Garden Separation Anxiety

Why is it that when you know you're going to be away from your garden for any period of time you feel such separation anxiety. My greatest inclination right now is to fall to my knees, hold on to my boxes, and reassure them I'll come back. I want to whisper to my broccoli they'll be just fine for four days, kiss my half sprouted beans goodbye, love on the okra with thoughts of true leaves emerging while I'm gone, and encourage my cucumbers to climb with all their might so I'll be proud of them.

It's also at this point that I begin looking for a 12 step program to suit my needs.

Yes, I'm being neurotic, but it's all (okay, mostly) warranted. Things are at a precarious stage. Most plants are just emerging and my broccoli is almost ready to come off. I'd pull a head probably Saturday and I'm worried that two more days out there will start letting the head loosen. I just pulled a green caterpillar off of my broccoli that had built himself a cocoon. He was not in the least bit happy and made a run for it. I caught him, but you know his buddies will come looking for him soon.

But how exciting is it going to be to come back and see how things are going now that the temperatures are where they should be for this time of year. Imagine the mass upsurge of growth from things that have been next to stagnant unto this point...carrots, I'm talking about you. You can't continue to drain me of my space and give nothing in return. Where's your sense of responsibility. It's time you think about maturing...

It will be fun to see family, I'm going to a wedding in St. Louis. The man, the boy and the girl are staying home, and I'll truly miss them more than my garden. To keep them close to my heart, I'll most likely take pictures of them to show the rest of the family and delight in their oohs and ahhs at how much they've grown. And...I might just throw some pictures of my garden in the mix as well for good measure. I wouldn't want the little, fuzzy tomatoes to get jealous, you understand.

:)

The morning comes early.
Sweet gardening dreams.

Hold on t'yer butts!

One more dip to low temperatures tonight and we should be clear sailing through spring to summer. You can tell everything out there is really responding to the warmer temperatures. My beans in pots are starting to sprout and I think there are a few threatening to come up in the larger box during the next day or two. The okra is out of the ground (six squares and one pot), waiting for their first true leaves and the one over achieving broccoli head has doubled in size and is sending off side shoots that are as large as the main heads of the other plants. There are multiple, multiple flower clusters on my tom in the hanging pot. I'm really rather shocked at how many there are with it still being so cool and how many are already producing small tomatoes, but I'm afraid with its growth it's going to get root bound fairly quickly. I'm interested to see what impact the warm weather has on it and everything else in the garden. I think the eggplants will be thrilled. It's too early for me to have them out as it is, but they seem to be holding their own. I'm headed to a wedding this weekend in St. Louis (anyone know what the weather's like there?), and I'm a little bit nervous about leaving the garden without daily bug picking, but I bet it will look like a different place when I get back one way or the other!

I put in three more red peppers for a total of 5, two tam jalapenos (4 jalapenos total) and one more yellow pepper (total 3) for the man. I decided to put more pepper plants instead of the soybeans I was planning on. I may move the soybeans to pots or try to sow them once the bush beans are done if there's time. There are multiple flowers on the peppers out front, but none yet on the SSPeas. They've been in the pot since January, so I'm starting to wonder if they'll flower at all, but there's nothing else needing to go there, so they can have all of the time they want.

One zucchini and a squash were started inside today to replace the black radishes and broccoli when they're done. The boy also requested watermelon, so some sugar baby was started inside as well. I don't have room to trellis the cantaloupe or watermelon, and I know it's going to overrun the garden, but we'll see how it goes. I'll most likely remove the onions since they're not bulbing and many are inclined to send up flower stalks. Onions and I don't seem to get along. I couldn't grow them in the fall, either. It's a 2x3 box which is small, yes, but I'm hoping I can keep one watermelon plant contained there. If it spills to the other box with the cantaloupe it shouldn't be too bad. I'll need to evaluate the summer sun again and see if there's room for another trellised box in the back, but it's not looking likely.

The morning comes early. Y'all have a good evening.
Sweet gardening dreams.

The Corner Yard....LIVE!

Well I just sat down to load up a film of the garden I took this afternoon when I logged on to blogger and saw that EG had just posted one of his own! Go check his out if you haven't. He's got an awesome SWC set up that's amazing.

I went to a local landscape company this weekend with a girlfriend. They were amazing. I can really see the difference between you big-box stores and the local ones. They had a little Jack Russel out there running around and my boy squealed like a pig while enacting his evasive maneuvers. You'd have thought the boy had never seen a dog before. For goodness sake! We have a Great Dane! I honestly don't think he understands Gibson's a dog.

We got a lot of planting done this weekend. This is the time of year where old things come out and new things go in. I decided to go ahead and pull those peas. I'll have plenty of room for them in the fall since I don't expect my squash to make it past the squash bugs in June/July. I bought some marigold, geraniums and mint. I read somewhere that mint/catnip helps to repel squash bugs. We'll see. I decided to put the flowers in those unreachable center squares in the larger bed.

Zucchini went in the place of the peas, but it hasn't sprouted yet. I pulled the spinach on the other side of the bed and put in some cantaloupe which will most likely overrun the entire bed since I can't trellis it. It says one foot apart for planting, and I've planted 3 per 9 feet, so I'm hoping it will do okay. I'm planning on moving the onion bed shortly when the onions are done, but I think it will be sooner than later because the onions keep sending up flower stalks one after one and I hear they're pretty unusable after that point.

The tomatoes in the hanging pots are setting fruit and the cucumbers in the hanging pots are emerging from the soil.

So here's the film. No laughing, please. Or at least be kind enough to laugh behind my back. :) There's a brief shot of the neighbor's yard. The film doesn't do it justice, but the weeds are so tall my two yr old thought she was lost when she walked down the sidewalk yesterday.

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.