Saturday, May 22, 2010

Garden is mostly planted

Wow I've been a slacker! I need to get caught up on what's going on in the land of the garden. (talk about a slacker, I've had this post ready since may 22nd and never posted it! OOPS!)

May 10: herbs are moved from main backyard garden to flower/herb beds. They have been quite successful in their new locations. I lined the new beds with compost/garden soil mixture and took large root balls when transplanting. Happy with this transplant.

May 15, 16 & 17 the bulk of the seedlings were planted.
Sat May 15, warm day, mid 60's. Rained for 2 days before planting so ground was nice & moist. Planted beans, broccoli, brussles sprouts. 3 hours after planting it starts to rain. Then it starts to hail! So we ran outside and covered the plants with milk jugs with the bottoms cut out. The pole beans were covered with a tarp. Everything survived the hail storm.

Sun May 16, warm day, low 70's. Planted the tomatoes, butternut squash, spaghitti squash, zucchini (all squash in front yard along with 3 tomatoes, 1 of each varity), bell peppers, lettuces, cucumbers. Much like the night prior, it hailed 3 hours after getting everything into the ground. Back outside with milk jugs and tarp. Again, thankfully, everything survived the storm.

Tues May 18 planted herb garden in spotted pot. It contains parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and marjoram.

Left to plant still:
herbs, watermelon, canteloupe (all seedlings)
beets
pumpkins
lettuces
radish (maybe)
carrot (maybe)

Its been 1 week since the seedlings were transplanted. Some of them are doing better than others. However, some of the seedlings looked a LOT better than others did going into the ground. The tomatoes are looking really good, which delights me beyond belief. The broccoli and brussles sprouts weren't the strongest seedlings going into the ground. I don't know what went wrong with them. The didn't seem to thrive very well once they moved from the mini greenhouse to the beer cups. Possible reasons: too warm, too little water, not enough sun
again I'm not sure which of these is the reason behind their delay. They are looking pretty good now that they're in the ground. I want to say its a combo of all the above, these are colder weather veggies, after all.

The bell peppers are still covered with recycled plastic 1lb strawberry containers. I covered the 'lid' with a scoop of soil to anchor it. Its providing hail protection, cold protection and warms them up nicely.

I have 3 wall of water rings that I need to try on my tomatoes. People swear by them, the water holds in the day's heat which helps them grow better in our altitude. I need to get them out this weekend. I'll try a wall of water on 1 of each varity.

I need to
add compost to the front garden badly!
buy soil for the melon/pumpkin patch
adjust sprinklers in back garden and for melon patch
plant herbs
plant remaining seeds
take pictures
fertelize - check the liquid fert. I have to see if its organic, if not get organic
get a pitch fork to stir compost pile