fast little buggers. I don't know what they are, but they have many legs and are about the size of a strawberry seed and more round than oblong. I've never seen anything like them before so I can only assume they came with the compost, and that irritates me a bit. I just wonder if the damage will be done to the seed or will they wait until it begins to grow.

On the bright side, there is a tomato growing from one of my plants hanging from the deck! I took an indeterminate tom and slid it in a hanging pot at a 45 degree angle. It grew towards the sun for a few weeks and is now full of flowers and starting to lean downward. I'll be excited if it works. Suspending the toms would be a great way of keeping them away from the tomato butcher. I can only use tiny salad tomato varieties because of the weight, but a tomato is a tomato!

Temperatures are looking very nice for this next week. I'm hopeful that a string of nice days will really help these poor hail and wind stricken plants recouperate.

A Lot Can Happen In Three Days

The discouragement is setting in, my friends. We left town this weekend to run sound for a local convention in downtown Atlanta. The same nasty line of storms that EG mentioned in his blog (http://engineeredgarden.blogspot.com/) came our way Friday night and tornado warning after tornado warning was listed for not only our county, but our individual town. I was worried enough leaving everything for three days, envisioning a monster bug attack, and now I worried about the condition of the house because of the storms. My fantastic sister-in-law agreed to take a run by the house in the morning and reported all was fine. Apparently, the radar was showing there could be a tornado on the ground, but I do not believe any was ever sighted.

However, I did return to find the yellowing of the tomatos and radishes in the far box is getting worse. I suppose the rain was too much for them being that they were already suffering from too much water and it's supposed to rain a bunch again tonight through tomorrow. I may just be replanting that bed.

The peppers in back are very yellow as well, but the ones in front in pots are thriving and putting out flowers which should open in the next week or so which has me excited.

I had planted pole beans in planters hanging from my deck a few weeks ago in hopes that the vines would run up and around my deck railing, but when I went to dig out some seeds to see why they hadn't sprouted, I found my nemesis the root maggot had destroyed all of those seedlings.

The eggplants and ssnap peas in front look a little worse for wear because of the high winds on Friday night. The peas all broke from their trellis and are sprawling. I'm going to see what I can do to prop them back up until they grab on again.

Then, as if it couldn't get worse, I noticed one of my potted tomatoes was completely severed at the main stem and there was no debris field for which to use for following the culprit. I went inside with the intent of giving our tomato-killing great dane a piece of my mind when I remembered we kenneled him three days ago. There's another stone-cold tomato murderer amongst us.

Needless to say, I'm irritated with it all.

I put some more bean seeds for my pots in wet towels and zippy bags to try to presprout them. I also did some for my big box. There's nothing in there now, so I don't need to wait for anything to be done before I plant the box. I might just plant the beans section of that box as soon as those sprout in the towels. I'll then dump an entire bag of DE on it to stop the flies from laying those blasted root maggot eggs.

I'm also going to do what I can to get my squash and zuchini in the ground as soon as possible. I heard on Walter Reeves' garden program today that the squash bug comes out in June, so try to get as much squash and zuchini as you can before that. He also mentioned to do carrots only in the fall and not spring. I wonder if that's why all of my carrots don't seem to be growing much at all?

Tomorrow I'm going to try to string the grid on the big bed. Instead of stapeling it down this time (it always pulls out), I'm going to try just putting in nails and winding the string around as I lay it and then bending the nails down around it. We'll see if that will work.

Jaundiced veggies?

My toms and radishes look like they have jaundice!

I could see this yellowing from the upstairs windows, it was that pronounced. I'm getting worried that the freeze we had the other night wasn't so benign as I thought it was. Here's what's going on. We went from happy radishes that you saw a few posts below to this:

Literally the change was overnight. The tomato went from happy tomato in a few posts below to this saggy, droop thing this morning:

Oddly, the limbs are incredibly stiff. They only have the appearance of being floppy. When I pulled radishes for tonight's dinner, I noticed the soil beneath was still relatively wet. We haven't had rain since Monday or Tuesday of this week. Could it be too much water? If so, we're in trouble because it's raining again today. Too chilly? For the tom, I could see it, but not the radishes. They're in the same bed, so I think what's affecting one is affecting the other. There were no pests that I could see.

Any ideas?

On a better note, here's tonight's dinner I pulled from the garden just now. That's 8oz of lettuce and spinach and three radishes (I didn't check their weight). Not too shabby if you ask me.

A blog by any other name..

When one decides to start a blog, it's the name of said blog that intrigues, it entices, it inspires.

And then you have mine. The coming up with a name is what held me back from writing anything resembling a blog, and then when you finally put one down, you have this conversation:
Girlfriend: "Hey, I checked out that blog you sent me. Not too shabby."

Ribbit: "Thanks. I'm having fun."

G: "Listen (pause), I have to ask. You're not planning on harming your family are you?"

R: "Noooo....not today. Why?" (note irritated, understated tone)

G: "Well, calling it 'The Coroner's Yard' doesn't really inspire confidence."

I actually thought about that as I was typing in the title for the first time. Ok, I thought about it because I initially typed it wrong. But it is what it is. It's not the yard proper, although if I had more sun back there it would be the whole yard, but it is most certainly the corner yard. And that, my friends, is the way it will stand...until I chop down that oak and commandeer the ENTIRE yard!

On a gardening note, I bought an ichiban eggplant today for a left over container that was itching for something in it. Hopefully it will produce more than a black beauty. Here's keeping fingers crossed it will produce anything at all!!!

Ribbit 1 -- Mother Nature a big whopping 0!!!

We survived! We survived!!!

The temperatures got down into the mid 20's last night. I was convinced that in spite of the straw on the peppers and the straw, bags and buckets over the tomatoes everything would have been toast.

The peppers laughed.

The tomatoes guffawed.

The lettuce stuck its tongue out, wagged its fingers by its ears and said, "nanny nanny, boo-boo."
Yup. They're mature like that :)

The peas, eggplant, and tomatoes that were moved into the garage did well also. The only problem seems to be that since they've been under cover for two days, they're experiencing a bit of sunburn. The peppers are leaning towards yellow as are the newest leaves on the toms. Don't know if it is a temporary thing or if it will just get worse. It was something I should have thought about, however.

I just finished unloading the last of the two cubic yards of compost that I bought from a local landscape supply. The first was a "plant mix" which seemed to me to contain more red clay than anything else, and the second was a good 'ole-fashioned compost mix. Here are some of the exciting things I found in the compost mix:

• Sticks


• Small rocks


• Used condom


• Bottle cap


• Something unidentifiable but fuzzy


• Sweet-n-low packet

I know what you're thinking. Who would have seriously thought you could compost a bottle cap!? Sometimes you just shake your head and move on. (*wink*)

I had too much left over, and since the man has redrawn the no-compost-pile line, I put the remaining compost in rubermaid tubs in the basement. Do you think it will keep?