Have I caught you up yet?

Last semester, I gave an assignment to my students to blog about their research papers as they wrote them. It was an exercise in organization, frustration management and group therapy. Whereas they did enjoy the process, as with everything that involves teenagers, they stated that I was hypocritical for loving blogs so much and yet not having one myself.

I do love blogs; I follow the ones I read religiously. Blogging can seem so overused especially if only for a limited purpose like, say, gardening. Again, please insert whiny teenager voice pointing out the hypocrisy here being that all I follow ARE gardening blogs AND what's worse, this thing here that I've started looks awfully like a blog to me. :)

I figure, hey, give it a shot. Besides, it's keeping me busy and away from grading those research essays! No one really has to see the blog except for me. Maybe in time I'll send the link to a few friends or family...most of whom would most likely laugh amusedly, pat me on the back, look sympathetic, sigh and move on.

Below this post, or rather you'll have to look to the side for the very first post, you'll find the goings on of the last year's transformation from container gardening to SFG. Most of these postings originated as posts of mine on GardenWeb's SFG forum. I tried to date then accordingly.

In today's world, the weather is really throwing us for a loop. After weeks of weather where the low was a measly 40 or above, we're having two days of below freezing temps. Last night it only seemed to get below freezing for an hour or two. Tonight is going to be worse.

I've moved all of the peppers, eggplant, SSPeas and other tomatoes and beans in containers either in the garage or basement. Hopefully they can all survive the two days without light. I was conned into planting tomatoes and peppers in the SFG by the man and the boy. It was far too early and we all knew it. I put plain straw over the peppers which seemed to work well last night. One of the green bell has a beautiful flower about to open, so it will make me sad to loose it if it doesn't work as well as tonight. For the tomatoes, which each had several flowers open yesterday morning, I decided on a different approach. I read somewhere that one man had put plastic grocery bags and then 5 gallon buckets over his toms and they survived low temps. I thought to add the bit of straw on the toms, the bag over the straw and the bucket over the bag over the straw. (sing:and the green grass grows all around, all around...) The sun is out now, even though the highs are only in the high 40's, so I'm hoping the buckets and straw are soaking in that heat and not cooking the plants underneath We'll see if it works.

I pulled two radishes to put in our dinner tonight. I actually pulled a third one, but you could see where the root maggots that decimated my peas had gotten into that radish as well. So far, the rest we've pulled have seemed fine. Hopefully it was an isolated incident.

Yesterday I took the truck and trailer to the landscape supplier and got myself a yard of what they called "plant mix" it was billed as a combination of compost, mushroom compost, humus and native soil "perfect for raised bed gardens". I unloaded the entire trailer last night and I must say, I wasn't too impressed. It was chunky and most of the clods were what seemed to be straight GA clay. I broke those up as much as I could as I was unloading it. The yard didn't quite fill up as much as I needed it to, so I sent the man today to go get me a yard of straight compost. We'll see what that looks like when we add it together. IF I can add it together. I need to empty the trailer tonight as the man needs it tomorrow, but I only have one dinky shovel and no wheelbarrow so it's one shovel load at a time.

That, and it's bleedin' cold out there with the wind whipping like it is. If you've got a frost warning like we do, good luck tonight!!!

March happenings

Monday, March 30

I must say I'm thrilled with the garden expansion this year. I went from containers in the summer to two 3x3 boxes in the fall to what you see here. I still haven't filled the largest box, but the other boxes seem to be doing very well.

The dog and I had a sit down and talked about the recent rash of tomato beheaddings. Through his dumbfounded expression, I gather he feels he's just a stone-cold killer at heart, but the tomato cages I've pulled out seem to scare him enough to keep him away for now.

I've proven that growing last year's lettuce wasn't a fluke. The lettuce this year looks great and when I was thinning the red radishes, I pulled up:

IT'S A REAL, REAL RADISH!!! I was excited.

Here are some more pics: Broccoli And finally, we had our first meal from the garden. I was just thrilled. I tried to frame my picture as nicely as Granny does, but for some reason, the leg lamp just doesn't scream elegance.

The dogs ain' gonna make it

When I went out to lay the grid on my beds this morning, I woke up to this:
Upon closer inspection, I saw this:
and this: I realized I had let the dogs out early this morning and they did their fair share of running around. I should have realized what they were doing when they wouldn't come inside to eat breakfast. This digging is not unusually and some of you may remember the China project they dug in the back yard large enough for my child to be unable to crawl out of on his own, but SNOT BALLS!!! I had left the door open for them to come inside. I raced back in with visions akin to the ones I have when I realize they've been let in after digging in the red clay. It's been raining here two to three times a week and I just knew the malamute to be filthy with his white furry paws and face because you know he didn't stop at digging, he most certainly had to eat some for good measure. I grabbed the can of spot shot, ready to follow their manure laced bread crumb trail, and couldn't find paw prints to lead me to the culprit. As the panic began to subside I found the mastermind well enough in the front room: See the mud on him? Neither did I, even though I know him to be the orchestrator. There wasn't even a residual speck on the carpets to clean. I don't know if I'm so mad at him for digging in my beds or if I'm more impressed with the mix's ability to shed water. We've all heard it and seen it to be so with our vegetables, but here, my friends, is the ultimate proof.

Trellis!

I put the trellis up today. It's not so much form as function, but I think it will hold up. I didn't know how much weight the top bar would hold, so I tool my 22 mo. old girl and hung her from it. She held on, but she's a bit of a runt weight wise, so I hung the boy from it as well for good measure. If it can stand up to them wiggling, I think the wind will be fine as well.

Expansion!

Last night, the man and I went ahead and built the new boxes for my Spring expansion. This morning I skinned them and put them outside. It was a lot of fun and I feel accomplished. Now I want to plant things!!! I've heard you can plant peas here in January, but we've still got many freezes left at that time and I'm not too sure on that.

Anyway, tell me, candidly of course, what you think. No, I know it won't get the optimal sun with the huge oak looming over the area, but it's what I've got. That, and I know some of the boxes will shade out others so I'm putting larger, taller plants in back. Better a garden than no garden at all, right?

Then, I've two more boxes to stack on top of the other two boxes already in use to make them taller for carrots/potatoes etc. Those will go on as soon as I get the heart to rip out the sad looking cabbage and brussles. The dill came out last week as it turned brown with the frost (sorry, Granny...it never bloomed). I don't think the cabbage/brussles will ever be at an edible stage, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something instead of wishing the days away.
SO! Long story short. The towered boxes will be about 16" in heighth and the new ones are 12". Yes, I know it's a lot deeper than necessary, but it makes me feel better. I went ahead and lay them now being that as you can see I only had weed block and not landscaper's fabric so it won't drain as it is. I need to kill off what's below and then make some larger holes in the weed block come February before I fill them. We're also expecting hard rains on Wednesday so I can see how they drain...or not.

Remember that tomato plant?

So, remember in those first pictures of the SFG I posted there was a tomato plant in the back of the first box. I went down there a few days after planting it and the whole stem was shorn off and there was slime everywhere.

Darn slug.

I tore it out and planted something else in its place.

I also had a husky red bush in the front walk. It was getting a bit brown, so I moved it to the back deck where it promplty thoroughly died. I cut it off at the base with the thought of dumping the soil later. Later never came and the plant sprouted anew. Amazing!

Three weeks ago, some rotten animal...slime included, cut off the tops of both stems fresh with flowers. I was incensed. I was outraged. What could it have been? Yes, there was slime, but this is a raised deck? Squirrel? Bird? Yes, maybe, but why didn't they bother the plant while it was out front?

I had given up. Forgotten about the whole thing, when this morning while I was drinking my coffee, watching sportscenter and praying Tebow would catch the flu today, I saw a shaddow moving over the tomato plant. I saw those giant masticating jaws lower themselves down on what was left of the fledgling tomato plant and chew...chew..chew, leaving a trail of slime as it went.

Blasted DOG!!!

It was my dog all along. That rotten slime drooling great dane, picking on something less than the size of his idiot head. Rotten dog. No wonder the plant survived in the front yard just fine.
The point of all this....I have four tomatoes planned to go in the back yard next year. I suppose I'll have to enclose the entire box in chicken wire, huh?

How do you plan your garden?

Computer, notebook paper, graph paper?

Grasping at straws here and looking for a better way to plan. I've got it mapped out on paper, but as you know, not everything is planted at the same time and some things you plant twice or more and some will stay on for what it seems is forever and still others you plant after some other things are done....I don't know if I need to color code with dates, draw a new map for every 3-4 weeks and color code new plantings/vs old or what!?

I suppose I'm driving myself crazy over nothing, but I really want to get a better way of organizing. The man had some of my garden drawing papers in his hand and asked if I needed them. At first, I was indignant. "Of course I needed them!" I fussed, "I made specific references on them which I had changed and put new notations which weren't working so I changed them again which worked perfectly until last week when I gave up on that paper to start a new one, so I guess no. I don't need it. Throw it out."

My memory is not the best. I can't rely on keeping up with planting dates and what will be planted where when what's done just by memory. I settled on this journal. I love the hard cover and spiral binding. The pages prompt you on what to write, but the other side is blank. I can then add my pictures into it like a scrap book AND keep all of my bits of paper tucked up inside. I ever made space in the back for planting notes on different vegetables and my harvest yield.