Lots of progress on the gardening front this week. Today I worked on my favorite part of this house: the giant window boxes on the front of the house. I put in red and white petunias just like I did last year. Petunias are probably the most pedestrian plant you can get, but I love them -- they're hardy, they're cheap, they come in a zillion colors, and they're pretty. I picked them up today at ShopKo along with several pots for the front of the house. In those I plan to plant several different kinds of flowers -- nasturtiums, morning glories, poppies, and more.
In the vegetable garden I transplanted the broccoli and the onions. Both seem to be doing fine today. I also started the bush delicata squash seeds. The only seeds I have left to plant now -- and these will go in next weekend -- are the watermelons, cucumbers, summer squash, and corn.
And speaking of the cucumbers, I had started them earlier in the greenhouse downstairs along with the watermelons. After realizing I had the light too high and I was top watering them, the watermelons began to droop as if they had damped off. I figured that I'd started them all too early and should have just been patient enough to direct seed them since they only take 55 days to mature, so I removed the tray from the greenhouse and set it on the floor of the basement. I expected them to all be dead the next day, but while the watermelons had indeed all died, the cucumbers were actually [i]thriving[/i]. So this week I began hardening them off and I hope they'll transplant well.
Everything else I'd direct seeded in the garden has come up, which is basically the root and leafy vegetables: turnips, beets, carrots, radishes, lettuce, and spinach. However, the transplanted lettuce isn't thriving; the seeds I started the same day are overtaking them. Next year I can direct seed them.
That's it this week. Everything is doing better than I expected!
Hey, I like your style! What is my favorite part of the garden? I was just out kneeling in the dirt and lovingly threading the green bean seedlings onto a bamboo structure that we built just for this purpose. We saw it in one of those kid’s books about interesting things to build. It’s just held together by duct tape and wire and it’s a bit rickety by now (it served us well for four growing seasons) but it grows very fine beans that add a touch of authenticity to any meal. Do we have a vegetable to go with the medallions of veal, honey? Sure do, I’ll just run and pick them.
Vegetables are harder to grow, than flowers, IMO. Do you agree? Tomatoes are always attacked by aphids and the lettuce has leafminers. I know, I know, roses often get rust or black spot, but we just spray with a neem oil, baking soda solution and that seems to help. The only thing I found to get rid of aphids is Bug Away, made by the Advanced Nutrients company.
Do you know their website? They make really cool plant nutrients, a lot of organics, and other products to help grow robust veggies and prize winning flowers. I especially like Grandma Enggy’s Golden Honey Fulvic Acid, which accelerates plant growth, increases cell division, strengthens the roots, and promotes the uptake of nutrients. Just like magic, it works!
Do you have a favorite product to help you grow your garden? I thought about growing more vegetables, especially since my honey developed a liking for broccoli. He read a book by some hippie doctor saying that we should all eat broccoli once each day. But the kind you get at the supermarket looks so perfect, I’m afraid my attempts to grow them would fall short. What do you think?
I read somewhere that broccoli has to be put into a bucket of crushed ice as soon as it’s picked, otherwise it will wilt and lose its nourishing qualities. He’s gone on some kind of a health kick. He munches on celery sticks all the time, I suppose I could grow those. He also likes baby carrots, do you know anything about them? Do they grow that size? How do they peel them in such a uniform manner? They all seem to be the same size?
He also likes long English cucumbers, which are shrink wrapped as soon as they are picked and have very sensitive skin. I heard that you have to train them to grow onto string. Sounds like an awful lot of work, for something that you can pick up at the supermarket at a reasonable price. Do you grow long English cukes?
How did you get the nickname “hellchick,” anyway? I like Caryn as a name. Sorry you had trouble with damping off. It’s these damned diseases and pests that get to me. Did you know that there are thousands of different fungi that attack plants? Some of them are beneficial, but most of them you wouldn’t want to ingest on your vegetables.
Posted by: bella | May 26, 2006 11:39 PM