Back to the garden!!

WOOHOO!!!!

I am down to two jobs, I can finally breathe and SLEEP! I have been so sleep deprived lately that I had to go see my doctor to get sleeping pills just so I could sleep. Now that I am done teaching I will have more time for other things in my life, like my family! And my garden.

So a bit of what has been going on in my life lately. I finished teaching today and turned in my grades for the one class I taught this spring semester. I still work for Disney and Miami university. I am getting ready to shift over to my summer hours at the university. You would think I am looking forward to that but I am not. I have the most screwed up schedule I would rather work second shift all summer. I will be working Sunday through Thursday. Sunday I work from 1-8 which only counts for 6.5 hours, so I have to make those up over the rest of the week. I chose to do that on one day, Monday, rather than spread it out over the whole week. Monday I work from 10-8 and Tuesday through Thursday 11:30 - 8. so not a very fun schedule. I almost had to quit from Disney because of this crappy schedule. Thank goodness I have a great store manager at Disney and he worked it out so I can still work for him over the summer. Yay!

So now to the point of this blog, gardening!!!

Where to start?

The Greenhouse! My wife gave me an add in early March from the Tractor Supply Co. that had a small green house for sale for $40. I think she was kidding me at first, but me and my gardening addiction was like "hell yes". So I went out to TSC and picked one up! It took a few days for me to get time but I finally got it set up. The Night I got it set up I put my flat of seedlings in it, Broccoli, Eggplant, and Bell Peppers. All of which were doing well and close to needing an up potting. That night We had a storm BLOW through. I went out to the Greenhouse the next morning and it had tipped over, AHHHHHHH!!!!!!! My poor little babies. I think God was letting me know that it was time to up pot. So after crying over spilled  plants and setting back up the green house, I anchored it with about 10 bricks at the bottom. Whew! everything worked out... Until the next storm. The next storm blew over the green house and all my plants again! even though it was anchored! I was thinking that maybe this wasn't a great idea and that I had blown $40. My wife suggested using tent pegs to anchor the greenhouse down, what a great idea! why hadn't I thought of it, so I went to Home Depot and found pipe hangers for $.46 each and I bought 10 of them. When I got home I pushed them straight into the soft ground and voila I had an anchored greenhouse! Since that day I have not had a single problem. Of the original plants I still have 4 green peppers and 3 eggplants that survived the Big Falls of 2012 :P I have also started sugar baby watermelons and zucchini. I transplanted the zucchini out a couple of days ago and everything seems to be going all right so far. I have moved my tomatoes out to the greenhouse so that I could give my wife back her kitchen table. The tomatoes too are doing well in their new environment, I just want them to survive this hardening off, get put in the ground and produce!

I finally had time to plant/start some of my herb seeds in the green house a week or so ago. I was realizing that I need to take better notes on what and when i plant things whether it is in one of my boxes or in the green house. I have Opal Basil, Genovese Basil, and flat leaf parsley, so far no action. I also planted a a couple more of each cultivar of tomato. I was getting nervous about my tomatoes i had already planted, I may have started them too early and I didn't want there to be any problems. I am supposed to be growing some for one of my wife's coworkers. so I will probably end up with extra plants. This is a quick picture history of my tomatoes:

31 March 2012

31 March 2012

26 April 2012

2 May 2012

This is my garden's chronology:

Sunny

31 March 2012

1 April 2012

16 April 2012

26 April 2012

2 May 2012

Shady

31 March 2012

1 April 2012

16 April 2012

16 April 2012

2 May 2012

the Greenhouse

More planting

So as most of my garden plans do, mine have changed slightly. Just moved a few things around....added a new variety of carrot :D simple things.

I am finding that I am running out of space quick. I am trying to find the things I want to plant, garlic to name one, while struggling not to plant every thing I have seeds for :P

so far so goo on my Broccoli starts, I have one that is just starting to show it's first true leaves. still no action on the bell peppers or egg plant. I probably won't see any for a while since i don't have a seed mat (they are expensive) so I might just have to steal my daughters room heater and heat up the area around the seeds and see if I can tease them out. I do have a few coming up in my class room, May be I should start a few more there since they have this really kick ass grow light set up :D

So to day I planted 16 Parisienne Carrot, I got these as a free gift from the folks over at Rareseeds.com. I can't wait to pull one of these round things our of the ground.

the other day I came across some shallots that I had stored from last season failure of a try. So I though I would try again :D didn't cost me anything this year....I think no matter what that next year I will bite the bullet and drop the $20 for a pound of great shallot sets, the red kind B-).

Oh yeah, nearly forgot. I ordered more seeds on Sunday. I ordered a yellow variety for a co worker of my wife and a purple variety for my wife. She had a Cherokee purple last year and she said she liked it. I believe that both of of these are indeterminate varieties so i can expect tomatoes all summer long.

Next I am going to have to go out and buy some dirt and compost for my containers i am going to have. two of them will be a determinate paste style tomato and one will be for potatoes. I should then be set for the summer.

So this was so short but I am at work and have been interrupted several times.

Until next time, Happy Gardening!

Bring on the Peas!!!

So I got home last night and decided that it was high time to plant some peas! I had been considering it for a while and thought "what the hell, why not!" So when I got home I made some homemade pancakes for the family and got busy planting.

A few weeks ago my wife, whom I love dearly for enabling this addiction of mine, bought me two 40 cell seed starting kits, they came with it's own seed starting medium. Since I didn't have any Mel's Mix left from creating my newest box, Yardy (because it sits in my yard duh!), I was stuck using the provided seed starting mix.

This is my first attempt at starting seeds for my garden, I have read on the SFG forums MANY different ways to start seeds. some use soil plugs others use egg cartons. Most use Mel's Mix (see All New Square Foot Gardening to find out more about Mel's Mix) and some even use vermiculite. Then there is the transplanting that needs to happen. I was very intimidated to say the least. A little while back I started De Cicco Broccoli in those seed cells I mentioned earlier. I now have baby broccoli coming up in 10 of the 12 cells I planted. If this tells you my confidence level I also have broccoli starts sitting right next to my seedlings. Either I am going to have a bumper crop this year of broccoli or I am going to be very happy that I bought broccoli starts :P lets hope for the former and not the later.

And coming back to last night, sorry for the side track there. While eating my pancakes in the kitchen and staring at my mini grow light operation I realized that I needed to plant some other seeds. It just came over me that I had empty cells and seeds that needed planting, welcome to my life, I can be very ADHD sometimes. so I pulled out my seeds and thought about my plans that I had sort of drawn up and went to town. I planted some saved seeds from red and yellow bell peppers, unknown variety and some Black Beauty Eggplant I went ahead and filled the rest of the cells with seeds. I can't wait to see them start popping their little heads out of the soil. I then soaked my peas and gave them a dose of inoculant and planted 32 peas :D 

although not elegant looking here is what my garden plans are as of today:

Shady in the Spring

arugula, (16)	arugula, (16)	arugula, (16)	arugula, (16)
Parris Cos, (16)	Parris Cos, (16)	spinach, (9)	spinach, (9)
Red Romaine, (16)	sylvestra, (16)	Butterhead, (4)	Butterhead, (4)
Red Romaine, (16)	Red Romaine, (16)	Black Seeded Simpson, (16)	Black Seeded Simpson, (16)

Shady in the Summer

peas, (8)	peas, (8)	peas, (8)	peas, (8)
eggplants, (1)	eggplants, (1)	eggplants, (1)	eggplants, (1)
broccoli, (1)	broccoli, (1)	broccoli, (1)	broccoli, (1)
broccoli, (1)	broccoli, (1)	broccoli, (1)	broccoli, (1)

Sunny

Haricot Verts, (4)	Haricot Verts, (4)	Haricot Verts, (4)	Haricot Verts, (4)
peppers, (1)	peppers, (1)	peppers, (1)	peppers, (1)
Not Planted	Not Planted	Not Planted	Not Planted
Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, (2)	garlic, (4)	garlic, (4)	Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, (2)

Yardy

tomatoes, (1)	tomatoes, (1)	tomatoes, (1)	tomatoes, (1)
Opal Basil, (2)	Shallots, (4)	Shallots, (4)	Opal Basil, (2)
Red Onions, (9)	Red Onions, (9)	Yellow Onions, (9)	Yellow Onions, (9)
Nantes Carrots, (16)	Nantes Carrots, (16)	Hollow Crown Parsnips, (9)	Hollow Crown Parsnips, (9)

I will see if I can come up with a better way of displaying this information.

Some things of note in Shady. I have already told you that I basically carpet bombed it with leafy greens what I haven't mentioned, I don't think is that I am planting concurrent crops for the most part. I have planted peas in with the arugula, even before it has sprouted :P hope it works. I did read that you can plant these two together, arugula being nitrogen loving and peas being nitrogen fixing it seems a match made in heaven :D

Until next time, Happy Gardening!