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Clicking through one of our banner ads or some of our text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. The Old Guy's Garden Record Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - Another Gardening Season Begins
Along with planting, we'll begin mowing soon. That chore produces the grass clipping mulch we use to hold back weeds and retain soil moisture. The garlic we planted in October will be the first crop to be mulched, once one slow row of pokey garlics finish coming up. There should be asparagus to pick. Our tall peas seeded in March will need to be trellised just as soon as they begin to emerge from the soil. It's exciting to be starting another season of gardening.
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It only took a year, but I got around this morning to updating our feature story, Building a Raised Garden Bed, to include the raised bed I put in last April. I cleaned gutters yesterday, so I guess we're ready for the rain. More than the rain, though, the prediction of an overnight low of 34° F for Saturday morning has me considering bringing our hanging basket plants back inside for one more night. Our stuff under the cold frame should do just fine, even if the temperature drops a couple of degrees lower than what is predicted.
I did see that our early, tall peas were beginning to emerge yesterday. But at that point, they were no more than green dots on the soil surface. By this morning, they were up enough to catch in a photograph. We're supposed to have a dry, sunny day on Saturday. By then, the peas should be up enough that I can erect our double trellis around them to support their vine growth. With large, yellow-orange patches of thunderstorms showing just west of us on the WunderMap weather radar, I'm not going to get any outdoor gardening done today. I guess I could use a day off. Saturday, April 4, 2015 - Lunar Eclipse
Something, a thirsty cat, I think, woke me up early this morning. After filling the water bowl in the kitchen, I noticed the full moon out our west facing kitchen window and remembered a lunar eclipse was supposed to occur in a just a few minutes. So I fired up the coffee maker, got dressed, and grabbed my camera. My first images through the kitchen window weren't very good. Only when I got outside, switched to both manual focus and exposure, did I get one decent shot of the eclipse. And before long, the fun was over. The moon was dipping into the horizon in the west, only partially eclipsed, as the first hint of morning light appeared in the east. The full lunar eclipse wasn't visible from here in Indiana, but folks out west should get to see it. And what I saw was really a pretty cool way to start a day. Cool Morning
While I trusted the cold frame for our plants there, I really didn't trust our weather forecast for a low of 34° F. I brought all of our hanging basket plants inside for the night.
Such shortcuts allow me to get more things started at once in less space. But shortcuts usually have a price. For planting to communal pots, one eventually has to move the seedlings to larger growing quarters to produce good transplants. Several days of rain that already has our monthly precipitation total at 1.72 inches gave me time this week to get some flowers started in communal pots and lettuce seeded too heavily in fourpacks moved to individual cells of fourpacks. The dianthus started from some fairly old (2009) saved seed moved easily into fourpacks. I still have more of the lovely little flowers to move, but ran out of space under our plant lights for them, and also ran out of sterile potting mix. Such small plants are still subject to damping off fungus, thus the use of sterile transplanting medium. I'd been disappointed with the germination of some of our lettuce, but it turned out I'd made an error in germinating it. I'd put our lettuce in a tray with other seed starts over our soil heating mat that was set at 75° F. Predictably, several of the lettuce varieties simply didn't germinate. I pulled them from the tray and reseeded those varieties, but didn't put them back over the heat mat. Of course, both the old and newly added seed germinated in the cooler conditions, leaving me with ten to fifteen lettuce plants per fourpack cell! I had a lot of plants to thin, some getting moved to other fourpack cells. We now have lots of lettuce transplants. As plants mature and some recover from the shock of being moved from their communal pots to single pots, they will be moved to the cold frame to harden off. Our tomatoes, peppers, and some lettuce got moved this morning. That freed up more space under the plant lights for more transplanting from communal pots to fourpacks. I still have two pots of marigolds, two pots of impatiens, a pot each of snapdragons and gloriosa daisies, an egg carton of petunias, and the rest of the dianthus to transplant. With our yard still squishy from all the rain, we'll work on picking up sticks and limbs today. I've already picked up about twenty pounds of bones from the yard the dogs have drug in from the woods. Area hunters poaching deer in the off season frequently field dress their kill, leaving behind legs and such that our dogs drag into the yard. Once we get the sticks, limbs, and bones all out of the yard, we'll be ready to mow when things dry out enough. Sunday, April 5, 2015 - Happy Easter
Yesterday, I hung a new bird feeder from a pin oak tree in our back yard. I'd been thinking about getting a regular bird feeder for a while. Then web buddy Don Smith sent me a link to a review of the Droll Yankees CC18S 18-Inch Onyx Sunflower Tube Bird Feeder with Removable Base When it arrived, I wasn't disappointed. It was, as advertised and reviewed, solidly constructed and made to last. I hung it from the pin oak tree because I'll be able to see it there from my easy chair in the living room. The tree is a favorite roost for local cardinals. I moved all of our marigold starts from their communal pots to fourpacks yesterday. In addition, I got lucky and found a cheap packet of Shasta Daisy seed at Walmart and seeded it. We grew Gloriosa Daisies for the first time last year and really liked them. The white petaled Alaska Shasta Daisy
Our extended forecast a few days ago called for rain early today through Friday, but the frontal system moving in slowed a bit, giving us a day marginally dry enough to get started mowing our grass and raking grass clippings for the first time this season. About half of the clippings, those with the most leaves mixed in, went on our working compost pile. The other half got piled beside our main raised garden bed to be used later as mulch. Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - Your Annual Nag about UV Exposure Once or twice a year, I feel compelled to nag my readers to protect themselves from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. I'm acutely aware of the dangers of sun exposure, as I've had quite a few skin cancers removed over the years and regularly have to use a rather expensive fluorouracil cream product on potential cancers. Being fair skinned, having gotten many severe sunburns during my childhood, and then riding a tractor for eight years with a thin T-shirt on when I was farming, I'm probably experiencing just what I deserve. Beyond getting appropriate medical care, protecting oneself from UV radiation while still being able to do the outdoor things we love is a major concern. The CDC notes that the hours between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. (Daylight Saving Time) are the most hazardous for UV exposure outdoors, with UV rays being greatest during the late spring and early summer in North America. Heavy clouds do filter out some UV, but not as much as you'd think. So the trick for we senior gardeners prone to actinic keratoses and/or skin cancers is to find ways to garden without exposing ourselves to too much UV radiation. Keeping in mind the CDC recommendations and checking UV scales often posted on weather sites can guide one on when it is safest to work outside. But not all jobs can be done in the early or late hours of the day. For me, mowing is one of those jobs where I have to be out in the sun at peak UV hours.
When I get into serious gardening in warm weather, I generally wear a T-shirt with a sun protective shirt over it along with a hat. And since I've had cancers on and in my hands, I wear gloves almost all the time when working outside. At one time, Coolibar Here are some related links about UV radiation and protective clothing:
Chuckle
Petra actually is a working dog, as she's absolute death on moles. When we first moved to the Senior Garden 21 years ago, we had my last farm dog, Leslie, to hold down the moles. When Leslie died at 17 years of age, the moles rebounded into our yard and garden plots. With Petra, the moles are now held somewhat at bay. The trade-off, of course, is that one has lots of holes to fill in the yard left by Petra and her running mate, Daisy. But I'd rather fill holes in the yard than use many of the commercial mole control products available. It's a pretty good life for Petra, and for that matter, Annie and I. Hummingbird Feeder
When our first resident hummingbirds arrive, there's not too much pressure at the feeders. But after their first clutch of eggs hatch and the babies leave the nest, it takes three feeders to prevent total hummingbird mayhem from occurring as the birds fight for dominance at the feeders. Until last summer, we'd exclusively used Birdscapes 12-ounce Glass Hummingbird Feeders The feeder I hung today is a Perky-Pet 16 Ounce Hummingbird Feeder Like most folks who feed hummingbirds, we make our own nectar for them. We mix water and sugar at a 4:1 ratio to make the nectar, bringing it almost to a boil on the stove to completely dissolve the sugar. If you're wondering when hummingbirds might arrive in your area, I found a page that gives some approximate dates for the eastern half of the United States. They also have another page with good instructions for making your own nectar. Cold Frame With it misting to raining outside today, our cold frame is standing open. In about the only gardening I did today, a flat of flowers got moved to the cold frame this morning. While the cold frame looks to be full, there's actually a flat with dead sage plants and my failed experiment with germinating bulbils in it that can be moved elsewhere anytime.
With my camera still in hand after the mulching, I snapped a shot of our awakening asparagus. Mostly thin shoots are beginning to appear. We were able to mix some freshly picked asparagus with carrots and gourmet green beans this week with a meal. It shouldn't be long before we have all the asparagus we can eat.
This row of peas is made up of Champion of England and Maxigolt, both tall pea varieties that we really like. We'll later plant a row of Eclipse and Encore short peas when the ground is warm enough to germinate those varieties. And no, I didn't hit the saturation button in Photoshop for the image at right. The peas really are that green! Transplanting Broccoli and Cauliflower Today, I transplanted broccoli and cauliflower into one of our narrow raised beds I'd prepared for the crop last fall. After fall tilling and a bit of liming, the bed was covered with a heavy layer of grass clipping mulch for the winter. Rather than clear the decaying mulch, I simply moved the existing mulch where I was going to plant to areas where the mulch had thinned out over the winter. I strung my row marker strings for the two rows of brassicas about 18-19 inches apart, and similarly spaced plants in the row 18 inches apart. Each planting hole got a light sprinkle of 12-12-12 fertilizer and some lime worked deeply into the hole and the soil around it. Since we'd experienced clubroot with our Violet of Sicily cauliflower last year, those holes got a fairly heavy dose of ground limestone, as lime helps hold back that plant disease. I watered the planting holes with a half strength mixture of Quick Start
I use old coffee cups with the bottom cut out as cutworm collars for our brassicas. The open bottom of the cups allows downward root growth, while the cup lip, spaced an inch and a half above the soil level, prevents rootworms from feasting on our tender, young transplants. After a week to ten days, the plant stems will be tough enough to remove the cutworm collars which will allow more lateral root growth. Once I had all of the brassicas transplanted, I applied a fresh layer of mulch to hold back weeds and retain soil moisture. Today's planting included five each of Premium Crop and Goliath broccoli, three Violet of Sicily cauliflower, two Fremont cauliflower, and four Amazing cauliflower. Even though we haven't yet reached our frost free date for this area, I risked putting in a Maverick Red geranium at each corner of the bed. I give complete seed starting to harvest information about brassicas in our how-to article, Growing Great Broccoli and Cauliflower. Saturday, April 11, 2015 - Let's Try this Double Trellis Thing Again
One challenge we have as yet to solve is the winds that sweep across the open fields to the west of our main garden plots. There's not much one can do about the weather. And the winds have become much stronger and more frequent in the twenty-one years we've gardened here. Until we began anchoring our tomato cages with T-posts, strong winds regularly tipped over the cages, usually when they were heavily laden with fruit, and often partially uprooting the tomato plants. Onion plants not grown in protected areas get tipped over prematurely, cutting short their growing season. Moving our garden plots to a more protected area isn't an option available to us, as we live on a 1.3 acre lot. We do have a large garden plot in a somewhat protected field to the east of our house, but it's not our ground and it doesn't have good soil. And even it is affected by strong winds. Two years ago, a possible funnel cloud ripped a path through the cornfield across the road from us before tearing a large limb off our Granny Smith apple tree and reeking havoc in our East Garden. Our raised beds are located in just about the only good spot we have for a garden, so we have to live with the wind.
Strong winds many years have ripped the brittle pea vines from the trellis. The weight of the vines, foliage, and especially the nearly ripe peas causes the vines to bend, cutting off any water or nutrients to those parts of the plants. Last year, I tried something new, a double trellis to surround the pea vines and give them more support against the winds we experience here. Sadly, I got the trellises too close together, spacing them eight inches around the pea row. The vines growing on the outside of the trellis still got ripped off of it, bent, and rendered useless. But the idea showed promise, as the vines between the trellises stayed erect, producing a nice crop.
Over the last few years, we've grown Amish Snap, Champion of England, Extra Early Alaska (mostly a shorter pea vine), Maxigolt, Mr. Big, Sugar Snaps, Spanish Skyscraper, and Tall Telephone (Alderman) peas on our trellis. Other than the Tall Telephones, all of the varieties have produced good early peas for us. With our more limited gardening plans this year, I only seeded Champion of England and Maxigolt peas in March, as they are the two best producers for us in most years. Since we have to anchor our tomato cages with T-posts anyway, I began growing a caged tomato plant at either end of our pea trellis a few years ago. I just anchor the cage to the end T-post(s), which allows it to defy the strong winds, standing tall even when terribly top heavy with tomatoes. The ground under the tomato cages sits empty most years until the soil warms enough for tomatoes and most danger of frost is past. (Note: I have an extra plant of each variety transplanted, just in case.) Since our tall peas are an early season crop, we get double duty out of our trellis(es) by growing our vining strain of Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers on them after the peas are cleared. Such a succession has worked quite well for us over the years. In May, we'll be starting a row of the Eclipse and Encore pea varieties. Both produce very sweet peas on short vines that still benefit from a short trellis (3-4' high). Both are PVP protected varieties whose seed is no longer commercially available. So we grow our crops of them from saved seed we've produced, but we can't legally share the seed with anyone else. That's too bad, as the rather difficult to germinate Eclipse variety produces the sweetest peas I've ever tasted, with the related Encore variety not far behind. Gardening Tips
Today was also our first bottom watering day for our plants in hanging baskets. Up until today, I'd been giving them small surface drinks with a pitcher. But to totally soak the pots, I set them in a feed pan and the top of an old steam canner and allowed the soil to draw all the water it could. Our dogs seemed somewhat miffed that two of their previous four outdoor feed pans weren't available today, although I caught Daisy, our red beagle cross, drinking out of one of them. With about fourteen plants to water, it takes an afternoon to do them all. So the dogs won't get their extra feed pans back until tomorrow. Next Up We're sort of on hold on gardening for now, as our main raised garden bed is still entirely too wet to even rake the surface, much less transplant or direct seed into. But transplanting onions and lettuce and seeding carrots and spinach will probably be our next, major gardening effort. And I really need to spend the next two dry days mowing our yard and the field next to us. Sunday, April 12, 2015 - Almost a Disaster
Then I decided to grab our daily "splash shot" that tops this page (and appears at left as well today). Looking out over our garden from our sunroom window, I realized in horror that it was noon, and I hadn't yet opened our cold frame. Cold frames are designed to hold in heat, and their plastic covering even intensifies the heat of the sun on sunny days. Left closed or sealed, temperatures under a cold frame can quickly reach levels that will damage or kill the transplants under them. I'd made a similar mistake years ago and ended up killing some of our more tender, melon transplants. So I shocked our granddaughter as I ran (yes, grandpa was running) for the stairs, shot outside, and opened the cold frame. I was relieved to see that the transplants remaining under the cold frame showed no ill effects from the 104° F temperature it had reached. Whew!
We have a pretty good line of rain approaching this morning. I mowed grass yesterday, but didn't get it raked, as my lovely wife seduced me with an offer of eating out last night. So this morning, I got out early and swept the yard of the grass clippings put down yesterday. As I finished, a few drops of rain were visible on the hood of the mower. I wanted the grass clippings off the yard for several reasons. They were heavy enough in places to kill the underlying grass. But they also will make great mulch for our onions, carrots, and lettuce, once we get those crops in the ground. I also used a couple of loads of clippings to mulch around some trees. I also find it a good idea to have an unused pile of soft clippings by the garden and around our younger trees, so the dogs will lay on them instead of in mulched areas of the garden.
We're on our second lawn sweeper from Sears. We simply wore out the first one over ten years of use. This model, the Craftsman 44" High Speed Sweeper Attachment for Riding Mowers, seems to be holding up pretty well after several years of use. It's a model made by Agri-Fab, their Agri-Fab® 44 in. Lawn Sweeper Prices for the lawn sweepers jump around a good bit from day to day, although the models appear to be almost identical. When I checked today, Rural King had the model on sale for $280 (regular price, $300), while Sears was at $288, Amazon Asparagus
Like a lot of folks, our tulips are in bloom. They're a real treat for us to see, as the strong winds here often shatter the blooms pretty quickly. We also have lots of apple blossoms on two of our three apple trees. Our dwarf Stayman Winesap is just showing a very few blooms, as it's still pretty young. Noting that I'd put in the first of our onions and carrots a year ago tomorrow, I checked the area where our onions, carrots, spinach, and lettuce will go this year. It was still too wet to really work, but I was able to rake the surface, making the area look a little more planting ready. The raking also will slow down germinating weeds, a much easier method than hand pulling or hoeing them when they get bigger. East Garden After playing in the soil for a few minutes, I got down to the main job of the day. I did our first mowing of the field east of us, site of our large East Garden. It felt a little funny to just mow over what usually is an area being prepped for melons, potatoes, and sweet corn. With my hip replacement surgery now re-scheduled for next month, I just sailed across the alfalfa cover crop on the East Garden, just as I did the rest of the field.
Some readers may have noticed what appeared to be two dogs by our main raised bed in yesterday's splash shot. If so, it wasn't your eyes. Daisy and Jackson quickly located the grass clippings I'd dumped beside our garden and stretched out on them for a nap. These two dogs often lay on our compost piles. Given a fresh pile of warm grass clippings, they enjoy them, too, as a soft spot. They've also been known to occupy mulched areas in the garden, Daisy most recently flattening a few broccoli transplants (which survived). When I can, I leave them a nice pile of clippings, mainly to keep them out of our garden plots. It's another wet spring day in our Senior Garden. We started today with rain followed by fog. While the rain stopped early in the day, it remained cloudy all day. The good news was that it was warm, almost 70 degrees.
I used today to get some of our flower starts transplanted from the communal pots they were started in to fourpack inserts. This is a job I often get too busy to do on time and end up with rather large flower starts to transplant. Today I caught our dianthus, impatiens, snapdragons, gloriosa daisies, and petunias at just about the perfect stage to move them into fourpack cells. I still have a pot each of trailing impatiens and shasta daisies to transplant that are still too small to move. Saturday, April 18, 2015 - Sweet Corn Transplants
I seeded our sweet corn at around eleven o'clock last night. No, I wasn't outside fumbling in the dark. I worked in our kitchen seeding two trays with sweet corn. I've read with interest over the years about how some commercial sweet corn growers use transplants to get their sweet corn to market as early as possible. Sowing transplants has the advantages of avoiding poor seed germination in cool, spring soils, gives the corn a head start on weeds, and of course, brings the crop to market early, while prices are relatively high. While an attractive idea, our sweet corn plantings have been too large to use transplants until this year. Last year, I did experiment with a tray of transplants that I used to fill in gaps where our sweet corn seed didn't germinate. That worked out well, other than I didn't grow enough transplants to cover all the bare patches.
Another idea I've read about is pre-sprouting pea seed. We already have a lush looking crop of early peas growing, but our two short vine pea varieties require rather warm soil for good germination. The peas in question are the Eclipse supersweet pea and the related Encore variety. I have small samples of both varieties, but neither is commercially available anymore, nor from seed savers, as they are PVP protected varieties. Eclipse, and to a lesser extent, Encore, need warm soil to germinate. So pre-sprouting the seed indoors might be the best way to go with them. For the volume of peas I want in our row, transplants would be difficult, although I may try some just as a backup plan. The problem, of course, is if my efforts don't work, we'll have seriously reduced our stock of the Eclipse variety, which didn't do well for us last year. For most crops, I wouldn't go to such lengths to get a crop, but Eclipse peas really are super sweet. Encores are just a tad behind Eclipse in sweetness and are far easier to germinate.
I did use a paper plate under the coffee filters this time to keep the round pea seed from rolling around too much. I was surprised this morning when I checked the seed and found it rather dry. At first, I feared a leak in the ziplock bags I used. Then I realized that the paper plate had soaked up a lot of the moisture in the bags. So I added some water and returned the two bags of seed to the shelf where I'm keeping them.
The fun part of growing this crop is that our Eclipse and Encores will be growing on good soil for the first time in several years. As we tried growing seed crops of both varieties in recent years, we planted them in our East Garden where we could have thirty to forty foot rows of them. While we had some success doing that, peas are a crop that really need fertile soil. We lavished compost around the East Garden plantings, but still struggled to produce good crops of peas there. So I'm hopeful that returning our short peas to the fertile soil of our main raised bed will reproduce the good crops of the varieties we used to get from them there. Here are a couple of good entries about pre-sprouting peas:
Good Forecast I continue to anxiously watch our extended weather forecast for any sign of a late frost. The coldest night currently in the forecast is for 40° F. While we have a gorgeous day today, rain is predicted for Sunday and Monday. But it may be followed by a five to seven day window of warm, clear, dry weather when we can get a lot of planting done.
A second job took the rest of the afternoon and early evening. I direct seeded carrots and transplanted onions into our main raised garden bed. With our reduced garden space this year, I only seeded ten of the available fifteen feet to carrots, leaving room at the end of the bed to transplant some lettuce in a day or two. Our carrot culture was basically what I've described in How We Grow Our Carrots. I did omit overseeding the carrots with radish seed, something I sometimes do to help break the soil surface for the slow germinating carrots. Instead, I left a walking board over the seeded carrot rows to hold back weeds and retain soil moisture. Our ten foot double row of carrots seeded included Laguna, Mokum, Nelson, and Scarlet Nantes. With rain predicted for tonight and tomorrow, I only lightly watered in the carrot planting. After last year's onion trials, transplanting two, fifteen foot double rows on onions didn't seem like all that much. Our one flat of four rows of onion transplants provided just enough onions for this transplanting with a few left over. I spaced the onions 3-5" inches apart in the row with four inches between the rows. Varieties planted this year included Copra, Milestone, Yellow of Parma, Patterson, Walla Walla, Red Zeppelin, Red Creole, and Rosa di Milano. Once the onion plants were in, I watered them with a mixture of starter fertilizer and Serenade biofungicide. The Serenade is to help fend off black mold. Again, with rain on the way, I didn't overdo the watering. How We Grow Our Onions gives complete directions, from starting transplants to storage, on growing onions. I'm sorry not to give step-by-step directions here instead of links to how-to's and feature stories, but I was one tired senior gardener by the time I got done. It took a hearty supper of leftover lasagna, garlic cheese bread, with a huge side of homegrown asparagus plus a serious painkiller to get me to write this much. Burpee is offering free shipping Saturday through Monday, April 18-20, with code FS109 Sunday, April 19, 2015 - Showers of Blessings
We're experiencing the blessing of showers today at the Senior Garden. Having gotten our carrots seeded and our onions transplanted yesterday, the showers are indeed a blessing. The rain, so far, has been a pretty gentle one. I'd taken the precaution of partially closing our cold frame last night, in case there was heavy rain or even hail. But while steady, the rain hasn't been excessively heavy. Our Granny Smith apple tree is in full bloom now, although it pollinator trees, a dwarf Stayman Winesap and a volunteer apple tree, have been a little slower to bloom. I stood under the Granny Smith a few minutes yesterday and marveled at all the bees visiting it. I didn't see any bee traffic between it and the volunteer apple tree, its main pollinator, but I didn't look too long. Bees get a little grumpy in cloudy weather.
When I erected the double trellis for our tall peas earlier this month, I also installed our rain gauge. Rainfall can vary a good bit within just a few miles, so having our own rain gauge gives us fairly accurate measurements. During the winter months, we've relied the last few years on local weather sites, all within seven miles of us, for our precipitation data. Unfortunately, the Weather Company, parent company of The Weather Channel and The Weather Underground, announced last week that they will be discontinuing the classic version of the Weather Underground next month. The move has created a firestorm amongst their members and users, as the new site simply doesn't work right for individual stations that report to the Weather Underground. Last year, The Weather Channel without any warning discontinued their local garden forecast pages. I relied on them for accurate UV forecasts, among other things. It would seem that the bean counters have taken over the weather sites from the meteorologists. Quick Reminder: Burpee is offering free shipping through Monday, April 20, on all orders. If you need just an item or two but were holding off ordering because of high shipping charges, this could be your chance. Use code FS109 at checkout to get the free shipping. Monday, April 20, 2015 - Transplanting Lettuce
I managed to get my hands good and wet transplanting some lettuce into our main raised garden bed. I'd left about five feet of space at the end of a carrot row for lettuce. Spacing the lettuce pretty closely, I put in fourteen transplants. Since we're partial to romaines, that made up over half of the planting, including the Defender, Winter Density, and Red Romaine varieties. I also put in a couple each of the Boston butterhead, Skyphos, and the iceberg, Crispino. The transplanting shouldn't have been too tough, as I could work from outside the bed. But getting my hands wet as I watered the holes made them cold in the wind. I started to mulch in the lettuce, but cold hands and the wind playing with the mulch defeated me. It's supposed to be sunny and less windy tomorrow. Even with the chilly weather, it made me feel a bit like summer seeing the reds and greens of the lettuce now in our garden. Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - Windy
My daily check of our started sweet corn was productive this morning. Of the seventy-two cells I seeded, sixty-one have shoots up, about an 80% germination rate. Before I move the flats outside, I'll reseed the empty cells, although what is already up should be enough for the very small space in our main garden devoted to sweet corn. I did notice a little lacy mold growing around a couple of sprouts, so I watered the flat with a captan mixture. I also had to add a little captan to our pea seed we're pre-sprouting, as there was some mold starting there, too. Note that these seed flats are normally covered with clear humidomes to retain moisture. I do uncover them through the morning hours when the sun streams in through our bay windows, so that the plants don't cook under the domes. Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - Planting Peas
Since I'd fall tilled our main raised bed, I only needed to scuffle hoe the area to be planted to clear it of germinating weeds. After driving T-posts at either end of the row and stringing the row, I opened up an 8" wide furrow about an inch to an inch and a half deep with a flat bottomed shovel. Then I spread light layers of 12-12-12 fertilizer, lime, and granular pea inoculant and thoroughly incorporated them in the soil with my garden hoe. Doing so will give the pea roots some fairly loose soil to drive down into.
When done with the seeding, I mulched the aisle between our onions and the peas with grass clipping mulch, as well as finishing mulching the lettuce I transplanted yesterday. The mulched aisle may look a bit wide, and it is. I'm leaving a full forty-eight inches on either side of our pea row for easy access. The next row to be planted, our peppers and tomatoes, will also have forty-eight inch aisles. I'm not terribly pleased with my garden plan this year. Putting taller crops in the middle of our large, raised bed may shade crops to the north. That's another reason for the wide aisles. Also, someone other than me may be doing a lot of the picking, so I'm trying to make things as easy for them as possible. Frost Advisory
So I drug myself out of the easy chair, collected our Hotkaps Our early peas, brassicas, and garlic should be able to withstand a frost or light freeze, so they got no covering. I'd already closed our cold frame during the daytime to let it build up a little extra heat for the night. And our hanging basket plants should do okay, as they're under the edge of the porch and up pretty high. Despite all the insulating we've done, our old farmhouse still leaks a lot of heat.
So we're ready for the cold, down to around 28° F or so, as long as we got everything sealed up tight. Thursday, April 23, 2015 - Apple Trees in Bloom
One of the real visual treats of spring is seeing our apple trees (well, and trees all over) in full bloom. Our Granny Smith tree has more blooms on it than I've ever seen. The volunteer apple tree we rely on for pollination is now freely blooming as well. It got heavily pruned back the last two falls, as it had some sick limbs on it, so I'm thrilled to see it in bloom again. (And later, I'll love its small, red apples.) Most of the bees visiting the trees this morning when I took these photos were bumblebees, although I did see some honeybees on the Granny Smith tree a couple of days ago. Two new studies released in Nature suggest that insecticides containing neonicotinoids may do far greater damage to wild hives of bees and bumblebees than kept hives. All three of our apple trees are in close proximity to each other. While the tiny, dwarf Stayman Winesap only put on a couple of blooms this year, that's two more than last year. The Granny Smith, of course, is filled with blooms. And the volunteer apple tree shown in the background behind the Granny Smith at right, has lots of blooms once again. No Frost/Freeze - Whew!
Our frost protection will need to stay in place for one more night predicted to run around 36° F. After that, things look pretty good temperature wise, although we may have rain tomorrow and Saturday. While it was really important to get our cold frame opened this morning before the full sun was on it, the Hotkaps over some of our geraniums and tomato plants can stay in place today. Stuff under them doesn't seem to heat up in the sun like the cold frame does.
With no room under the frame for our two trays of sweet corn transplants, I moved them to a protected area of the back porch this morning to begin hardening off. I want to get these transplants in the ground just as soon as possible, as even the deep inserts they're planted in can cramp root growth. Also, the field next to our garden will be planted to field corn this year, so I want our sweet corn to pollinate well before the field corn tassels. Unless our forecast for tonight improves considerably, the trays of sweet corn will go back on the dining room table overnight.
We had a light frost last night, as overnight temperatures dipped to 34° F. Since we still had all of our tender plants covered, we suffered no damage. The cold frame's max-min thermometer recorded a low of 39° F, so I guess I got the frame sealed up a little better last night than the night before. We still have a couple of cool nights in our weather forecast, but not serious enough to delay the planting of tender plants. Of course, I'll be drying out and saving our Hotkaps and floating row cover today, just in case. I put in three bell pepper plants and four tomato plants this afternoon. The three Earliest Red Sweet pepper plants were still pretty small. The four Earlirouge tomato plants were about eight inches tall with rather sturdy stems. All of the plants were caged. The pepper plants got cut down and re-purposed tomato cages, while the tomato plants got five foot tall cages made of welded wire. The tomato cages are wired to T-posts, as they tend to topple over in the wind when top heavy with tomatoes. This is the first year in some time that we've grown some of our pepper and tomato varieties for seed saving in our main raised garden bed. Such plantings are usually made in our East Garden or outlying isolation plots which have only marginal soil for gardening. It will be interesting to see how these plants do in the rich soil of our raised bed. In planting, I sprinkled a little ground limestone in each tomato hole to fend off blossom end rot and watered the plants with very dilute starter solution with some Serenade biofungicide mixed in. The Serenade helps prevent diseases such as anthracnose and bacterial spot. And each transplant got a temporary cutworm collar made of the top of a wax paper coffee cup. After mulching today's planting, I was able to rototill the very end of our raised bed where our sweet corn transplants will go. Once the corn is in, we'll have our initial planting of our garden done for this year. Depending on how things go, we have succession crops planned for areas where the current crops will come out by mid-summer. Saturday, April 25, 2015 - Rain
Our lettuce transplanted into our main bed on Monday has really perked up with the rain. I'm hoping the showers will get our carrots and peas to germinate soon as well. The geraniums at the corners of the bed suffered a bit more than I thought from the recent frost. Some of their outer leaves are dying, although the plants should survive. The geraniums that were under Hotkaps seemed to fare better than those around the lettuce that had a floating row cover loosely thrown over them.
My gardening job jar is now down to just transplanting and mulching our sweet corn and hanging a trellis for our short peas (T-posts already in place). That gives me a good feeling. Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - Transplanting Sweet Corn
In addition to transplanting our sweet corn, we switched from growing all sh2 supersweets to a new, open pollinated, sugary enhanced (se) sweet corn variety, Who Gets Kissed? I seeded two flats of the sweet corn in deep (#606) inserts on April 17. The seed readily germinated in the warm conditions in our house, got moved outside to harden off a bit, and went into the garden today. To make things even more interesting, I planted the corn in a grid with a foot between rows and a foot between plants. I first read of growing corn that way in Crockett's Victory Garden. I'd tried the technique years ago, but found growing sweet corn in traditionally spaced rows easier. But with our space limitations this year. I decided to try the tight planting method again. It was that or no sweet corn. By keeping the grid lines straight, I can still reach in with a scuffle hoe between plants or rows to clean up any weeds that germinate before I mulch the corn.
I'm going to wait a few days for the corn to put on some growth before mulching the whole patch. I don't want the corn to disappear in the grass clipping mulch, as the first row practically did. I did, however, mulch the geraniums I put in at the corners of the bed. The geranium transplants were pretty dry as was the soil at the corners of the bed. A final step in the planting was to spread some Shot-Gun Repels-All Animal Repellent granules around the planting. We've already seen a brave rabbit enter our yard this spring. Thursday, April 30, 2015 - April Wrap-up
With the upcoming cutoff in much of my gardening activity, I hustled this month to get everything planted and mulched. Rather than abandon all of our garden plots this season, I worked to make our plantings less labor intensive while I rehab and my wife cares for the garden. That meant getting things started early, despite some really wet weather and late frosts. I've also done a lot of much heavier than normal mulching to help keep the garden soil moist and weed free while I'm off. Our fall planted garlic and the early peas we seeded in March are both looking great. Some of the crops we put in this month seem to be just biding their time until warmer weather arrives. Stuff like tomatoes and peppers like warm soil and don't put on much growth until they get it. At this point, our garden for this year includes garlic, peas (both tall, early ones and short, later ones), broccoli and cauliflower, onions, carrots and lettuce, tomatoes and bell peppers, and some sweet corn just transplanted a couple of days ago. Planned succession crops include cucumbers, green and kidney beans, kale, and sugar snap peas. All of the above mentioned crops should make for a nice gardening season. However, not using our East Garden and isolation plots will mean that a number of crops we normally grow will get left out this year. They include melons (watermelon, canteloupe, and honeydew), potatoes and sweet potatoes, spinach, beets, paprika peppers, herbs, pumpkins, butternut squash, yellow squash, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. Of course, if I rehab fast enough, we may sneak some spinach and who knows what all else into fall plantings.
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