Veggies and Varmints. ROI and Rotting. (A Real-Life Gardening/Composting Thread)

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by corbes

Haven't seen mini-greenhouses before but am intrigued and will look into further...

There are tons of them on Amazon in a ton of sizes. I simply picked the largest size that will fit in the one specific spot on my deck that is acceptable to She Who Must Be Obeyed. I'm not looking to use it to extend my growing season on the back end--just to start seeds early without having them inside on freezing nights. In the end it *might* even save me a little money because I'll be starting everything from seeds instead of buying seedlings/small plants. (And of course, if it turns out that some of my seed-started plants don't do well in March, I can still just buy stuff in late April/early May to supplement whatever didn't make it.)

There are larger ones that can be put directly in the garden if you're looking to protect a particular section. These things scale upward in size/cost quite granularly from around 30 bucks, all the way to a few thousand if you want to have a bona fide big ol' greenhouse on your land. And there are so many options that--at least for the size I went with--you can just filter on 4-star reviews or better and still have multiple options. (I started with around seven 4-star-plus options in the size range I wanted and narrowed it down from there.)



My situation is that there's a power outlet on the deck right by the "acceptable" spot, and I've read that simply putting a small space heater on the bottom shelf at a low temperature is quite effective as a fail-safe on nights where there's a really hard freeze. We did have a few 20-degree nights and some snow in March last year, and I already own what seems to be the perfect space heater for those situations. (Automatic turn-off if it gets tipped over, ability to blow air that's as cool as 70 degrees, etc.) Point being, it makes more sense for me to just have it on the back deck than to get a larger one.

[tzach]

I'll admit I was drawn to this thread from the nice choice of words in the title.

this is absolutely a great read and i'll keep following, ben. I wish I had a big garden + available time to plant organic veggies instead of buying them.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

SQUASH AND ZUCCHINI--Seeds. These were doing great early on, then suffered the great groundhog attack. They came back strong and produced a solid crop until squash bugs and squash vine borers destroyed them completely. I'm considering going non-organic with these next year by just using good ol' Sevin dust.

So, methinks I'm going to stick with organic for at least one more season. Upon further reading and discussion, I think I'm going to try a bit more companion planting along with a combination of Neem Oil and insecticidal soap to combat those nasty buggers.


I turned piles #2 and #3 completely yesterday. And by "turned completely," I mean that I actually moved them over a few feet, essentially creating new piles where what was on the bottom is now on top. I'll do the same for #1 this evening. #2 definitely is moving seriously toward being usable compost. I'd imagine that #1, especially near the middle, is going to be heavily decomposed.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by tzach

I'll admit I was drawn to this thread from the nice choice of words in the title.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I turned piles #2 and #3 completely yesterday {11/19}. And by "turned completely," I mean that I actually moved them over a few feet, essentially creating new piles where what was on the bottom is now on top. I'll do the same for #1 this evening. #2 definitely is moving seriously toward being usable compost. I'd imagine that #1, especially near the middle, is going to be heavily decomposed.

I assume that the cold weather is affecting the heat some. The temperature has been in the mid 30s or lower just about every night for the last week-ish. Pile #3 (the newer) is the hottest, coming in at 154 yesterday. Given how new it is and with a complete turn, I would have expected the low 160s. Not complaining, though. Pile #2 was at 147. Again, I would have guessed 5-8 degrees hotter than that for it. And as I'd guessed, pile #1 is fairly close to looking like just dirt, especially in the bottom/middle, and it has only managed to heat up to 128 since being turned on 11/20.


Because I moved those piles, I grabbed a few bags of leaves from around the 'hood and started a relatively small pile in the back corner where the original one began. That area is in shade from the storage shed and back fence, and can't be tilled because of cable/phone lines, so growing much of note there isn't really feasible. Instead, I expect it to be where I keep an ongoing pile throughout the growing season where I'll dig into the middle to use some if/when I need small amounts.


ACTUAL NEWS ABOUT PLANTING SOME STUFF!!!

I did some reading of the extension service's recommendations for planting in my area, and it turns out that I need to be planting my garlic....now. (Technically, I'm actually a week or two late.) Garlic is an excellent pest deterrent for the garden (both rodents and insects), and ideally I'd like to intersperse it near the plants that benefit from it. However, because I still need to till, my thinking is that I'll do two plantings:


1. FOR HARVEST--To harvest/use/eat actual cloves of garlic, it would appear that I need to get it in the ground ASAP, so I've ordered some California softneck garlic for planting, and it should be arriving today. I'm thinking I'll put it just outside the brick perimeter to help deter rodents from the entire area until time to harvest it in June/July.


2. FOR COMPANION PLANTING--Several organic gardening resources list garlic as THE #1 crop out there to help other crops. A significant portion of the stuff I intend to grow is listed here (and in other places) as benefiting from having garlic nearly, so once I cover with compost, till, and get stuff i the ground, I'll be interspersing a garlic clove or two near the appropriate plants. I don't expect to be able to harvest any of that garlic, but based on my reading, I liken this strategy to signing a 20/20 minsal mentor in FOF: you're not signing him for his production, but for how he helps the youngsters thrive.




I intend to get the first round of garlic planted today or tomorrow. The planting guide for my area suggests November 15th as the last date, but since I live on the far northwest of the area in question. I'm hoping I can get away with doing it 9-10 days too late.


EDIT: In case you're wondering why I waited late, it's simply because though the planting calendar had been on my radar for several weeks, only a few days ago when reading up on pest management for my squash plants did I fully realize how revered garlic is in that arena.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Dropbox - mulched_threepiles.jpg

Planted 24 garlic cloves today along the top side (closest to the camera,) just inside the mulched area near the bricks. I have four more bulbs left, and it looks like 12-15 cloves per bulb, so that should be enough to plant them all the way down the long side of the garden just inside the bricks over the next few days.

[Ben E Lou]

Ok, so this is kinda fun. When I was taking my trash out this morning, I noticed that the neighbors across the street had two pumpkins sitting on top of their trash can to be thrown out. I couldn't resist grabbing them.


1. Opened up two pumpkin-sized spaces in the newest compost pile.
2. Lifted each pumpkin overhead and SMASHED it into the ground in the space.
3. Scooped out the seeds.
4. Covered the pumpkin pulp and shell with the material from the pile. Now I've got lots of pumpkin matter in my compost.
5. This evening, I'll get with the girls and follow these instructions for saving the seeds to plant next year.

[Ben E Lou]

I've been doing some reading on growing raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Nearly every source says that raspberries and blackberries should be grown at least a few hundred feet from one another due to some air-borne diseases that they can give one another.



My yard is big, but not that big, so I have to pick one. Based on what I read about ability to grow them in my area and given the locations I have to work with, the choice seemed fairly easy: blackberries win, and they'll be grown in a location away from the main garden:


https://www.dropbox.com/s/wm5j1y1uhkjrb9f/blackberry_location.png?dl=0


The pic above was taken from the back corner of my yard a few minutes ago. I'm going to put a simple twine lattice up on the back side of the deck that you can see. The deck (not including the stairs) is 16 feet across, and it's 6 feet from the ground to the bottom of the deck. I'll let the blackberries climb the lattice in that area.


Blueberries thrive in soil even more acidic than the 5.8 pH I have outside of the garden area. 5.0 to 5.5 is listed as the ideal range for them, so I'm going to create a bed a few feet up the yard from the existing main garden bed for them. I'm thinking one row of five bushes.


COMPOST
I'm continuing to move the piles farther up the beds as I turn them so it won't be as much work to spread it all when the time comes. Pile 3 is almost at the top of the bed now. I haven't turned the other two in a week, but expect to do so this afternoon. Here's an update on the piles:

PILE #	BUILD DATE	LAST MATERIAL ADDED	LOCATION	LATEST TEMP	LATEST TURN	COMMENTS
1819-1	9/2/2018	10/29/2018	main bed, bottom	126	12/2	Looking like mostly dirt, but based on temp, clearly is still active.
1819-2	10/2/2018	10/29/2018	main bed, middle	133	11/26	Also mostly dirt-like, but with observable leaves in particular still breaking down
1819-3	11/5/2018	11/5/2018	main bed, top	145	11/26	When I started turning it this morning, there were pockets of dry leaves that appeared to have not decomposed at all, so I watered each layer as I turned it.
1819-4	11/24/2018	ongoing additions	back corner of yard	130	11/26	Hoping I won't need anything from this one until I'm planting the first fall crops in July-ish 2019. Assuming the temp is low because right now it's not big enough to get hot.

I also suspect that pile 3 is lacking enough nitrogen; when I built it, there simply wasn't as much grass available, and I haven't been able to use the van to get copious amounts of used coffee grounds lately because my wife has had it pretty much constantly filled with presents for foster kids. (Yeah, can't fuss at her about that...) The last of the foster kid Christmas events is this Thursday, so I hope to add more nitrogen next weekend.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

When I started turning it this morning, there were pockets of dry leaves that appeared to have not decomposed at all, so I watered each layer as I turned it.

Well I haven't addressed the potential nitrogen issue at all, but watering the layers seems to have helped. Temperature was up from 145 to 153. That said, I'm not nearly as concerned about the heat for that as I was for the others, as it contains zero clippings from my weed-infested yard. To the contrary, whatever grass clippings were in that pile were from grass in the neighborhood that was still growing enough to need to be cut in early November--the healthiest lawns around, in other words--typically those with few weeds.

[Ben E Lou]

BIG SNOWSTORM

We received over a foot of snow at my house over the weekend. The broccoli and strawberries have been completely covered in snow for over 72 hours, and I don't want to try to dig them out yet, for fear that I'd step on them while trying to locate them. I'm wondering if I should have put some sort of cover on them for identification. Oh well, I guess we'll find out how cold-tolerant they really are.




MAJOR EXPANSION--PREPARING NEW BEDS
We've eBefore the snow came in, I put the mower on the lowest setting and shaved off a large area to being prepping it for more planting next year. If all goes according to the new plan, the garden area will extend all the way from a little in front of the storage shed to being even with my back deck. If I've measured everything correctly, the length will be ~93 feet now.



The expansion will mainly do two things:
1. Allow for a good-sized (18x16) area that's dedicated to blueberries. It's looking like I'll do six large rabbiteyes and four dwarves, or perhaps just eight rabbiteyes and one dwarf. (I already bought the dwarf. Couldn't resist. The nursery I visited where I was planning on just going in there for advice had exactly one thriving dwarf blueberry plant left from last spring.) As mentioned earlier, blueberries grow best in soil that's even more acidic than what occurs naturally in my yard, so I'd prefer to have an area just for them. I sent soil samples from the soon-to-be blueberry bed to Raleigh on 12/4, and have ordered some organic soil acidifier in advance of getting the results, so I can apply it ASAP to have close to two months before I purchase and plant the blueberries in February. This area will be mulched with pine straw eventually.

2. Give space for a truly targeted pollinator/beneficial insect flower garden, and for me to have room to experiment with growing flowers from seed. Plus I figure beautifying the area will enhance SWMBO's willingness to sign off on all of this. I finished mulching this area with leaves in the dark on Saturday evening, and the snow came in Saturday night/Sunday morning, so I haven't gotten a picture nor do I have a good feel for how much bigger the area looks with



So with all that said, HERE is a link to the updated plan. (Too big to post a pic here, I would think.)


There are a few green areas not filled in. That's intentional. Some of the empty space will likely remain empty; some of it will be used for either extra planting of stuff that's struggling, or if I run across some seed or plant that looks interesting and I decide to stick it in the ground.



COMPOST UPDATE

The piles were cooling a bit anyway, probably due to not having been turned, but I'm pleased to report that the hottest one was still at 138 as of yesterday, despite being buried in snow. No complaints here, and the good news is that I'll have plenty of moisture around when I turn them again--probably starting today since I'm off work due to school being out and the temperature is slated to rise into the mid 40s with direct sun on the back yard. The heat of the piles has made them the first areas in my yard where you can see the soil. Pic coming in the next post. (Easier to post pics with Tapatalk, I've realized...)

[Ben E Lou]

[Ben E Lou]

So the melting snow allowed me to easily mark out the 2019 plan and take a pic:




Dropbox - big picture map.jpg

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Planted 24 garlic cloves today along the top side (closest to the camera,) just inside the mulched area near the bricks.

100% of these have sprouted. Woot!

[Ben E Lou]

Updates...

• The 60ish garlic plants I mentioned earlier are coming in like gangbusters now. It makes me hopeful that the work I did on composting and ph adjustment is paying off.
• Speaking of compost, I just used a little in each hole I dug for garlic and left the piles in tact back in November, but I've now spread the compost over the entire vegetable section. It probably averages 3-4 inches deep. Some of it is unfinished, but I'll let the earthworms deal with that the next couple of months for me.
• I've either purchased directly or ordered online all (I think) of the seeds I should need for this coming calendar year, and put the plan together for planting dates. If anyone cares to give it a gander, it's here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gseyfetw5i...dates.pdf?dl=1
• The first plant (Kale) is set to be started in the greenhouse next weekend. Woohoo!

[Ben E Lou]

Updates...

• All seeds have arrived in the mail or have been purchased locally, I think. I'll do an inventory soon to make sure.
• Planting the first batch of kale tomorrow, most likely.
• I tilled the entire vegetable area (roughly 700 sq ft) in a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon, and I'm glad I did. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I covered that area with leaves as a winter mulch. Well, the leaves were quite a bit more matted/stuck together than I'd realized. (Many were not shredded, but whole leaves.) With that, combined with the mostly-but-not-fully-finished compost on top of it, I think some mixing may well have been in order. I got that all mixed up well and the tiller did a fine job of breaking up the leaves into smaller pieces in preparation for...
• ...Yesterday, where I bought ~1500 European Night Crawlers from a local worm farm and put them all in the vegetable area. Per the suggestion of the worm farmer I dug six holes, spaced throughout the garden, where I buried kitchen scraps and put a concentration of worms in those--hoping for some breeding--and then spread the rest of them all over. I'm hoping they'll accelerate/complete the breakdown of the leaves and unfinished compost for me.
• I know I keep saying it, but I'm still utterly stunned at the progress of the garlic. I'll get another pic on tomorrow. (Rain all day today.)

[corbes]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I tilled the entire vegetable area (roughly 700 sq ft) in a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon . . .

Sounds perhaps like someone invented a reason to play with a new Christmas present?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by corbes

Sounds perhaps like someone invented a reason to play with a new Christmas present?

Hehehe. In fairness to me, there were legit reasons, too! I wanted to get worms in there to chew up the leaves and unfinished compost, but I wanted to do it *after* I'd tilled so I wouldn't kill a bunch of 'em. Therefore, since Christmas, I've been waiting to find a day when all of the following were true:

• It hadn't rained for 48 hours. (So that it wouldn't be too muddy to till.)
• It hadn't been below freezing for 48 hours. (Soil warm enough for worms.)
• It wasn't going to get below freezing for 48 hours afterward. (To give 'em plenty of time to go deep.)
• I had time for the 55-minute drive to the nearest warm farm to pick 'em up.

And of course, the sooner the better, so the worms would have time to do as much as possible before the first stuff goes in the ground in early February, and everything is rockin' and rollin' in April.

[Ben E Lou]

First germination! Tiny kale seedlings are starting to emerge in my mini greenhouse. A few pics:







The little space heater has been a surprising star. Even on nights that have gotten into the lower 20s, the greenhouse has remained in the 55 to 80° range all night long.

[Ben E Lou]

I have to comment again on the mini-greenhouse. Obviously, I thought it would be a good fit for my situation. Well, I must say that it has absolutely blown away even my somewhat-high expectations:

• It traps heat *far* better than I would have thought for something that small with an open bottom. My deck faces south with all-day sunlight, so on sunny days like today I'm able to turn the heater off once the sun comes up, and won't need to turn it back on until an hour or so after sunset. Right now, a good 2 1/2 hours after turning the heater off, it's 31 degrees outside (low was 19) and 71 degrees in the greenhouse. Today is the coldest day we've had since I've had it, and even so I won't be surprised if I need to open it up mid-day to cool it off a bit in there.
• Securing it from wind couldn't have been easier: my deck has little slits between the boards, and I was able to thread wiring that I use to secure tomatoes to their stakes through the deck and tie all four corners down that way. It's tied extremely solidly.
• Given how it traps heat, it'd be too hot on my back deck once it starts to warm up in the spring, but I have no real need to use it other than for Jan-Mar seed starting.
• When I targeted the greenhouse, I didn't know about 72-cell peat seed-starting kits. I've got one in there that's doing great, and two would fit on each shelf if need be. So theoretically, I could house over 500 seedlings in there even with the space heater if I went with the tiny cells.

[Ben E Lou]

Did a little thinning this morning. I have 15 kale seedlings now.



Also, I went to the county landfill and picked up about 1900 pounds of their compost and put it in the flower garden area over the weekend. It’s about 2 1/2 inches deep on average. I’ll till it into the soil when it comes time to throw the flower seed out there in April. The cardboard is down for weed prevention in the walkways in the vegetable garden as well. I need to decide what mulch I’m going to put over it.

[Young Drachma]

Missed this until now. Here for Farmer Ben.

[Ben E Lou]

Planted 12 broccoli (arcadia), 6 more kale (ragged jack this time), 6 cabbage (brunswick), and 12 spinach (bloomsdale longstanding) this evening in peat pellets on a heating mat in the mini-greenhouse. Best part: my two incredibly sweet and devastatingly cute helpers. ❤️❤️❤️ #DaddysGirls

[corbes]

Today in Vermont it is officially omg-cabin-fever-read-the-fedco-seed-catalog day! It happens every winter but you don't know when it will be until the day arrives.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by corbes

Today in Vermont it is officially omg-cabin-fever-read-the-fedco-seed-catalog day! It happens every winter but you don't know when it will be until the day arrives.

Good times! I bought several things from Fedco this year.

[Ben E Lou]

[Ben E Lou]

I haven't posted in a while, but that doesn't meant I haven't been busy. Here's a quick catch-up on the last couple of weeks.


THE GOOD

• Laid straw bales to cover the cardboard in the walking paths.
• The girls have planted carrot and lettuce seed in their gardens, and the younger transplanted three of the broccoli seedlings that she planted in peat pellets into her garden. (Lettuce is only in the older child's garden. She loves caesar salads so she asked to plant some romaine.)
• A few lettuce seedlings have emerged in the older child's garden.
• On 2/5, I planted lettuce, carrots, spinach, and onions in the ground in the main garden. No germination yet.
• 63 of my 72 viola planted in a jiffy tray have germinated and are doing well. We had a particularly warm spell right at germination time for them, so they sprouted outside on the back deck in full sunlight and seem quite acclimated to it. I've been leaving them in the sun all day most days, so i'd imagine they're hardened pretty well.
• In addition to the three broccoli transplants in the kiddie garden,I moved five to my garden on 2/11 and didn't cover them on the couple of nights we've had below freezing, and they appear to be thriving.
• We've got a week-ish of rain in the forecast nearly every day coming up, and the current extended forecast is calling for only one night between now and March 1st with temperatures below 35. I'm going to check what else might be ready for transplanting and move more cool-season seedlings to the main garden this morning once we have daylight.

THE BAD

• My germination percentages on cabbage, spinach, and one of my kale varieties has been poor. I'm thinking I didn't water them enough in their peat pellets. The violas were watered much more and did so much better. I did a huge planted yesterday (2 x 72-cell peat pellet trays) and watered to the same level that I did with the violas and covered. We'll see if that improves things.
• The spinach that did germinate got too hot in the greenhouse one day this week, it appears. I was stuck on a 3-hour call with a client watching the greenhouse temperature rise into the upper 80s on a day that was expected to be cloudy, but we ended up having direct sun. Nothing else seems to have been heavily impacted, but the spinach is still lying down on the soil after 2-3 days. (I guess the good news is that it's still green, so maybe it's still alive and could recover?)
• Keeping the germination media moist has been taking up too much of my time when using peat pots. So yesterday I put them in trays without holes and filled the bottoms with around a half inch of water. Here's hoping that'll reduce my watering needs.

THE UGLY

• The kale that was doing so well is now almost all dead from a bad move I made. We had a morning where it was around 20 degrees. Given that the kale had been outside in temperatures as low as 35, I thought I'd give it a little exposure to super-cold temps so I could feel comfortable putting it in the ground. Oops. Only 40 minutes in 20-degree weather killed nearly every one of them. I had 15 seedlings almost ready for transplant. Only three seem to have survived. They're in the main garden and seem to be recovering well. One looks like it's starting to thrive.

EXTENSION SERVICE CLASS TAKEN
I attended the "Totally Tomatoes" class offered here on Sunday. Extremely informative and helpful, especially with regard to specific varieties that thrive here. I'm picking up some Celebrity seeds ASAP.


CURRENT STATUS
The spreadsheet I'm using to track planting dates, germination, etc. has entries for "estimated germination begin" and "estimated germination end" based on the planting date and the "7-14 days" or whatever the specific plant says. I have a total of 275 plants--plus some that I didn't count numbers such as the carrot seed scattered in my garden--with estimated germination end days between 2/15 and 3/1. In other words, the next two weeks will either be a ton of fun or a massive disappointment!

[Ben E Lou]

It has been a while since I've posted, but that's not for lack of gardening activity. To the contrary, the issue has been that much of my free time has been taken up by doing actual gardening stuff. The highlights from the last month-ish. (Pics in the next post).

• The tomatoes have germinated and grown so well to date that I needed to thin many of the peat cells. I gave away 16-20 seedlings to friends/neighbors. I wish I could have given away more, but the rest were in cells so close together that I was afraid to try to pull hem apart. I'm now left with 32. (Yeah, too many!) I have 10 different varieties, so I chose the healthiest-looking one from each variety yesterday and moved those into large (4 and 5 inch) peat pots to eventually be placed in my garden. I intend to grow 3 chandlers, and then 1 each of the others, so I still need to pick out two more chandlers. Unless something goes badly with the ones in the peat pots, the ones remaining in the cells will be given away or maybe even sold.
• The sweet basil---from the 2018 seed packets I bought for 25 cents each--is also going gangbusters. I need a lot of it--some for my wife's herb garden, and some as companions in the main garden.
• Marigolds are looking strong as well.
• I'm out of space in my little greenhouse! For example, I have a 36-cell Jiffy tray with the large peat pellets in it housing 20 marigolds and 16 bell peppers. I'm doubting I can keep them in such small cells for another 2-3 weeks until our last frost. (Avg = 4/15.) If I get lucky, it's possible that it could be this coming Wednesday, though, more later. But if I need to keep them away from outside until mid-April, I hope the roots have enough room. The greenhouse has four shelves, each the size to hold two seed trays, but one slot on the bottom is taken by the space heater. One option, since it's not looking like we're going to get below 30ish outside, would be to remove the space heater and free up another space, but I'm leaning more toward just bringing the tomatoes inside at night, since they wouldn't like the non-heated greenhouse, which I'd think would fall to 40ish degrees on our colder nights.
• I think I over-watered my viola seedlings. Most of them are dead. I got some more and intend to start those soon, but again, no room in the greenhouse!
• Speaking of viola and other cool-season stuff planted early, much of it hasn't done all that well, and I strongly suspect that it's from a combination of over-watering and exposing them to too much cold too early. I assumed that since they were cool-season, I could just leave the seedlings outside as long as they didn't freeze. The good news is that it has been a learning experience, and the second round of planting the cool-season veggies went MUCH better. Prior to this season, I'd never done the seedlings/transplant thing, and had never planted anything before the last frost. What little gardening I'd done had been seeds or store-bought transplants put in the ground after the threat of frost was over. The struggles with the cool-season stuff taught me a lot, and I strongly suspect helped set me up for success with the tomatoes, marigolds, bell peppers, basil, and future-planted stuff.
• I bought this raised bed kit, and intend to use it primarily for strawberries. I tilled the ground under it, laid down cardboard boxes, wet them thoroughly, and filled it with a combination of cheap topsoil, miracle gro all-purpose, and Member's Mark potting soil.
• Not surprisingly, when you think about it, the cool-season stuff in my kids' gardens is outperforming the same stuff in the main one. The main area is a combination of crappy native soil, my homemade compost, and the amendments I added last year. Their raised beds are 100% store-bought good stuff--a combination of Miracle Gro all-purpose, Miracle Gro raised bed soil, black kow compost, and mushroom compost. And underneath that, I tilled and they put down newspaper, so I'm sure the worms have come out to play down there. The broccoli in my youngest's garden, for example, was transplanted to both places on the same day, from seedlings that had germinated on the same day. Hers is now close to 1.5 times the size of that in the main garden.

[Ben E Lou]

The main strawberry bed is now in place. There will be a few more in containers and in the kids’ gardens, but the majority are in this raised bed.

[britrock88]

But you got snow yesterday!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by britrock88

But you got snow yesterday!

Yes, we did!



Extremely minor and temporary accumulation, grass surfaces only, and only remained for maybe 90 minutes or so. I don't think it got below 35 degrees during the day yesterday, even though there was moderate snow falling for a few hours.



It did get down to around 29 or so in the NW suburbs of GSO last night, with a heavy frost. I covered the strawberries since they're young. It's over 60 right now, headed to near 70 today, and if the extended forecast is correct, we saw our last frost this morning.

[Critch]

I have exactly the same raised garden kit, mine is setup but unplanted as we had a gardening mix-up. We have gardeners and they turned up and sprayed weedkiller over the whole backyard, so waiting a few weeks before starting the raised garden.

Other than that, I got a "survival essentials" seed pack for Christmas, so I have 8 containers on my deck with zucchini, beets, egg plant, beans, brussel sprouts, parsnips, cucumber and peas all sprouting from seeds.

Current plan for the raised garden is to buy tomato plants (cheating, I know) for one side, and hopefully transplant a mix on the other side from my containers when i need to thin them out.

And with that, it's time for me to wander out to the garden and check on my leaf-babies.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Critch

I have exactly the same raised garden kit, mine is setup but unplanted as we had a gardening mix-up. We have gardeners and they turned up and sprayed weedkiller over the whole backyard, so waiting a few weeks before starting the raised garden.

Other than that, I got a "survival essentials" seed pack for Christmas, so I have 8 containers on my deck with zucchini, beets, egg plant, beans, brussel sprouts, parsnips, cucumber and peas all sprouting from seeds.

Current plan for the raised garden is to buy tomato plants (cheating, I know) for one side, and hopefully transplant a mix on the other side from my containers when i need to thin them out.

And with that, it's time for me to wander out to the garden and check on my leaf-babies.

Pics pls k thx when you get a chance!

As for me, I planted just about everything this weekend. I had to make a choice, as I'm going to be out of town for a week. I thought it better to have everything in the ground and risk frost rather than asking someone to bring stuff inside and/or manage the greenhouse all weekend. Early tomorrow morning seems to be our last reasonable chance of frost. The low is forecast to be around 40, but that's in the main part of town. Typically, 37-38 in town means light patchy frost out here. Fingers crossed! After tonight, it looks like frost chances are next to nil.

I did keep a few tomatoes, basil, and squash out of the garden in case I have to make some replacements, plenty of seeds are leftover (I mean, I planted seeds in the ground in late April last year, so starting over wouldn't be horrible for most stuff,) and I have several cloths to cover stuff up if I need to.

Anyway, here are pics of the current status:

[Izulde]

The raspberries/blackberries/blueberries 200 feet tip is really helpful. I've got an orange tree in container in my townhouse's courtyard, and was going to look into growing fruits and vegetables (also in containers, naturally). Looks like I'll also have to pick one of the three

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I had to make a choice, as I'm going to be out of town for a week. I thought it better to have everything in the ground and risk frost rather than asking someone to bring stuff inside and/or manage the greenhouse all weekend. Early tomorrow morning seems to be our last reasonable chance of frost. The low is forecast to be around 40, but that's in the main part of town. Typically, 37-38 in town means light patchy frost out here.

Given the amount of work it took (4:30pm to sunset Friday, basically sunrise to sunset Saturday, and 8ish hours total on Sunday,) I don't regret taking this particular weekend--when the wife and kids were out of town and I could therefore work uninterrupted and guilt-free--to do the heaviest lifting on the garden.

But crap.

Originally Posted by NWS

Issued: 4:38 PM Apr. 15, 2019 – National Weather Service

...ISOLATED POCKETS OF LIGHT FROST POSSIBLE OVERNIGHT ACROSS SECTIONS OF THE PIEDMONT AND NORTHERN COASTAL PLAIN OF CENTRAL NC... Winds will subside overnight, permitting temperatures to fall into the mid and upper 30s by early Tuesday. Locations sheltered by the wind will stand the best chance of seeing pockets of light frost. Due to the expected isolated nature of the light frost, a frost advisory is not needed at this time.

[Ben E Lou]

Heh. Fun with the forecast: frost Tuesday morning, could be over 80 on Wednesday.

[Ben E Lou]

So, at like 7:45pm, a friend offered me some huge row covers for free, so at around 9:30 last night, I was out there throwing these huge things over the fence and trellis poles. If I had known these suckers would be in the mix, I never would’ve worried for a moment!



(Pic taken a few minutes ago.)

[Ben E Lou]

We did have some patchy frost yesterday morning. And by "patchy," I mean that within my blueberry bed, some of the pine straw had frost on it, some of it didn't. Anyway, glad I had the covers out there. Taking a look this morning, 24 hours later, it looks like some of the uncovered basil took damage, but may survive. Everything else appears unfazed. Yay!

Forecast calls for a low of 45 on Saturday night. After that, looks like it's "late spring" type weather moving forward. Lows all of next week are looking to be in the mid to upper 50s, with some days over 80.

I haven't gotten all of the seeds in the ground that I wanted for some of the companion plants, and I'm now starting to think that I'll just wait until we return from vacation for some things. Doesn't look like we'll get frequent enough rain next week to keep seeds near the surface moist, though the total should be more than enough for the stuff that's already growing, so I won't need a neighbor to step in to do general watering. I'll probably go ahead and plant the sunflowers today, since they're an inch deep, but wait on the shallow-sow stuff.

[Critch]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Pics pls k thx when you get a chance!

As requested.

First up, I have 8 City Pickers Patio Garden Boxes on my deck. I've have them 5 or 6 years and have had good yields from them. Once the growing season is over, I clean them out and store them on the deck under a tarp for the winter and have only had one broken wheel over the years, so they're fairly hard wearing.

This year they're all planted from seeds, 6 of the 8 have sprouted. Only cucumbers and egg plant not through yet. This may be the last year for this setup, we're probably replacing the deck with something covered later this year:



Early leader are the beans, shooting up and probably going to need staking up soon. From previous years, my best yield will come from something I have no idea how to use, tomatillos one year, habanero peppers the next, jalapenos last year, so going by that record there's a good chance I'll have a monster parsnips harvest this year.



First try this year is brussel sprouts. I'm not even sure what brussel sprout plants look like, but they're going to need thinned out. Especially the little clump at the front where I dropped the seed packet when i was sowing them.



Down at ground level I have the raised garden, nothing planted but the plan here is 8 bought cherry/grape tomato plants round a basil plant on one half, and overflow from the deck when I need to do some thinning in the other half. So more brussel sprouts and hopefully cucumbers.



I have gardening fabric under it, I didnt want to use it as opinion seems divided but Aldi had it on sale. Cant say no to a bargain. Soil is all bagged Raised Garden soil from Home Depot. I'm also planning on putting a small mesh fence round it (Aldi again) just to keep the rabbits and groundhogs out, but that's stretching my diy skills to the max so far.

One early failure are my jalapeno plants. Last year I got over 100 jalapenos from two plants, so I looked into wintering jalapeno plants. I followed the expert advice, but I now have two dead twigs in pots with no sign of coming back. So they're bound for the trash.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Critch

Soil is all bagged Raised Garden soil

From watching my kids' gardens easily outperform mine so far (even with stuff planted from the same seed packet on the same day,) it's becoming more and more clear to me what a MASSIVE difference soil composition can make. Making more homemade compost!


Love your pics, Critch.

[Ben E Lou]

As for my garden, we returned from a week+ of vacation this past weekend. Observations...

• To our surprise, we were greeted with several fully ripe bright red strawberries.
• One of the tomato plants is about to bloom, as are many of the marigolds.
• The mulching and laying of cardboard I did seems to be paying off so far. I had less than 5 minutes of weed removal to do after having been away for a week!
• Several of my bean plants germinated during the week.
• The spinach and broccoli in the kids' gardens (where the top 6-8 inches or so of soil is 100% store-bought) is growing gangbusters--far better than that which is in the main garden.
• Nearly all of the seeds that I put in the ground before I left germinated. Only a small handful will need to be re-sown.
• I put up some anti-bird reflective ribbons, and perhaps they're working. None of the bright red strawberries that are showing had a single peck taken out of them, and this morning there were about six birds on the ground in the back--all on the other side of the yard from the garden.

Some current pics...







The squash and zucchini are starting to form, so I sprayed those plants with neem oil and surrounded the ground around them with Repels All. Keep away, groundhogs and squash bugs!!! (There are also white icicle radishes, nasturtiums, marigolds, and garlic planted nearby as companions.)

[Ben E Lou]

The garden experienced some rapid growth the last two weeks. It has been in the upper 70s/low 80s consistently, with lows in the upper 50s/low 60s, and a fair bit of rain. So far we’ve eaten spinach, strawberries, kale, and lettuce. All have been excellent. A few pics in the next post...

[Ben E Lou]

kale


lettuce


should be harvesting broccoli soon


Strawberries are filling the beds.


Squash and zucchini


So far, strawberries have seen our only peat/varmint issues: birds pecking them (though not these)


Bell peppers seem to be growing more slowly than pretty much everything else.



The big picture view.

[Ben E Lou]

The good and the bad from my morning garden inspection: spotted my first tomatoes, but also something ripped a drip irrigation line and destroyed one of my red bell pepper plants. I’m guessing it was a squirrel digging.

[Ben E Lou]

A few shots from yesterday and this morning...




The largest broccoli head is now bigger than my fist. Probably harvesting in the next day or two.




I think I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but the vegetable section of the garden is aligned to get maximum sunlight. This picture was taken at 7:30 AM today. The shadow line falls right on the walking path between the vegetables and the flower-only portion. Full sunlight covers the entire area by around 9am this time of year.





Flower-only section, taken this morning. Starting at the fence, the sections are sunflowers, a “bee feed” mix, a “butterfly/hummingbird” mix, calendula, and California poppies.





One of my four squash plants. Looks like I’ll be harvesting this soon.

[Ben E Lou]

Other notes...

• The temperature dropped to around 45 each of the last two nights. As of this morning, I hadn't seen any tomato blossoms having fallen off.
• In other weather info for here, the long-term forecast calls for today and tomorrow to feature spring-like weather (mid 70s hghs/mid 50s lows) but then HOT (highs 87-94, lows 65-71) for two solid weeks. That's midsummer type weather around here. I guess I need to go ahead and harvest the cool-season stuff?
• I recall that the basil really took off when the weather got hot last year, so looking forward to that.
• It does feel like all the work I did on composting is paying off. The plants pretty much all look quite healthy and I'm pleased with how they're growing.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

It does feel like all the work I did on composting is paying off. The plants pretty much all look quite healthy and I'm pleased with how they're growing.

it happens that I took a picture on this day last year. The difference is amazing.

Top: my squash plants on May 17, 2018.

Bottom: my squash plants on May 17, 2019.


Evidently I’ve learned a thing or two...

[Ben E Lou]

Biggest strawberry to date from her garden. She was, uh, a bit excited.

[Ben E Lou]

Found and killed this little jerk today. Didn’t see any eggs, but sprayed the base of all my squash/zucchini plants with neem oil nonetheless. These jackholes destroyed my squash and zucchini crops last year, and I’m determined not to let it happen again.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Ok, so this is kinda fun. When I was taking my trash out this morning, I noticed that the neighbors across the street had two pumpkins sitting on top of their trash can to be thrown out. I couldn't resist grabbing them.





1. Opened up two pumpkin-sized spaces in the newest compost pile.

2. Lifted each pumpkin overhead and SMASHED it into the ground in the space.

3. Scooped out the seeds.

4. Covered the pumpkin pulp and shell with the material from the pile. Now I've got lots of pumpkin matter in my compost.

5. This evening, I'll get with the girls and follow these instructions for saving the seeds to plant next year.

So this post was made on 11/26, sixth months ago today. As of today, this is happening on the back side of the compost pile. 😂😂😂

[Ben E Lou]

This morning’s harvest...