More gardening!

Did more work, got more pictures!

First off, I got pictures of the rest of what I planted for my grandmother.


That's her cherry tomato. I forget what variety it is off the top of my head. And in the pots are basil and parsley. They were supposed to end up on the front porch, but she hasn't wanted them out there yet... (Yes, I've reminded her/asked. She wants to leave them where they are for now.)

And on to the big project for today, planting the rest of my seedlings! (And doing a few other things.)



The Box #1! I'm trying square foot gardening in this and #2, but it's much more readily apparent here. The boxes are about 6'x3'. And in this box we have... (from left->right, front->back)

Basil (seeds just planted today), Anaheim pepper, okra x2 (seeds just planted today), Bell pepper, cilantro.
Jalepeno pepper, Anaheim pepper, okra x2, Bell pepper x2.
San Marzano tomato x3, Better Boy tomato, Early Girl tomato, Sweet 100 tomato.

I sunk the tomatoes and okra when I planted them (meaning, I deliberately planted them deeper than where the soil was in the previous container. Certain plants can grow roots off of what was the stem when you do this, which gives the plant a bigger and better root system). I dug down nearly to the bottom of the raised beds for the okra and most of the tomatoes! And also, I found some bone meal today, so I put a scoop of that in the hole for each tomato before I set it in. That should prevent them from getting Blossom End Rot when it comes time for them to fruit. As you might be able to tell, I'm using shredded newspaper for mulch. And I've only partially done the mulching... I'll put much around the rest of the plants in the box on Monday.

And as another note, I used one of those biodegradeable 4" pots for the seedlings. Like peat pots, but harvesting the fiber for the pots I got was supposed to be better for the environment than harvesting peat for peat pots. And the tomatoes were already sending their roots through the pots!

And, well, when I was starting the tomato seedlings, I started eight of them. Check, there's six in the box. Where'd the other two go?

Answer: here.

(Forgive the shadows, it was late in the day.)

These two clay pots were an AWESOME find for free. Every year my grandma's city has a "Clean Up Week", where residents put an unlimited amount of what they want to get rid of, no size restrictions, on Saturday and Sunday, and then Mon-Fri the city comes and hauls everything off. This is also a good time to troll around the streets looking for treasure in someone else's trash. That's what these were, though we had to pull plants out of them. We got a bunch of other planters, but these were the crown jewels of our haul. And now they're holding tomatoes.

The larger pot (here) has another Better Boy tomato in it. The smaller pot (here) has another Sweet 100. Aren't they purty?

I also put a sage and marjoram seedlings in the back corners of the bean box, but I didn't take a picture of them.

And just because I noticed the affect the light was having on the peas on the way inside... Here and here.

Gardening!

Okay, so sorry that I haven't posted lately. To make up for it, here's pictures of what my garden's doing. Okay, well my garden and my grandma's garden. I do most of the work with her food plants (the landscaping and lawns are on their own systems).

I'll be posting a lot of pictures, but not all of them. Here's the rest of the pics. The ones taken today have 5-28 at the beginning of them.

For the ones at my grandma's... Here are her beans. I forgot to get a picture of her tomato plant and herbs, but I can get those later.

Her bush beans:


The ones with the white flowers are Beananzas. The ones with the purple flowers are known as Purple Queens. She even has little beans already!






And her Speckled Butter Beans:


We're trying them this year because Grandma was wanting them again. These don't seem to be exactly what she remembers, but it's as close as I can find. And we've had a problem with snails eating them, sadly. :( I've done a second application of snail bait around them, so hopefully they'll have a chance to get a bit bigger before the little monsters come close again.

And now on to the stuff in my garden...

Box #1 is currently empty except for dirt. I've been hardening off the seedlings that go in there (tomatoes, peppers, okra, herbs), and I hope to get them planted this weekend.

Box #2:


This I'm calling my bean box. Obviously, I'm growing beans in it. I have some Speckled Butter Beans of my own to add to what my grandma's growing (the far right of the box, one I started indoors and transplanted and already with pods, and two more just sprouting out of the ground).


I also have four transplanted pinto beans, and I planted eight more pinto beans, and so far six of the eight have popped up. They look something like this:


I'm also doing a bunch of bush beans, Beananza and Purple Queen (same as grandma, so we only had to buy one packet of each). Out of them I only had one Beananza transplant, and I have planted six more beans of each, but so far only two of each have sprouted.


I've also planted radishes, carrots, and lettuce in that box. The radishes have popped up, but are in the shadows of the box picture. I've had a couple of the lettuces pop up, but no signs of life from most of them (I also have them behind the beans, so hopefully the climbing beans will protect them from the worst of the sun once summer gets going here). Also no sign of life from the carrots. I live in hope, though. I'll also be putting a couple herbs in the back corners of the box when I do the transplants this weekend.

And now onto Box #3:


The two newspapers with the holes ripped in the center are mulch for my zucchini plants. If you look closely, there's a seedling in each hole. One of them is a Ronde de Nice, the other is a Raven. The little sticks sticking up around it are where I've planted onions. Those haven't come up yet either. :(

I also have various containers growing... I don't have pictures of the strawberries or herbs yet, but I do have pictures of my peas. I did some peas in pots when I realized that the boxes weren't going to be done in time for me to plant the peas in those. I started all three pots at the same time, but then snails got the peas in the first two pots, so I had to start them again. You can tell the third pot because it's so much larger than the rest. The third even has some pea pods already!






I also have some memorial-type flowers going.

When my friend Emily got married last year, some of the favors at the reception were packets of wildflower seeds. Well, here's what one of those packets is doing:


And then early last year, both of my paternal grandparents passed away within months of each other. We managed to make it out for my grandmother's memorial service and interring both of them. With the cards we passed out at my grandma's memorial service was a little paper card with flower seeds embedded in it. I was the lucky one who kept it, and I planted it this year. So far, this is what it's doing:


It's actually not bad. The card that it came on said it would take about 4-6 weeks for it to sprout, and it's only been like 3.

And that's it for now! I'll keep updating the blog as things happen and the season moves forward!