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.

Spring is fast approaching

I went out the other day and started cleaning up my raised beds for the upcoming spring planting.

Here's one of my beds after getting out all the old dead stuff.  It's waiting for more soil.

My chive square still has chives growing.  Since they survived the winter, more power to 'em.

My lemon balm is sprouting up again too.  Those herbs are tough!

This is a photo of my strawberry patch square.  Can you find it?  There are green strawberry leaves under all that mess.  I've since cleaned it up somewhat, but I'm worried that too much cleaning would damage the plants that are waking up.  There should be lots of strawberries.  I took out the swiss chard and kale that was growing in this bed, to allow for more strawberries to take over.  This whole 4 x 4 square will be strawberries.

The garden is about done for the year

Overall the garden was my best ever.  The square foot method worked quite well.  So did the SIPs (Sub Irrigated Planter)s.  I did learn some lessons though, that will make my garden better next year.  Some of those lessons follow:

1.  Next year I will plant some corn.

2.  Seedlings are way better than seeds, unless you can plant your seeds directly in the garden.  Even then, seedlings seemed to take hold and grow better for me.

3.  Tomatoes in planters are much more susceptible to blossom end rot than tomatoes in the square foot garden, even when the growing medium is the same.  That was my experience, anyway.  I had a grape tomato in a Grow Box and one in a raised bed.  Same variety.  The one in the Grow Box had real problems with BER, and the one in the raised bed had none.  Both produced a lot, but t he Grow Box tomato lost a lot of fruit.  Next year I will mix dolomite lime with the growing medium.

4.  Next year I plan to start my transition to a self-irrigating method of watering as much as I can.  Otherwise I have to get someone to water for me when I go out of town.

5.  Two tomatoes per grow box is almost too many.  They overgrew the staking system and got top heavy, and one of the Grow Boxes tipped over.

6.  I need to improve my staking system for my tomatoes, both in the raised beds and in the planters.  My tomatoes were spreading out all over the place.

7.  My carrots and onions did poorly.  They were a waste of time.

8.  Bugs took over as the summer progressed.  Next year I will treat my plants to keep them away.

9.  I have great herbs, and I seldom cook with them.

10.  Summer heat should be attenuated.  I didn't think it was hurting anything but some of my tomatoes got weird yellow blotches on them as they ripened.

11.  I need to allow more room for the tomatoes.

There are probably more lessons, but that's enough for now.  I got lots of veggies, gave a lot away and used a lot too.  I'm looking forward to next year.