I'm long overdue for a garden update. No major news in the past couple weeks. Things have grown a little - that's about it! I am super excited though, because Saturday is our official last frost date! This means I can plant my warm season crops -like green beans and sunflowers and cucumbers and squash! It's also the very earliest I can add my tomatillo and ground cherry seedlings into the garden, and buy/plant tomato and pepper seedlings (I have a few, but I'll need more). I may wait another week or so to do that though. Ideally overnight temps should be consistently in the 50s before planting tomato/pepper like veggies (tomatillos and ground cherries are in that category too). Looks like we're supposed to get down in the 30s and 40s Memorial Day weekend... so maybe the weekend after that?
Here's what's happening right now:
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| Garden as of today. Looking a little greener! |
New asparagus shoots are still coming up!
Garlic, Arugula and Lettuce. The little arugula/lettuce seedlings are getting bigger!
Grapes... the posts and chicken wire we use to hold them up are a little
white-trash- but soon the grapes will totally cover them and nobody
will be the wiser. Some day we'll get high class wood posts for these
guys.
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| Can you see all the grapes-to-be? |
My divided baby hostas (and remnants of Sam's chalk drawing behind them)
Baby pears!
And an update on my seedlings: Dudes, I'm so proud of how big some of these guys have gotten! No grow light required!
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| Tomatillos . A little leggy. I have four of these guys |
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| They're flowering! |
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| And a flowering ground cherry! |
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| Brandywine Tomato. |
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The above tomato plant looked like this when I repotted it on May 8th;
What a difference! Poor little guy needed to stretch his legs. Now I'm bummed that I threw out the rest of my tomato seedlings because they all looked so sickly. Dang.
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| Yum Yum Gold Pepper |
Ground cherry seedlings (below). The larger ones were planted 2-3 weeks before the smaller ones. It amazes me how fast everything takes off once you put them in larger containers. I totally learned my lesson about the importance of potting up plants as soon as they're ready.
I got the idea to use red Solo cups as pots on youtube. My theory is that the red cups act like the red plastic mulch recommended for tomatoes, and helps the plants grow larger faster. Tomatillos and Ground Cherries are in the tomato family - so I'm assuming they like red too. Next year I'll have to experiment and put a few seedlings in blue cups to see if there's any difference.
And finally Ninja, checking out the garden:
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| She seems unimpressed. Humph. |
Wow, looking good Heather! So what's the theory behind the cups? And it's cool to see your grapes. Scott mentioned maybe planting some next year. I should mosey down to our garden and take another peek. We got some rain last night. I really want to go buy some green bean plants. I think next year I might try growing my own plants from organic seeds.
ReplyDeleteThanks Deb! I'm not sure if they know - but red plastic sheeting put on the ground around tomato plants makes them grow bigger. You can buy it in gardening catalogs - and probably even at home depot. Crazy, eh?
ReplyDeleteLove me some green beans. :)