Photo update 6/25/14

It's almost the end of June.  My garden is doing pretty well.  I've harvested strawberries (about a quart), swiss chard, lettuce, Romaine lettuce, and Kale so far.  I've got tomatoes but they are still pretty green.  It's too early to harvest them yet.  My onions are getting big, and the beets in the Grow Box, although they look kinda bad, are getting bigger too.  I'm pretty happy with the rain gutter system so far.  If it goes well this year, I plan to expand next year with three or four more.

Time for a garden update

We just got back from a great family reunion in Marble, Colorado.  We were gone almost a week.  I asked my friend and neighbor Jack to check on the garden and water the global buckets a couple of times while we were gone, and they did just fine.

The above Grow Box has Romaine lettuce in it.  I think it's ready to be harvested and eaten.

My Kale is looking good too.    That's a basil plant in front of the kale.

This Grow Box has beets.  I haven't had a lot of luck with beets in the past, so this is looking pretty good.

 I'm pretty happy with my rain-gutter system too.  The tomatoes are growing like crazy and I've seen little green tomatoes on some of the plants.  The two peppers are growing too.

 One of my global bucket tomatoes.  It's beside my new composter.  This one seems to require more water than the other ones.  It was wilting when we got back from the reunion, but perked right up after watering.

Another global bucket tomato doing well.

And another.

 And, finally, the fourth.

This square has my new big variety strawberries in it.  There's also some volunteer lettuce, volunteer dill, and volunteer grass.  I didn't plant the grass.  I did plant the lettuce and dill last year.  There's some weeding to do in this square.

The day before we left for reunion I picked up a rhubarb plant at the Co-op.  It's looking good.

Above is my alpine strawberry patch.  I picked  a half quart of strawberries when we got back yesterday.

Corn and cabbage, growing strong.

You can't see everything in this square, but the huge plants are bee balm.  To the right of them is lemon balm, with chives in between.  On the left side are some red onions, and cucumbers in back near the trellis.

These are yellow onions.  I thought that this would be a cool planter but it's water intensive and has to be hand irrigated.  Next year I'm going to re-do it with sub-irrigation or remove it altogether.  Haven't decided yet.

My tomatoes this year

This one is called Better Bush.  It's a determinate tomato, meaning it doesn't vine out too much and stays in a bush like form.  I've never grown this tomato before so I'm interested in how it does.

This is my Champion.  I only have one.  I haven't grown it before either.  It's indeterminate, meaning it will grow big with vines.  Thus the cage.

Parks Whopper.  Another new one for me.  The fruit is supposed to be pretty big.  Indeterminate.

This one is Super Fantastic.  I hope it's super fantastic.  It's another variety I haven't tried before.  Also indeterminate.

Mountain Pride.  Another new one for me.  Seems like the seedlings available this year are a lot different from last year.  There are the regulars like Early Girl and Better Boy, but I didn't get any of them.  This one is determinate I think but not sure because it doesn't say.

This is my Solar Fire.  It's supposed to tolerate heat well, which is good here in the desert.

This is Yellow Pear.  I guess the fruit is yellow and looks like a pear.  Its one of the grape tomato varieties.  New for me.  This one is in a "global bucket."  It's a type of SIP (sub-irrigated planter).

Ah, last but not least (so far).  This is Lemon Boy.  I grew it last year in one of my grow boxes and liked it quite a bit.  It produced fairly well and has a good taste, plus it's kinda a novelty because of the yellow color.  This one's in a global bucket too.  All the rest are in my rain gutter garden.

There you have it.  Eight tomato plants and eight different varieties.  Somehow eight doesn't seem like enough, but may have to do.  I wanted to grow Juliet again this year, because it did well for me last year, but I haven't been able to find any seedlings.  Juliet is a grape tomato and it was one of my best producers last year.  It's great in salads and for snacking.  I'll keep my eyes open and if I see one I'll grab it.  I'll make another global bucket to put it in, I think.

Garden update

Today I got my rain gutter containers planted.  Hopefully we won't have any more freezes until late in the fall.

I have two snacking peppers, and six tomato plants.  The tomatoes are:  Better Bush, Champion, Parks Whopper, Super Fantastic, Mountain Pride, and Solar Fire.  There's one each of the tomatoes and two planters of peppers, for a total of 8 on the gutter.  There's room for nine, but I wanted to leave a little more room for the indeterminate tomatoes on the east end so I left one bucket off and spread three buckets out a little.  You can see the empty 9th bucket sitting forlornly on the ground at the end of the row.

Remember this picture?

It's my strawberry square (4x4 ft) after the winter ended a few weeks ago.  Below is how it looks now.

The strawberries are taking off!  In fact, a lot of my garden is doing pretty well.  I have had a horrible time with seeds, but most of the seedlings I bought in the store are thriving.  The exceptions are a couple of pepper plants that I planted in a bubble SIP.  I added some fertilizer to the mix and then planted them, then read the instructions on the fertilizer.  It called for 1/2 cup per 5 gallons of mix, and I added 1 1/2 cup.  They aren't looking too good right now.  I don't expect them to make it but maybe they'll pull through.

I have two more tomatoes planted, one each in last year's global buckets.  One bucket has a Yellow Pear and the other has a Lemon Boy.

I planted a dwarf Japanese Maple in a small container this week also.  If it does well it will grow to 6 ft tall and 8 ft wide.  When it starts getting big I will get a bigger container, but it says on the tag that it is slow growing.   I found a slideshow of someone's yard that had several Japanese Maple varieties growing and it looked beautiful.  I've wanted one ever since, so now I have one.  It says it likes direct sun and partial shade, so I might move it to a spot that gets some afternoon shade.

I've got more pictures but didn't want to make this post too long.  Besides, now I have fodder for more posts for a few days.

My first bubble SIP

It's still cool here.  It's in the 50s right now, although it's been warmer already, and last night was 28 degrees.  I still can't put out my tomatoes and peppers overnight.  I figure in a couple more weeks I can.  I did plant some red onions in one of the raised beds between the herbs and the cucumbers yesterday.

Now about the SIP.  It stands for Sub-Irrigated Planter.  A bubble SIP is a planter without any drain holes in it.  The plants get oxygen from a reservoir at the bottom of the planter.  To learn more about bubble SIPs and SIPs in general, go to Inside Urban Green to learn all about them.  I used a blue plastic  box for mine, and put two of my Cubanelle pepper plants in it.  I  can still bring it in at night if need be, and can move it around the garden (yard) as I see fit.  I grew Cubanelles last year and really liked them.  They look like Anaheim peppers except that they are sweet instead of hot.  They're great for salads.

I'm sold on sub-irrigation after last year.  My Grow boxes worked great.  My rain gutter system is set up and waiting for the plants.  Maybe next year I will convert the raised beds to sub-irrigation too.

Here's a photo of the bubble SIP that I made.  It has two reservoirs in it, made from lunch meat containers from Sam's Club.  I drilled a bunch of holes in them and used a couple of Sparkling Ice bottles to make the water spout.

My bubble SIP and the rest of the plants are inside right now because it's cool and windy outside.  I'm getting them used to the outdoor weather, but only a little at a time.

I got a little more done today

I spent part of the day working in the garden, such as it is.  I picked up some seedlings, 4 tomato and 4 pepper, but I can't plant them in the garden for a couple of weeks.  I could have waited before buying them but I couldn't help myself.

The last grow box is done.  It contains six Red Russian kale plants and two sweet basil plants.  That is if the seeds sprouts.  I tried to find kale seedlings but everybody I tried was sold out.  Basil was everywhere but I had seeds to use.

The first two buckets in my rain gutter garden are done.  They are planted with cabbage.  Seeds again.

These are the tomato and pepper plants I bought.  They will have to be brought in in the evenings for a couple of weeks, until the danger of freeze is gone.  My Grandma Haines always said that May 10 was the day that you could put plants in the ground.  Or in the raised beds and sub-irrigated planters in my case.

I've begun planting some things

I know it's still not to the date of the last frost, which my Grandmother used to say was May 10, but I'm getting started anyway.  Everything will probably freeze and die.  If it does, I will start over.

Today I planted two of my grow boxes.  I got my new nutrient patches in the mail yesterday, so I was itching to get started.

The box above is planted with beets.

 The second box has Romaine lettuce in it.
I have a third box but haven't decided what to plant in it yet.

 I planted cucumbers in the right side squares if this raised bed, next to the trellis netting.  I plan on growing the vines vertically up the netting.

The photo above shows my very first rain gutter grow system.  There's nothing in the buckets yet, but they will have tomatoes and peppers for sure, and maybe some kale if I don't put it in the grow box.  If I do, then I will probably place cabbage in a couple of the buckets.

Here's a photo of the float valve in the rain gutter.  I will hook the water up to the house water with a short garden hose and the buckets will have constant sub-irrigation.  I have a second float valve, and maybe will set up a second line of buckets.  The cost isn't too bad, but the potting mix is a little pricey.  It's like $14 to fill three buckets.  I guess that's not too bad.  Especially if I get lots of veggies.  My other idea is to use the "grow bags in the kiddie pool" method.  I kinda want to try it too.  Then I will use the second valve to set up the watering system in the little pool.

I cut two of my trees in half

I bought the two trees in the photo as flowering trees about three years ago.  They were just seedlings.  Last year, they were about twenty feet tall, and I noticed in the fall that there was fruit on both trees, but it was way up high where I couldn't get to it.  So, I figured that this year I would cut them down to about five feet and see what happens. If they're going to be fruit trees, then I want to be able to reach the fruit.  I think they are apples, unknown variety.  We shall see.