GardenDesk

GardenDesk has moved again

2011-01-20T07:00:00.003-05:00

I apologize to any of you who have followed me over the years because I know I have moved this blogs location several times - what a pain. I'm sorry.

Well, I have now moved back to just www.gardendesk.com and am using typepad again. I left this old blogger blog in place for now since my moving has caused some confusion. If you want to see the most current posts, click here. Also, you can find my current rss feed at feedburner.

If you are interested, I wrote a whole post detailing why I've mad these changes. You can see it here.

Once again, I am sorry for the inconvinience. I hope to see you over at the new GardenDesk!

Happy Gardening!

Benefit with vermicompost from your own wormery!

2010-06-16T22:13:00.007-04:00

As you may or may not know, I have a worm bin full of thousands of redworms that I keep in our dining room. The whole family enjoys feeding the worms our vegetable scraps and watching the babies hatch. My worm bin is the Gardens Alive Worm Factory.

I have written before about setting up the worm bin here and here. I have written about how to harvest the worm compost from the bin, but I have never really shown why vermicompost is so great.

Worm castings, or vermi-compost is the super compost - the best organic natural fertilizer possible for your plants. I have always read this and believed it, but this year I decided to put it to the test.

Remember the Pea bed that I prepared back in March? In that bed, I put two rows of chicken wire fence with two rows of peas on either side of each fence. Afther the peas got growing, they looked like this:

For my experiment I put freshly harvested worm compost as a top dressing on the two rows of peas on one fence and not on the other.

After a few weeks, the pea vines on the composted side grew so much bigger than the other side that they reached above the fence and fell over! They also yielded many more peas! The easiest way to show you the difference is by this split screen picture:

The left side had the vermicompost added. Look how much thicker the vine is than the one on the right. The right side did well too. I never would have known the power of the worms if I hadn't done this side-by-side test. The peas were fabulous, by the way.

On the same day I added the worm castings to the peas, I transplanted my last early tomato plant. I added a generous amount of the worm compost to it's hole as well.

It may be just a coincidence, but that is the plant that has been giving us our early ripe tomatoes so far! The other early tomato plants haven't ripened yet. Sounds fishy doesn't it? Or should I say wormy! I'm convinced that the vermi-compost made the difference. It makes me want to get another tray started on my Worm factory right away. Each finished tray makes quite a bit of compost.

I have a friend that has been asking me about worm composting and how to do it. That has made me realize that I never really written a comprehensive how-to compost with worms post. I am now in the process of doing that. It will be added to gardendesk.com as a page. Worm composting is one of many topics that I write about but don't really give good details to the beginner. I apologize for that and am working on making that better. That is why I started the GardenDesk page arm of this site. So far I do have a general composting page, a seed-starting page and a beneficial insect page. Soon I will add a worm composting page and several others.

For now all I can do for my friend is refer her to my worm composting thread and recommend some books like Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System and The Worm Book . Also, my Worm Factory came with a great little informational booklet that I am loaning to her. She has said that she may buy the same bin that I have which made me remember the Gardens Alive online $20 off coupon that they have. You can get that by clicking here:

I posted that primarily for her, but anyone can use it. It leads to the main Gardens Alive page and is good for any of their products. If you are looking for the Worm Factory, you then need to search for "Worm Composting System". I highly recommend worm composting and endorse the Gardens Alive Worm Factory.

Other than my friend reading this, I'd love to here others thoughts on worm bin composting. Do you have one? Have you made one yourself that you are happy with? Does the idea intrigue you or disgust you. One thing is sure, vermicompost IS nature's super-compost!

Keep Growing!

- Marc

Enjoying our Early Tomatoes and more!

2010-06-15T15:20:00.003-04:00

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted here. I have a bunch of reasons why and some strange stories to go along with them. For now though, I'm going to try to get back to blogging as if I never stopped because I have countless things to report.

This year's garden is the biggest and best we've ever had! Possibly one of the most exciting things to report is that we are now eating a few early tomatoes!

This was the first one we ate but actually the second one picked. It was harvested on June 6th. We missed our early tomato record by one day, unless you count the first ripe tomato picked. The first one, picked on June 3rd was a huge, record-sized beefsteak tomato that looked like this:

Does that count? It reminds me of when a pullet lays its first egg. The first one is always a tiny strange little egg. (Our chickens are doing great by the way.) I've never seen tomato plants operate in the same manner, but this one did! Side by side they look like mother and child.

Tomatoes aren't the only thing we have harvested during my sabbatical from blogging. We've gotten a generous amount of lettuce, spinach, sugar snap peas, broccoli, and have begun harvesting cucumbers and almost zucchini. Much more is planted and doing well. I will try to get caught up here and post regularly about it all. I have enough to write that I could post every day if I'm able to get my act together. For now however, I'm going to enjoy some fresh sliced tomatoes with my family.

How are your tomatoes doing? What about the rest of your garden?

Keep Growing!

-Marc

Planting Peas and Potatoes for Patty's Day!

2010-03-17T06:24:00.000-04:00

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Here in Kentucky, instead of wearing green we can plant it! Green Peas that is. Local farmers also say planting potatoes is fair game on St. Patrick's Day. I don't know if I agree with either because in many years it stays really cold until mid-April. This year however I am going to take a chance along side my neighbors. Of course I can never garden exactly like regular folks so I'm planting the potatoes in the greenhouse beds.

I may have overdone it a bit in buying 50 pounds of Kennebec Seed Potatoes, so I won't put all of them in the greenhouse. Later when I am no longer worried about frost, we plan to put the rest in the row-garden portion of the yard.

That is unusual for us because we primarily garden in raised beds which is where I planted the peas. The ground was still pretty wet last night which illustrates another reason why I love gardening in raised beds.

Last night I cleared out the bed closest to the greenhouse with a rake to make room for some peas. If I wanted to plant them in the regular ground as in a traditional row garden, it would have been way to wet to plant. I planted four rows of peas, each row on either side of a chicken wire fence.

Later I will add more support poles to the chicken wire pea fences. It was very important for me to put the supports up before I planted the peas so I would know where exactly to place the rows.

Also, I usually have a problem planting tomatoes and things that need support because I plan to add the support later, but sometimes I don't get around to it. After doing this with half of my tomatoes last year, I vowed to ALWAYS put the support up prior to planting. So here is my quick pea supports.

The other fun thing about preparing this pea bed was watching the chickens watch me. You can see the coop in the background on the right in the previous picture. I treated the chickens to an occasional worm as I turned over the soil. They were delighted!

Taking worms over to them gave my back a break every now and then. I'm not yet in gardening shape so even prepping one 4x12 raised bed wore me out. That's another reason why I like raised beds - you can work only a few beds at a time and still be very productive.

Later this week in the outdoor garden I hope to plant beds with broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and spinach. I think my pea bed is a pretty good start. I just hope they germinate well. Maybe by planting them on St. Patrick's Day I'll get the luck of the Irish!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Is Winter Really Over?

2010-03-08T18:49:00.004-05:00

I actually got hot outside today while I was pruning the apple trees. It was 62 degrees and the snow is just about melted! Could winter be over? I don't think I can believe that since we have had record amounts of snow this year.

Here in Kentucky we didn't get near the snowfall that the east cost got, but we did get 27" in February and more that a foot of it all at once. It was hard to keep it off of the greenhouse.

My daughters favorite thing about having a greenhouse this winter was that when we were playing in the snow, we could go in there to warm up. It was also a great place to keep the sleds!

The only thing we could do in the garden was go sledding.

That picture was taken during one of our smaller snowfalls. Most of the time the garden beds have looked like this:

There was a lot more snow than we are used to. Even playing in it got us much more tired than usual.

It was our first winter as chicken owners. I learned that chickens do not like snow!

During the last snow, about eight inches blew into their pen and the girls refused to leave the coop. When they would jump down into the snow, they would squawk and flap around like they were being attacked! I actually had to shovel out the snow, put new wood chips down, and bait them out with lettuce from the greenhouse.

They still spent most of their time inside, but at least now they would come out to eat and drink. That's also about the time they start laying more eggs again. Now that it has been warmer, there are some days that every hen lays. Soon I will be able to let them back out in their grazing pen.

There will be a lot going on in the garden pretty soon too. I do have some early tomatoes and lettuce started and have much to share with you.

Most of the winter I have been writing pages for my new gardendesk.com site (as opposed to this blog). Now I plan to turn my attention back to blogging, so stay tuned here.

In the meantime, check out one of my new pages. The ones I have done are Seed Starting, Beneficial Insects, Composting, Garden Bargains and Tomatoes! I hope to write more as well - Spring can be very busy and exciting.

So what do you think? Is Winter almost over?

A Welcome Sight!

2010-01-19T07:46:00.004-05:00

Seed and gardening supply companies are clairvoyant! They seem to know the exact moment when you become sick of winter and spring fever is beginning to set in.

Last week, my car got stuck in the snow at the end of our driveway. All I could do was put my boots on and walk up the hill to the house. Since the car was now parked closer to the mailbox than the house, I decided to get the mail first. Expecting mostly bills, I was pleasantly surprised to find with those bills some of my favorite garden catalogs!

The best catalog that I got was Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I wrote all about them and their catalog last year.

The other catalogs I got on the same day were Henry Fields, Totally Tomatoes, and Gurney's. Wow - Jackpot! I will put these with my other favorites and decide what new seeds plants and supplies to buy this year.

What a great cure for Spring Fever!

Greenhouse Growing Update

2009-12-01T12:58:00.000-05:00

You may remember that we built a new greenhouse last Fall.

It came in handy this spring as we used it to raise a lot of seedlings. The main reason I wanted a greenhouse however was to have the ability to grow salad crops all winter long like Eliot Coleman teaches in his new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook.

It doesn't have to be heated, but it does need raised growing beds inside to grow the crops in. I wasn't able to finish the raised beds when I built the rest of it last year, so I got them ready this September.

The plan was to grow many perfect little seedlings inside under my giant light stand. That didn't work out because we had a huge flood in our basement right about the time I should have been starting the seeds. Instead I was busy tearing up wet carpet and drywall.

The light stand was still in that picture, but eventually it was dismantled. It will be put back together in the garage. (I'll post more about that and about the basement renovation later.)

Anyway, instead of starting seeds inside and planting seedlings in the greenhouse, I direct seeded in the greenhouse growing beds.

I planted lettuce, spinach, oriental greens, radishes, carrots and beets. We have been able to eat the radishes and some of the lettuce so far. This is what the growing beds look like now:

As you can see, direct sowing caused my lettuce bed to have bare spots and many of the plants are too close together. We tried to thin them but they are still bunched together. Much of it is still growing well. I still want to try to fill the gaps with new plants. I'm new at this, so I don't know if that will work.

It is still above freezing during the days here, but soon I will have to add a 2nd layer of plastic over the beds with small hoops or cold frames. I know I can keep the veggies from freezing. I just don't know how much the growth will slow as the day lengths are getting so much shorter.

No matter how much or how little success we have this Fall/Winter, I am having fun giving it a try. And the fresh lettuce is tasting real good!

I hope it lasts all winter!

I want to build another chicken coop!

2009-11-07T12:47:00.001-05:00

Our chickens are now giving us a good amount of eggs. We only have five hens and are averaging four eggs per day.

Recently I posted an update on our chickens and the coop that we built for them. In that post, I told you that I love having chickens far more than I expected. We have never kept chickens before, so we started out small. Now I'm wishing that we had more but I only built a small coop. We could fit a few more birds in there, but the best option would be to build a 2nd coop. Last year I had trouble finding info on how to build a chicken coop so I made with without plans. It worked out pretty well, but I think I can build a coop faster with some good plans. Again, I've been searching for info on building an easy chicken coop, and I think I may have found it!

Its a ebook simply titled Building A Chicken Coop. It promises easy step-by-step printable plans for coops of all different sizes. It also covers things that are not as usual to find in chicken books such as what the cheapest and best materials to build with are. The first line of their promo sounds great: "Discover How To Easily Build An Attractive And Affordable Chicken Coop That Protects Your Chickens From Predators,Maintains Their Health And Delivers More Delicious Eggs". Wow, that covers all of the important stuff! I'm excited to check this out.

I can't wait to build something new for the chickens so we can get a bunch more in the spring. In the meantime, our five are enjoying the new grazing pen I made for them.

My current coop will have to do until I have time to read Building A Chicken Coop and decide which coop plan to follow.

If you want to see for yourself more about the book I'm talking about, you can Click Here!

Hopefully we will have a mild winter and I can get started building a new coop before spring. I'll let you know how it goes!

Pollan's Botany of Desire comes to TV and DVD!

2009-10-27T12:39:00.001-04:00

Many gardeners are familiar with author Michael Pollan, especially for his acclaimed books, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. But do you remember his book The Botany of Desire from 2001?

Well now The Botany of Desire has been made into a 2 hour television special to be aired tomorrow night, October 28th on PBS.

I was able to view an advance DVD copy of it, and I recommend that all gardening and food enthusiasts tune in. The premise of both the movie and the book are that we humans "think" we control plants and use them to satisfy our own desires, when actually the plants are controlling us. About the film, Michael Pollan says, "We don't give nearly enough credit to plants. They've been working on us, they've been using us, for their own purposes".

Pollan and producer/director Michael Schwarz takes us on a beautiful voyage around the world to get an up-close and personal look at the history of how four very important plants have crossed paths with mankind. They profile the Apple, the Tulip, Marijuana and the Potato.

Watching this riveting account of plants prompted me to get The Botany of Desire book as well. The movie does a good job of capturing the essence of Pollan's original work, but of course the book goes into even more detail. If you like the movie and haven't read the book, I urge to to pick up a copy.

What the film accomplishes that the book can't is visual in nature. The photography is beautiful and illustrates the growing processes well. It is also nice to see Pollan and other experts talking instead of just reading quotes. The film is broken up into four half hour segments, each concentrating on one of the four plants. It wouldn't surprise me to see it later aired as a mini series in half hour segments. There is no official word about that. As of now the only airing is slated for October 28th at 8:00 p.m. on PBS stations. After that, it is scheduled for DVD and Blu-ray release on November 3rd. Here is what the DVDs will look like:

The DVD is a great addition to your video library, but you have a golden opportunity to see it for free tomorrow night!

Watch the special and then come back here and let me know what you thought of it. Do you agree with me that it is visually beautiful, interesting and informative? Does Pollan make you think differently about your relationship with the plants in your garden? Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks - Marc

Update on our Chickens and the Coop

2009-10-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I have never posted about our adult chickens on Garden Desk! That's crazy because we absolutely love our chickens. I never knew how much fun they would be, and the eggs are delicious!

We did manage a post back in April about raising our chicks. We raised the chicks in our garage while we built our outside coop. We built the coop mostly out of wood that we already had from an old deck that I took apart a couple years ago. The coop construction took much longer than anticipated but they have been in it for three or four months now. here it is:

We were able to put it right in front of the garden and beside the greenhouse.

When we would read about keeping chickens, it seemed that many people let them roam around during the day. Around here experienced farmers were telling us to watch out for the many predators, some even during the day. We have to watch out for hawks, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, opossums, weasels, rats and the neighbor's dogs. Many people told us that we wouldn't be able to keep our chickens alive.

With this in mind, we tried to build a very secure coop. The building that they sleep in is in the very center, up on stilts with no outside walls. The small window openings have two layers of wire over them and we even put wire mesh down under the floor boards.

The rest of the coop is all under tin roofing with two kinds of wire around the perimeter. The wire is also buried in concrete at the bottom about 18 inches under ground! The door has a second latch about a foot off the ground so nothing can squeeze in.

If anything does manage to sneak in during the night, they shouldn't be able to get in the wood building. The chickens have a small door that they use during the day.

They go inside at dusk and then I lock their door.

Here they are coming into their building:

The other wall is hinged for us to get inside for cleaning. It also has the nest boxes built into it. When closed it also has a heavy duty latch. Here is what it looks like from the outside:

Here is the nestbox part of the inside:

The chickens' main feeder and water hang from the building under the nest boxes.

All summer we fed them plenty of fruits and vegetables, an occasional worm or grasshopper and grass that we pulled. Recently, I thought they should get to graze in the grass on their own. In order to keep them safe while grazing, I constructed this crude grazing pen:

I can lock them in if I want to clean out their coop, or I can connect the two units with portable chicken wire sides and top that roll out of the way when not in use. You can see what I mean from this angle:

The chickens love grazing in their new pen in the evenings. At nightfall, they go back inside to their roosts and I disconnect the pen and lock them safely in their coop.

The chicken coop and grazing pen are working out pretty well, especially since I built it without any real plans. The chickens have adapted well to it and are laying eggs almost daily now. As good as getting fresh organic eggs is, I think my favorite part about our chickens is that they are super friendly. They are more like pets than farm animals. They actually enjoy being held and get excited when they see us.

Raising chickens is great! As long as winter goes well, I hope to get more next spring. Of course then I'll have to build another chicken coop!

Thanks for reading!

Accidental Pumpkins?

2009-10-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

Look what we got from the garden - 2 very nice pumpkins.

Actually, they grew behind the garden and actually, we didn't even plant them. We didn't do so well managing our compost pile this summer. Instead of turning it, we just kept adding to it. A lot of plants grew out of the compost pile, including volunteer pumpkins!

I guess they came from last year's Jack-o-lantern. Pretty funny, but we'll take it. As a compost enthusiast, this is kind of embarrassing. I even used to teach seminars on how to compost and how to build various compost bins.

Harvesting these pumpkins last week made me get serious about building new compost bins this weekend. I now have two sets of double-sided pallet-made compost bins. I will clean up this mess and start new in the new bins. I will take pictures and post them soon. In the meantime we will enjoy our compost pumpkins!

Easy Potato Harvest!

2009-09-29T12:23:00.000-04:00

We grew a few different kinds of potatoes this year and in different ways. Recently we harvested our red potatoes which were grown in the most interesting way. This harvest was done with just my bare hands and I didn't even get very dirty! Here is one of the plants pulled up with the tubers underneath:

These were grown in a small cinder block raised bed. The growing medium was not dirt. It was a soil-less mix of peat moss, rice hulls and other organic material. Since this medium is so loose, you can harvest these potatoes by just reaching into to mix.

It is pretty hard to show you what I mean in words or pictures, so here's a first for GardenDesk - a video!

It really is that easy. My favorite thing about harvesting in this way is that it is easy to steal away new potatoes any time while they're growing. I didn't get a video of that earlier in the year, but below is a good simulation. Ignore that the plant has died back. This technique worked the same way while the plants were growing.

I just reached in every so often and took a new potato without harming the plant.

So if this mix is so great, why isn't my whole garden like this? First of all, it is a bit expensive. More importantly, The mix dries out quickly and is really hard to keep watered while the plants are growing.

I actually found this mix last year and thought maybe it would be good to have many beds like this. Before buying too much, I conducted a side-by-side test comparing this mix with my regular raised bed of garden soil, compost and peat. I grew one tomato plant, one pepper plant and four cucumber plants in each 4 foot square bed. Here were the results - this first picture is early in the season:

At harvest time, it looked like this:

My normal soil is on the left, the soil-less mix is on the right. Both sides yielded about the same amount of produce, but the new mix dried out too much. I think you can tell that the cucumber vines in the back were a bit smaller. So last year I was a bit disappointed with the new mix.

This year I began dismantling the cinder blocks but ended up keeping the new mix side of the bed. I planted the potatoes on a whim and now this mix has new value to me. I think I will reserve it for root crops from now on. Maybe I will move it into the greenhouse.

These reds are oh so delicious! For only 4 feet of growing, I can't complain with the amount we got, and harvesting as shown in the video is so easy. Forget the pitch fork! What fun.

Old Friends, Yellow Tomatoes and Salsa!

2009-09-28T12:19:00.000-04:00

My tomatoes didn't perform as well as I had hoped this year. We had plenty to eat fresh, but not enough to freeze or can any. There just weren't many tomatoes on each plant. I'll admit that I grew too many different heirloom varieties with too few plants of any one kind. There were never very many tomatoes of the same kind ripe at any given time.

Just as I thought we would not have any fresh garden salsa or spaghetti sauce this year, we ran into a dear old friend at the grocery. She only grew one kind of tomato and had a gazillion of them! She invited us over to pick some. Here is what we picked:

They were organically grown, and as you can see from the picture, they were yellow tomatoes. Could we still make salsa without red tomatoes? We were up to the challenge.

These friends are a generation older than me and were neighbors of mine growing up. More summer days as a boy were spent playing on their farm than at my own house, so it was great talking with them and catching up on how each other's families were doing. I think their gardens were the first I ever saw as a youngster. What used to be an acre or more of vegetables is now just a small plot, but they are still better gardeners with that tiny garden than I am with a larger one. Their 6 tomato plants produced far more than my 30 plants! That is a bit humbling for me, but I was so glad to get to see them (and glad to get the tomatoes!) We said our goodbyes and headed home to process the tomatoes!

It was getting late in the day already, so the whole family pitched in to make to work go faster. My daughters did a great job getting the skins off the tomatoes and cutting them up.

Renee and I mixed their bright yellow tomatoes in a large pot with the other salsa ingredients. It instantly smelled delicious. It didn't look quite as appetizing. The other ingredients changed the color to an orange-brown.

We canned 10 pints of this odd salsa as well as a few pints and a few quarts of yellow spaghetti sauce, which looked equally as strange.

The only thing that didn't look odd was one quart of plain tomatoes that we will use in chili.

That jar looked fairly pretty, but more resembled canned peaches than tomatoes. I wish we could have canned more of the plain tomatoes - now I'm sounding greedy.

It was quite a blessing to get these tomatoes in the first place, and to get to visit with the farmers who grew them.

By the way, although it looks odd, the salsa tastes great!

Fall in the Garden

2009-09-24T12:18:00.000-04:00

Now that it is officially Autumn in my garden, I have taken my Summer blinders off and noticed that it actually is beginning to look like Fall.

The trees in the background are just beginning to turn colors. Several of the beds are empty now after their residents have been harvested. The white row cover in the middle is protecting new fall cabbage from those awful cabbage moths that produce the even more awful cabbage worms that I struggled with last Fall. Several beds have been re-seeded with lettuce and spinach.

All that's left to harvest from the Summer's bounty is sweet potatoes and the last of the green beans, potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. Soon it will be time to turn our attention to the Fall/Winter crops in the greenhouse.

I guess I must admit, Fall is actually here.

Harvesting Vermicompost (Worm Castings)

2009-09-21T12:13:00.000-04:00

Back in March, we began raising red worms in our kitchen with our new worm factory.

By April they were already having many little worm babies. We kept feeding them all summer and adding trays for them to expand into. We started with 1000 worms and by now I estimate that we have over 5000! They are hard to take pictures of because they don't like the light, but here is my best shot:

The best thing about raising worms inside is that they give you an easy way to recycle your kitchen vegetable scraps. They break down the veggies and create the best plant fertilizer on Earth - vermicompost!

Once again, this is not an easy thing to photograph. Here is a closer look at a smaller amount:

They look like coffee grounds but have no oder at all. I was able to get quite a bit of these plant nutritious worm castings from the bottom tray which I will add to our new greenhouse growing beds.

After harvesting this compost, I created a new bedding environment for the worms to move into just like I detailed at the bottom of this previous post.

We really like having these worms. Have you ever raised worms or considered it? I recommend keeping worms to any avid gardener!

Oh Deer!

2009-09-20T12:10:00.001-04:00

Twice now we have looked out the window and were surprised to see three young deer in our backyard. They eat a little from the tomatoes, a few leaves from the apple trees, and then just walk around aimlessly.

This one is looking at the tomatoes.

This one is leaving the apple tree.

I wonder if they lost their mother who should still be guiding them. You can still see their spots and they seem lost.

The funniest thing about their tour of the yard is that both times they have been very curious about the chickens. They stare at the coop and the chickens inside with puzzled looks.

They don't seem to be afraid of anything except when the chickens flap their wings. Both times the deer walked around a bit and then disappeared into the woods. They don't seem to be eating much from the garden.

I just hope they don't come back in the spring and eat everything! They are magnificent animals. For now we are content to just watch them when they come. Next spring will be another story!

Still picking green beans

2009-09-19T12:06:00.000-04:00

With Fall almost here, there is not as much to harvest in the garden right now. But if you walk up the path between the chicken coop and the greenhouse, the first bed you come to is the green beans.

This bed gave us lettuce in early spring and then early potatoes in summer. The third planting was green beans, and now they are ready!

My wife and I picked a heaping bowl full of them. She also picked some late tomatoes. I only found one ripe tomato from my topsy turvy. When I carried it in with the beans, it looked like a green bean sundae!

With this heaping bowl of beans, we froze 5 quarts and made 5 pints of Dilly Beans. We have never tried pickled green beans before, so we only made a small batch.

If we like them enough, we will make a lot more next summer.

Since green beans are probably the easiest thing to grow in the garden, I don't know why I don't plant more. Next year!

Update on my Upside-Down Tomatoes

2009-08-18T12:04:00.000-04:00

At last we have been harvesting delicious tomatoes from both of our upside down tomato planters. The Topsy Turvy Planter is still doing the best.

As the tomatoes ripen, the plant is looking worse. Some of the leaves are yellowing or turning brown. I don't know if this is due to uneven watering or a nutrient deficiency in the soil. For the soil in both planters, I used about half organic potting soil and half coir (coconut fiber). I saw how the coir worked so well retaining water for the worm bin that I thought it would do well in the planters. The only problem is that I don't know if that is cutting down on the nutrition going to the plant.

To remedy this next year, I plan to add Tomatoes Alive organic fertilizer to the planters. Tomatoes Alive has been successful for me in the past but what will make it even better for the topsy turvy is that Gardens Alive is giving away a pound of tomatoes alive plus when you buy a Topsy Turvy II from them.

I don't know if Topsy Turvy II is any different from my Topsy Turvy, but I want to buy at least one more of them for next year, so I might as well get it with the Tomatoes Alive from Gardens Alive.

If I use their internet coupon -$20 Off $40 purchase, I can get three for the price of two! Or maybe I'll just get two and buy something else small to qualify for the $20 off. I love everything they have. If you have never browsed the Gardens Alive!site, I strongly encourage you to. They have a lot for the organic garden. Back to this year - The tomatoes are looking good from our hanging planters.

The overall plant doesn't look as good as it does on the Topsy Turvy advertisement, but does anything ever look as good as the ad? I think next year I will prune of the lower branch side shoots (which are actually higher since it is upside down). This would help the overall upside-down tomato appearance.

In conclusion, When I wrote my first post Do Upside Down Tomato Planters Work?, I thought that they were more of a novelty than a real planter. Now that I have tried a couple different ways, I think that the Topsy Turvy is a solid product. It is probably still better to plant tomatoes directly in the ground, but if you don't have room or if you just want some gardening fun, give the Topsy Turvy a try. If you want to know more of the pros and cons of growing with planters, I wrote a more in-depth post on this subject at Simple Green Frugal Co-op.

Next season, I am going to try strawberries and cucumbers in one too. How can I already be talking about next year's tomatoes when there is still so much harvest and then the Fall garden to tend to this year? I don't know. I guess its an obsession. :)

Great Bell Pepper Harvest - But Why?

2009-08-16T11:59:00.001-04:00

I told you in my last post that we have had success with onions and peppers. The Bell Peppers have continued to be incredible this year. We have Green and Yellow Bell Peppers and now some are beginning to turn red for us. There are so many peppers on each plant!

The size of these peppers are much larger than I'm used too as well.

In years past, I never got such great peppers unless I used great big plants liquid compost on them like I did the year before last.

You may think I'm bragging about these peppers but I'm not. You see, for whatever reason I usually can not grow very good Bell Peppers. Most of you reading this probably grow peppers like this every year, but I usually only get one or two small bell peppers from each plant.

So what is different this year? Did I amend the soil or use fertilizer? No, but something is different next to the bed that is producing these wonderful peppers.

They are right behind our new chicken coop that has a slanted highly reflective silver roof!

Could these pepper plants be benefiting from the reflective rays? I think so, because I also planted peppers from the same batch of seedlings elsewhere in the garden that are performing in their normal lackluster way. Here is a picture of one of them:

That is how my pepper plants usually look! Pathetic compared to my bed of bountiful peppers.

This summer has been unusually cool and wet which have not been good growing conditions for tomatoes. Peppers are supposed to do best with heat as well. Do you think it is possible that my peppers are so good because of the chicken coop roof? I guess without conducting soil samples in the two locations we can't be sure that the soil is the same, but I think it is. I really think the only difference is the reflective roof.

Am I crazy?

Unusual Weather, Unusual Harvest

2009-07-31T12:01:00.000-04:00

In most years, we are blessed with a bountiful harvest. Usually by now we have an overabundance of cucumbers and tomatoes, along with beans and potatoes. In past years we haven't done well with Bell Peppers and have had trouble getting our onions to grow very large.

This year is very unusual. The main season tomatoes are very late and we have only had a few good cucumbers. On the other hand, our Bell peppers and onions have been amazing!

We have well over 100 large onion bulbs drying right now.

To grow large onion bulbs you need many growing days of warm but not "hot" temperatures. Usually here in Northern Kentucky,our weather is not condusive to growing large onions because we typically go quickly from a cold Spring to a hot summer. This year has not been typical. Our Summer has been unusually cool. July 2009 is now officially the coldest July ever recorded! Our "normal" average high temperature for July is 85 degrees. This year's average was 69 degrees. That kind of weather is not great for growing tomatoes, but oh how the onions love it!

And of course we love the onions! I guess in a way the vegetable garden is like the stock market - it pays to diversify.

The other vegetable that has been unusually great this year are the Capsicums. The weather explanation doesn't fit here at all. I do have a theory about why we have harvested about 75 large peppers from one 4'x12' bed. I will share that theory and some pepper pictures in my next post.

Happy Gardening,

- Marc

The Topsy Turvy Does Work!

2009-07-21T11:52:00.003-04:00

Before this year's growing season even began, I posed the question "Do Upside Down Tomato Planters Work?" There has been a great deal of discussion about this lately, especially about the Topsy-Turvy Upside Down Planter.

I decided to conduct an experiment this year and bought a Topsy Turvy and another upside down tomato planter that was really just a hanging basket with a whole in the bottom. They are hanging side-by-side on my deck.

The tomatoes in both planters are growing well, but the Topsy Turvy plant is thriving! It is performing as well or better than the main tomatoes in the garden.

The Topsy Turvy's plant is much larger than the one in the other planter, and there are more tomatoes forming. I think this has to do with the volume of soil that the roots have.

The other planter is working and I would think it was doing well if I didn't have the Topsy Turvy to compare it to.

So my answer to my previous post's question of whether you can really grow tomatoes upside down is YES. However, it is still easier to grow tomatoes in the ground. Upside Down tomatoes have to be cared for in the same way that any container grown vegetables do. You must use a light soil mix like potting soil mixed with coir or peat moss. You also have to keep up with the watering without over-watering. Tomatoes like deep watering every few days. It is okay if they almost dry out in between waterings. I think most peoples biggest mistake with container-grown tomatoes is watering too much. Tomato plants don't like constant "wet feet". Too much water leads to rotting fruits and fungal disease.

With proper watering though, growing tomatoes in hanging containers is a great way to go. I plan on getting a few more Topsy Turvy Upside-Down Tomato Planters for next year!

Here is one last picture of my hanging tomatoes with my daughter next to them to show how big the plant is.

I can't wait to see how big it gets and how it looks with ripe tomatoes on it. I will post again when that time comes! What about you? Is there anyone else who has had success with the Topsy Turvy or any other upside-down planter? I think the majority of talk about these planters is about how they haven't worked out. I would love to hear from you if you have found success. Thanks!

Eliot Coleman's new book!

2009-07-10T11:48:00.000-04:00

Wow, a lot has been going on with my family and in the garden lately. I have many many posts to share with you to catch up, but first let me show you my birthday present from my wife and daughters.

Its Eliot Coleman's new book - The Winter Harvest Handbook. Officially the title is:

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

The subtitle is important to me because that is exactly what I am hoping to do this year. Our new greenhouse is ready to grow veggies all winter long!

This was a great birthday surprise because I didn't even know Eliot Coleman had a new book out. It was just released. As you may know, Eliot Coleman is my very favorite gardener and garden author. His other two books, The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest are on my list of 25 favorite gardening books.

I can't wait to read more of The Winter Harvest Handbook. So far, I can tell that it is packed with even more of Coleman's wisdom. He outlines the way he accomplishes growing so much organic produce, all year long.

This book was only part of a fantastic birthday week. I have been able to spend some extra time with my family, we are eating tomatoes, peppers and onions from the garden, and we finished building the chicken coop! My hours at work are changing which should allow for more time in the garden and for blogging. Hopefully, I will get pictures on soon of the chickens and the garden and get back to regular blogging.

Happy gardening everyone!

Great Big Tomatoes To The Rescue!

2009-06-15T11:35:00.000-04:00

Things have been so busy this spring that the garden has fallen a little behind. There are still lots of veggies growing out there, but I haven't been able to finish building the new raised beds that will allow me to grow almost twice the produce that I have in years past.

I'm still hopeful for the crops that start from seed, but I was getting pretty worried about all the tomato seedlings I had waiting in the greenhouse. Instead of waiting for the finished beds, I tilled a new area in the yard to accommodate a single row of tomatoes.

The plants are still pretty small, so maybe you can't see them in the above picture. Here is a closer look:

I was able to quickly mound up the soil so it is sort of like a raised bed. What this new row doesn't have that my beds do have is great soil. I add loads of compost to the raised beds. This tomato row is just the ordinary dirt from the yard. Since I don't use any chemical fertilizers, how am I going to keep these tomatoes healthy without compost? I'm using Great Big Tomatoes

Great Big Tomatoes is a wonderful product from the Great Big Plants company. I have used Great Big Plants for the past few years and wrote about it here.

Great Big Tomatoes is basically an organic concentrated liquid compost, rich in the nutrients that tomato plants need to grow big, healthy, and delicious. I just learned about Great Big Tomatoes and am excited about using it. All I have to do is mix a little in a gallon of water and use that to water my tomato plants. Easy.

I'll give you an update later in the summer when these plants are big and beautiful. I'm glad I was able to move some of these tomatoes out to this row method. When I do get my new beds finished, I will now have room for many other veggies. But I don't think I could have put my tomatoes in the new row without Great Big Tomatoes. I'm glad I found out about it.

Frost is a real Danger for Tomatoes and Peppers

2009-05-19T11:31:00.000-04:00

Here in Northern Kentucky, most people believe that everything should have been planted in the vegetable garden already. Most people plant on the first nice day in May and believe that planting on Mother's Day is definitely safe. Most of the time this is true but the official average last frost date in my area is May 15th.

It is now past May 15th so it really should be okay now, right? You would think so, but the May 15th date is an average of the last 50 years or so. If you remember from Math class how to find the average, that means that sometimes the last frost is after the average date. That is what almost occurred last night. The weather forecast called for a frost advisory, and since frost is deadly for tomatoes and peppers, I had to protect them.

It was easy to cover the beds that I used last Fall as my stoop houses because they were already equipped with a place to add hoops. I then just covered the hoops with plastic. The main tomato bed that I have planted was not used last year for hoops so I had to do something different.

I simply pounded some scrap lumber in the ground as end posts and attached a cross beam.

Then I draped a piece of plastic sheeting over the beam to make a quick tee-pee over the tomato plants. The only thing you have to be sure of with this method is that the plastic is not touching the plants. The frost and cold can go right through to the plant leaves if they are up against the plastic.

The temperature in the garden got down to 35 degrees, only 3 degrees above freezing! I don't think we actually had a frost, but I was still glad to protect these heat-loving plants. They seemed to make it through the night okay.

I only have about 15 of my 75 tomato plants in the garden so far, so it wasn't hard to cover them all. I'm glad I still have the others inside the greenhouse because the weather this spring has been cold and rainy. I will not be getting ripe tomatoes by June 5th like last year. At this point, having ripe tomatoes by July 4th sounds good.

Oh well, I just hope that we don't have any more 35 degree nights at least until October.

Finishing the Greenhouse Construction

2009-05-07T11:25:00.000-04:00

I have had a couple of email questions about tomatoes and about how my extra-early tomatoes are doing. There was also a comment from Amber asking for an update on our Greenhouse. These are related topics because we will not have ripe tomatoes in May this year due to how slow I was in finishing the Greenhouse. Renee and I built most of it last Fall, but there were several things not completed that prevented the early tomatoes from going in there in time. The tomatoes are doing well and I will post specifically about them later. Its just that I don't think they will be ripe early enough to beat last year's record of June 5th.

The good news is that I finally completed the rest of the Greenhouse construction. The things left to do this Spring were:

Install an exhaust fan and run electric to it
Build windows to use as vents
Build inside grow beds and fill with soil/compost
Extend retaining wall and back fill for future greenhouse expansion

That proved to be a little too much to accomplish quickly, but it is now almost complete. The first item on the list was the hardest and the most important. Most people think that a greenhouse needs to be hot, and that is true during cool weather. The biggest struggle with a solar greenhouse is that in the Spring and Summer it can get TOO hot. This time of year is particularly difficult because nights are cold and sunny days get hot. With all of the vents closed up for the night, our greenhouse can easily get to above 120 degrees by mid-morning. The new exhaust fan is thermostat controlled to come on and expel the hot air in that scenario.

Here is a picture of our hoop house from the back where the fan is:

I was able to install the fan myself.

Getting the fan put in place was all I could do since I am not an electrician. Later I had an electrician friend come to run the electricity to the fan. In the meantime I set about completing the other items on the list.

I built the windows so I could have flexibility in how much venting to allow each day.

Then I built the raised beds along one side and along the back. This is not a requirement for all greenhouse structures but it was in the book The 12-Month Gardener by Jeff Ashton, where I got the plans from and I think it will be a great way to grow lettuce and spinach all winter long.

The hardest part was getting the wheelbarrow in to fill up the beds.

I was able to put boards down as plank ramps to go up and in.

I also had to tackle the retaining wall. The spot where we placed the greenhouse didn't naturally fit there. There wasn't enough space for it so we had to build a retaining wall and then fill in behind it with fresh dirt. Originally I wanted the greenhouse to be 14 feet by 24 feet. Since we had to move so much earth, we only built half of the wall and then built half of the greenhouse. Next year I want to expand to the full 24 feet so the rest of the wall needed to be put in and back filled.

I moved about 50 wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the spot I dug out to fit the chicken coop in (more on that later). I forgot that we would need to run the electric through that space, so I had to dig part of it out again to make the trench for the electrician to run the pipe with electric wires in it.

My electrical friend came over and did a great job with the pipe and the wiring.

He was able to splice in to an existing outside outlet that used to power a swimming pool pump.

He put in an outlet and switches to control a light that we will install later and the fan.

And finally, here is the fan working!

Now we can put plants in our greenhouse without worry of them getting too hot.

We may not have been able to use it much this spring, but from now on this greenhouse will grow thousands of plants for us. Our goal is to be able to harvest something from the garden in all 12 months of the year by leaning heavily on this structure in the winter. I'll show you more as we get it all going.

This greenhouse was a little more work than I thought it would be, but it feels good knowing that we built it ourselves from scratch with only a little help from our electrician and a lot of help from The 12-Month Gardener. What a great book that is!

Happy gardening!

- Marc

A Few Problems With the Tomato Seedlings

2009-05-06T11:23:00.000-04:00

Most of my tomato seedlings that I just potted up look really healthy and strong. They are a bit smaller than I would like them to be, but they look good.

The transplanting session that I wrote about yesterday was not the first one. I began potting on the tomatoes about two weeks ago. Unfortunately some plants from the earlier sessions have problems. I don't know if they are victims of Damping off disease or if they have a different fungal problem, but they look pretty bad.

The above picture shows the most common problem in which the leaves are shriveling up from the ends. The below picture shows how some of the plants have gone so far as to drop all of the leaves. I bet if I touched that last leaf, it would fall off too. :(

I wonder why some plants are suffering from this while the majority look great. I guess it could be the difference in the varieties and their resistance to disease. I lost all of my Kentucky Beefsteak and Prudens Purple plants. Where it gets more curious is in cultivars like Persimmon and Climbing Triple Crop, because some plants look good and some look bad. Is this because they were separated in different trays, or is it just because the "good" ones are yet to show symptoms?

One thing that could have caused this is the fact that I used some trays that were left outside all Winter (I know, that is bad and pretty unorganized). I rinsed them out, but I guess they could still have been infected with something. Since I bottom-water all of the seedlings, I guess it could spread to the tomato seedlings that belong to the varieties that have less disease resistance. I really don't know.

I lost about 20 plants but that is still a pretty low percentage of my overall plants. Hopefully the other million plants will continue to prosper.

The other problem that I am having with the tomato plants is that many of them are purple.

Only the underside of the leaves are purple, and I know what that is. It is due to a phosphorus deficiency because of the soil being too cold. Hopefully that will remedy itself when the plants (and their pots) warm up. I gave them all a dose of Great Big Plants to try to help them out as well.

Well, there you have it - kind of a depressing post compared to most. Gardening isn't always roses and sunshine I guess. Stuff happens. In a week or two, all of the tomato plants will finally be planted outside and hopefully will take off from there. Until then, they will be waiting under lights on my grow-light stand.

I'll let you know how they work out later. At least my extra-early tomato plants are already outside and doing well.

Happy Gardening!

Marc

Potting Up Tomatoes is Now Easier!

2009-05-05T11:20:00.001-04:00

As you may remember, I am growing at least 35 different tomato varieties from seed this year. Instead of using soil blocks, I am doing it the old-fashioned way by starting in cell-packs and potting up to 4" peat pots. That means that I have to transplant about 150 tomato plants!

This task is now a lot easier thanks to my new Portable Potting Tray.

The Portable Potting Tray is very simple but works great. It is designed specifically to be used for potting seedlings, re-potting and transplanting and enables me to do my potting at the kitchen table without making a mess.

Of course I still make a bit of a mess by taking over the entire table with tray after tray of plants.

The Portable Potting Tray is comfortable to work with since the front is cut out for easy access and there is a sort-of shelf across the top.

If I were only doing small amounts of re-potting, it would be easy to keep everything right in the bin, but the below picture is 150 tomato plants freshly potted.

I've also been potting up lettuce, spinach, zucchini, and loads of cucumbers to battle those raccoons! My biggest problem now is that I'm running out of room under my lights!

At least it is May now, so all of these plants will soon be re-located to the garden or the greenhouse.

Happy May, and Happy Gardening!

- Marc

Repelling Raccoons - 3 ways to keep raccoons out of your corn!

2009-04-28T11:16:00.000-04:00

We have many raccoons that frequent our yard and garden. They eat the leftover cat food on the back deck just waiting until that magical night when the sweet corn is ready!

Then they party until every last kernel is gone!

So what can I do to repel those rascally raccoons? There are three ways for me and you to rid raccoons from our gardens.

1. Erect an electric fence. An electric fence is the only sure way to keep raccoons out, but that involves too much work and expense for me.

2. Use a "floppy fence". Last year I began creating this, but didn't finish in time. I still think it is a good idea though. Basically you fence in your garden or a portion of your garden using your favorite standard fence. I only put the fence around a small corn patch last year. The trick to the "floppy fence" as outlined in Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas, is to attach a roll of chicken wire to the top of the fence like this:

The chicken wire is fastened only at the bottom to the top of the fence. It stays floppy at the top with no support. When a raccoon attempts to climb it, it folds down on him which essentially dumps him off. Allow me to demonstrate with my daughters stuffed animal:

The raccoon climbs the fence and reaches the chicken wire. When it continues up the chicken wire, its own weight causes the wire to bend down over it.

No corn for that ~~leopard,~~ raccoon! When I wrote about this last year, some readers commented that this would also work to keep cats out of your garden. If cats are your problem, you could use netting instead of chicken wire.

I believe this might work and I love the 100 Greatest Garden Ideas book, but even this strategy is a bit too much work for me this year. Instead, this year I will be trying my 3rd way to repel raccoons, which I learned from another one of my favorite books, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening. So what's the trick?

Plant a virtual fence with cucumbers!

Dozens of vining cucumber plants will completely surround my corn patch. According to Carrots Love Tomatoes, raccoons can't stand cucumbers. They don't like the smell of them, and they don't like walking across the prickly vines. I'm not sure if it will work but I agree with many other things from that great book. I have started many cucumber plants of five different varieties. Not only will I have an almost infinite supply of cukes, but hopefully I'll also get some of this:

Mmmmmm! I can't wait for Summer eatin' from the garden!

So what do you think? Will this idea work? What about Jeff Cox's floppy fence? Do you have any other ideas for beating those coons this year?

Maybe I should feed them extra cat food!

Raising Chickens; New to GardenDesk!

2009-04-21T11:19:00.000-04:00

We finally have baby chicks, so our new adventure in raising chickens has officially begun!

We have never kept any kind of farm animal before but have been gardening for over 20 years now. It seems that raising chickens is a natural extension to vegetable gardening as I've seen many other garden blogs discuss chickens. I suppose it is similar in that just like with vegetable plants, you care for the chickens and then "harvest" the eggs.

Our chicken coop will be located right in front of the garden and next to the greenhouse, so they will actually become part of the garden. We will be able watch them and tend to them while in the garden and it will be easy to supplement their diet with veggies and insects from the garden. I am looking forward to having them as my garden companions.

For now, they are in our garage in the homemade brooder that my father-in-law built:

We have 17 chicks in all but there are 5 breeds represented. Among them are Buff Orpington, Silver Laced Wyondotte, Dominiques, Black Austrolorp, and some Polish Crested. I don't know how many we will be keeping. Some of them will join the flock that Renee's parents have. For now we are enjoying them all and watching them change and grow daily in the brooder.

Since we really don't know what we're doing yet, we have been reading a lot about raising chickens. Whenever I start something new, I like to find the great books on the subject. I go to several libraries and check out as many books as I can on the subject - usually twenty books or more. Then we browse through each book and pick out our favorites. Then I read those books in their entirety and usually buy two or three of them for future reference. To begin our chicken adventure, I found many books and have selected these four as my favorites:

The book that most people would recommend is Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens. I agree that it is a wealth of information and I will be buying it.

Another great book for me right now is Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock since I still have to build our coop. It has lots of great ideas.

My third selection is Keeping Chickens: The Essential Guide because it has good information and beautiful pictures of the chickens and different coop ideas. This is helpful to our family because we are not yet familiar with even how our adult chickens will look.

Last but not least, I am enjoying Barnyard in Your Backyard . It is great because it is written as a guide for beginners. It also covers raising other small animals including rabbits. Rabbits will be our next addition, so I will be buying this book as well.

I love the combination of learning by doing at the same time you learn what to do from books. We will be learning how to raise chickens successfully in this way and we are pretty excited. Hopefully I will have the coop and yard built soon to show you.

There has been much going on in the garden too, which I am behind on posting about. Get ready for rapid-fire posts as the gardening season (and chicken season) is now moving into high gear!

Happy Gardening!

- Marc

Happy Easter in the Garden!

2009-04-12T11:03:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung, The garden is blooming and My Savior Lives! Oh what a wonderful day!

Happy Easter everyone!

The worms are multiplying - Babies!

2009-04-09T11:00:00.001-04:00

We are really enjoying our GardensAlive Worm Composting System. We have only had it a month but the worms have more than doubled already! If you want to see what the worm bin looks like, I showed several pictures of it on my last worm post.

My daughter has had a favorite kids book for years called Diary of a Worm. Now that we have been able to watch worms up close for a month, we understand the book a lot better. Now, it is pretty funny to us. What a great little book. For example, the instructions in setting up the bin had us put several sheets of wet newspaper as the very top layer of the bin. Diary of a Worm begins with advice from a mother worm to her son. One thing she tells him is "Never bother Daddy when he's eating the newspaper."

As it turns at, that is so true. The worms love to eat newspaper! Look at what those three layers of newspaper look like after one month:

They also like to get up above the newspaper, between it and the plastic lid - so we added more moist newspaper.

Today we discovered the coolest thing of all. The worms not only like to eat newspaper and crawl between it and the lid, but they like to do other things there as well.

Look at all the babies! There are at least six or seven in this picture. They are so small that we would never have seen them without the newspaper as a backdrop.Here's a closeup of the above picture:

These baby worms are small but they are a lot longer than I would have expected. Below is a different picture. Notice that one baby is snuggled up next to an adult and another baby is a little to the right. It almost looks like a mom and her babies, doesn't it?

Did I just hear you say "aw, how cute"? If so, did you ever think you would think worms were cute?

I tell you, we are having much more fun with our worm bin than we expected. It's really easy to keep it going since the bin is right in our living space. We have already expanded to the 2nd tray. If you want to see how the bin is put together, my first worm post shows it in detail. Also in that post, I show some other styles of indoor worm bins like the famous Can-O-Worms.

I'm sure those other worm systems work well too, but we are very satisfied with our Gardens Alive bin. They still have their spring Internet coupon going for the worm bin or any of their products. It is $20 Off Any $40 Purchase, a pretty good deal, don't you think?

We are so new at keeping worms that it still seems odd to call it vermicomposting. That is what I like to call it though, because the whole reason for raising these worms is to be able to use the ultra-rich compost for the garden that they create. I first found out about vermicomposting from a garden blog, but I don't remember which one.

If you are a garden blogger and have ever written about raising worms, please let me know. Include the url to your post, label or category too if you can. We'd also like to hear from you if you've ever kept worms even if you haven't written about them. I want to learn all I can about this and tell as many gardener's as I can too.

Keeping worms is so easy and fun, every serious gardener should consider it! Please comment if you agree with me or even if you have questions.

Thanks,

Marc

Onions - a - Plenty

2009-04-07T10:57:00.001-04:00

Recently Renee and I got to transplant our onion plants outside in two of our raised beds.

We are growing two different onion plants this year. Walla Walla is a yellow skinned large sweet onion and Superstar is our large mild white onion. Both are supposed to do well even in the north.

We will be planting various onion sets as well when we plant out the tomatoes and beans. We also have two types of leeks still growing inside under the lights (Carentan and Giant Musselburgh). To round out the Allium family, we have potato onions and several types of garlic that we planted in the fall. The large onion bed is right next to one of the garlic beds.

The garlic is growing very well.

If it weren't for all of these Alliums, the vegetable garden would still be pretty empty. Soon they will be joined by peas lettuce and cabbage. Then later comes the many warm season veggies. I can hardly wait!

Early Tomatoes Progressing with Transplanting

2009-04-06T08:35:00.000-04:00

Several people have been asking me about the status of my extra-early tomatoes. I also have received questions about how big they get inside before I move them out. I have been a bit less organized this year so not all of the early tomatoes were planted at the same time. Currently I have some in all three of the first stages. First, I think it would be helpful to explain the process that I take all of my early tomato plants through with this picture montage:

I start the seeds in plastic cell packs by sowing two or three seeds in each cell and then cut out all but the best looking plant. As soon as the plants get their first set of true leaves (not counting the seed leaves) I transplant them to 4 inch peat pots or sometimes newspaper pots. When they get about six inches tall I transplant them to CD spindle covers and then again later to patio planters. Each time I re-pot them I bury the stem all the way up to the leaves to encourage new roots (visible in above pictures 5 and 6).

Why do I transplant so many times and so often? This is the key factor in keeping the plants growing at a fast pace. The plants will stop growing if they run out of root room. If a plant stops growing, it doesn't necessarily hurt the plant, but my goal is to get them to ripen as early as possible. Here is a picture that illustrates this in an amazing way:

What's so amazing? The plants on the left are the exact same age as the one on the right. The only difference is that the one on the right was potted-up about two weeks earlier. The ones on the left stayed in their original cell pack. When the roots ran out of room, their growth was retarded. That is why you must transplant often to keep the plants growing.

I have tried simply starting the seeds in larger containers as well. This works better than allowing the tomato plants to become stunted, but you lose the benefit of planting deeper with each transplant. The plants just get taller and spindly and fall over. The root system is not as strong either because when you bury the stem during transplanting, new roots from from that previous stem. Extra bonus!

This year I am skipping the peat pot stage and transplanting from the cell packs to a 4 inch nursery pot. Here is a recent flat of them:

Those are my 4th of July, Orange Blossom, and Early Girl seedlings. I have found a method for quick and easy transplanting too. I fill the new pot with new soil mix, leaving the center open. I then can simply remove the plant and root plug from the cell pack and drop it in - filling in the dirt around it and around the stem until the new container is full. This smaller montage shows what I mean:

I'm not sure if I'm on target to get ripe tomatoes before June 1st or not. Last year I managed to get my first ripe tomato on June 5th. I hope to beat that this year, but I'm not very confident of that. We'll see. My favorite old gardening book that I often speak about is The New Victory Garden by Bob Thompson.

In that book, Thompson outlines this process of growing early tomatoes and he gets ripe tomatoes in New England by June 1st! Maybe I need to study the book again to make sure I have the plan right from here on out.

It is very cold here this week, but I can easily imagine a warm May 31st were I visit the garden early in the morning to find this:

That was last year's first tomato. Can't you just taste it? I can hardly wait!

My 25 Favorite Gardening Books!

2009-03-23T08:23:00.002-04:00

As you probably already know, I am obsessed with gardening. My friends, neighbors and family know that I live gardening. Many times they ask my advice on gardening matters and ask me how I know so much. That has surprised me in the past because I don't think of myself as knowing all that much more than the next gardener. I don't have a formal horticulture education except for a few month long Master Gardener Program 13 years ago.

So where have I learned what I know about gardening? Of course much knowledge comes from gardening a lot. After pondering this question a bit, I would have to say that most of what I know came from reading about gardening from great organic gardening books!

I own almost 100 gardening books and have checked out at least another 200 from the local libraries over the years. Even still, it seems that I keep coming back to the same 25 or so time and time again. After going through all of my books, these are my current "top 25" gardening books:

If you've been reading this blog for very long, it doesn't surprise you that I am really into gardening books. I often reference the book that I learned things from like when I built our coldframes and where I got the plans for our greenhouse and other posts.

To put my top 25 in some kind of order, I thought I'd share them in a few different categories and say why they are my favorites.

First, I have to mention The Rodale family of organic gardening books. These have been invaluable to me over the years.

First is the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Resource for Every Gardener. I listed the subtitle because to me, it is so true - especially if you want to garden organically. I just picked up a new Rodale Organic Gardening resource encyclopedia from the discount bin and it also has great info. Next, 50 Years of The Best of Organic Gardening Magazineis great! It was published back in the Mike McGrath days and features the best vegetable articles from OG magazine. The last two are classics that deal with composting and organic insect and disease control. They are The Rodale Book of Composting and The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control. I use all of these Rodale books as constant reference books.

This nest group is my favorite "fun" group. They have much more personality than the Rodale books.

Four of them are from two of the most famous gardeners - Mel Bartholomew and Eliot Coleman. These are must haves in a vegetable gardeners tool box. Most people are familiar with Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book, but did you know that he wrote a newer one called the All New Square Foot Gardening. In it he reports the discoveries he's made by square foot gardening for so many years. He makes some changes to his original methods which are great improvements. I haven't discarded his old book however, because it has better vegetable descriptions and spacing charts.

Eliot Coleman's books are Four-Season Harvest and The New Organic Grower. I could write a whole post about the wisdom of Eliot Coleman and what a great teacher he is. Coleman has influenced my gardening more than any other author. I often mention something from him like when I write about season extension or soil blockers.

The last two are my first gardening book, The New Victory Garden which I have written about many times before and Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas. I used to love watching Jeff Cox's TV shows "Grow it" and "Your Organic Garden". Incidentally, Elliot Coleman had a great TV show as well called "Gardening Naturally". Sorry - off topic a bit. Easy to do when I start writing about all of my heroes in gardening. Anyway, Jeff Cox's book is a compilation of great tips to make your gardening better like how to keep Raccoons out of your corn. That is one I will be trying this year. I demonstrated it in last year's post about the Raccoons eating my corn!

Wow, this post is getting to be longer than I expected and I've not even covered half of my favorites yet! If I continue I'll either bore you to death, or rush through the rest with out writing much about the books. I think a part two is in order, don't you?

For this part one post, I'll list the rest of my top 25 in case you can't see them in the top picture. They are:

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening

Backyard Market Gardening

Grow Vegetables: Gardens - Yards - Balconies - Roof Terraces

The 12-Month Gardener

Solar Gardening, Growing Vegetables Year Round

Gardening Under Plastic

Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System

Raising Earthworms for Profit

The Worm Book

Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs

The Vegetable Gardener's Bible

Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers

Crops in Pots

And My Master Gardener Notebooks!

Soon I will post "Favorite Books, part 2" to explain why these books are so significant to me. Until then, I would love to hear what your favorite gardening books are. I know of at least a dozen more popular gardening books that could have been on this list. I do like a lot more books than this but these are the most significant to my garden.

What gardening books have influenced how you garden the most? Which ones are your favorites? I am always looking for great books that I haven't read yet, so if you strongly recommend a book there is a good chance I will look for it. So please share with us your list of favorites. I can't wait to find out. :)

- Marc

Seed Starting Operation is now Cat Proof!

2009-03-09T08:23:00.002-04:00

This is the time of year when I get very anxious to get started with the vegetable garden. It's still too cold outside except for the crops that were overwintered like garlic, potato onions and horseradish.

A great way to get started is to tend your vegetable garden inside. I have written numerous times in the past few years about seed starting and am not going to re-hash it here. If you have never seen my posts about seed-starting under lights, you can see them here:

Indoor Seed Starting Doesn't Have To be Complicated or Expensive!

How To Grow Healthy Seedlings Under Lights

Don't Be Afraid to Start Vegetable Seeds Indoors

One aspect of seed starting that I will write more about this year is using soil blocks. I did write about my new Soil Blocker last year, but will be using it much more this year.

I start nearly every vegetable indoors with my light set-up. Here is a picture from last year of my early tomatoes under lights:

For years I had no problems with starting under lights. Last year I hit a bit of a speed bump when my pepper plants were eaten by our cat! The cat was okay, but the plants were not. Ever since both of our cats have shown more interest in our seedlings than they used to and we had to do something to keep them out! Here is the beginning of this year's modification to the seed table:

I've only got the bottom part finished so far but I plan to finish the top before it is needed. Right now we just have the early tomatoes, some lettuce, spinach and leek seedlings started - so the bottom level is enough.

I simply stretched and stapled garden netting over the support beams and made big hinged doors out of framing lumber. This way, I can open them up to access the seedlings.

The cats, however can not!

Our cats, Macy and Maggie are not very happy with me but the seedlings are!

I'm ready to start many more seedlings. How about you? Do you start vegetable or flower seeds indoors? Do you have any problems with pets bothering them? What types of vegetables do you have started already?

It's exciting! Happy Gardening!

GardenDesk Has Moved!

2009-03-02T21:06:00.004-05:00

I have finally made the switch from blogger to typepad. All of the previous GardenDesk posts have been moved to http://www.gardendesk.com/ and all new posts will be over there.

If you have a blog and are linking to Garden Desk as Gardendesk.blogspot.com, please change it to just www.gardendesk.com.

I guess the rss feeds will need to be changed as well. I am working on that from my end. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The new platform will allow GardenDesk to be even better.

Thanks, and Happy Gardening!

The Worms are Doing Great!

2009-03-02T07:32:00.002-05:00

My 1,000 new worms are safely settled in to their new home! These great red wiggler worms arrived just after my post about putting our new worm bin together. They are doing great in the new Gardens Alive Worm Factory!

The worms seem happy and healthy. I think it is because the Worm Factory came with great instructions on how to set up the bedding to give the worms their best possible home. It also came with a block of coir, which has turned out to be a great bedding. I didn't know what coir was, but I found out from The Worm Book that it is the shredded fiber of coconut husks.

When you add water to the coir, it instantly swells up! My kids got a kick out of watching it grow so quickly.

After it soaked up the water, I broke it apart and made sure it had even moisture.

The Worm Book by Loren Nancarrow and Janet Hogan Taylor, lists the advantages of using coir coconut fiber in worm bins. It says coir (also called coia) is great because it retains moisture like peat moss but of course is more of a renewable resource than peat. Coir also mixes well with other bedding, is odor free and clean, doesn't compact in the bin and has a good pH of 6 to 6.5. Nancarrow and Taylor states that the disadvantage of coir is that it is expensive. This worried me a bit because I want to buy additional coir for the bedding in the other trays of my worm bin. In the small quantities that I need for worm farming, cost is not bad. I found the same size brick of coir at Pinetree for $2.95.

After the coir was evenly moist, I added some crushed egg shells and put the whole mix in the worm bin tray.

Next came a layer of shredded paper.

The last step to making the worm bed was to add a couple sheets of moistened newspapers. This is a great idea since it helps to keep the material underneath moist as well. It will also be easier to tell when I need to add water to the whole worm bin.

Finally, it was time to add the worms!

Every day since, we have added vegetable kitchen scraps in one side of the bin. You need to bury the scraps so the worms have easy access to them and so they don't smell. It has been shocking how fast soft foods like strawberry tops and eggplant pieces are consumed. Potato peelings and lettuce have been slower. In a weeks time, the worms have also digested much of the shredded paper and I assume they are also eating the coir.

I guess I should have stated this at the beginning, but this is the whole reason to have a worm bin. We have it located right in the kitchen so we can add compostable food scraps quickly and often. Each worm eats its body weight in food each day! Over time, the worms will supply us with rich vermicompost that we can add to the garden! Worm castings are amongst the best of organic soil conditioners.

I will write more about the benefits of raising worms as I learn more about them. Like I mentioned earlier, I am reading The Worm Book . I am also re-reading the classic Mary Appelhof book, Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System.

I was also able to find a new book on raising worms as a business called Profitable Earthworm Farming. A similar book, Raising Earthworms for Profit was actually the first worm book I read. It is a great book which got me very excited about raising worms! I'm not sure that I want to be in the worm-selling business, but I do want to expand my worm farming as much as possible in order to get more worm castings from them. These books will help me turn my 1,000 worms into 15,000 worms in a year. If I create space for them, in two years I could potentially have half a million worms! That's a lot of vermicompost! I definitely don't want to buy any more redworms. They are sold for up to $50 per pound (1,000 worms). At least I found a pound of worms available for $29.99. Maybe they would be good to raise for profit. Discussion for another day.

In the meantime, I will feed and visit my worm bin daily. Even our cats like to watch them wiggle.

I want to keep them healthy so I don't need to buy any more. There is one thing I would like to purchase for them though. I worry that I'm injuring them when I dig my hand through them to bury the food. I want to buy a Hand Compost Turner Tool. It is only $4.95 and using it would be safer for the worms. They probably sell this so you don't have to touch the worms. That doesn't bother me.

Don't they look great? I know, I'm like a proud pet owner. I'm sure I'll write more about them later!

Gardening Themed Fortune Cookie?

2009-02-27T00:55:00.004-05:00

My family and I love to eat Chinese food, and since there is a new Chinese take-out restaurant in our town, we've been eating it more than we probably should. Of course, the kid in me always likes getting the fortune cookie after stuffing myself.

Most of the time I don't pay much attention to the actual fortune, but this time I did a double-take!

It says "Your present plants are going to succeed."

Wow, that is so great! How did it know that I've already started my extra-early tomato plants under lights?

That has to be a typo, right? It makes me think - wouldn't it be a great idea to have fortune cookies for gardeners? Think of all the great advice they could give. Maybe I got the first fortune cookie for gardeners. Or maybe it is supposed to read "Your present plans are going to succeed." I am planning quite a bit for the garden this year, so I'd take that as well.

I guess this means the year ahead will be a great one. My plants or my plans will succeed!

This fortune can be for all of you as well. So make plans and grow plants; they're sure to succeed! Hey, the cookie says so. :)

A Political Statement; Rare on Garden Desk!

2009-02-26T11:26:00.006-05:00

I have always stayed away from discussing politics on this blog, but I just can't keep quiet with this. When it comes to public office, how does one know that he has reached true success? It certainly isn't that every constituent agrees with his or her positions. Can you consider someone successful if he gets elected to his State Senate? How about if he is elected to the United States Senate? Could the true measure of political success be attaining the office of the President of the United States? Barack Obama has achieved all of these political positions but I'm here to tell you that even becoming President is not his biggest honor. What marks his success even more than becoming president? I am here to report that Barack Obama's single biggest honor is.............

BARACK OBAMA IS NOW A CHIA PET!

Introducing the Chia Obama Handmade Decorative Planter!

Everyone needs one of these, don't you think? And since nothing with Obama is ever small or simple, there's not just one Chia Obama pose - there's two! If the above "Determined" look doesn't suit you, also available is the Chia Obama "Happy" pose!

President Barak Obama. Love 'em or hate 'em, you have to agree that he has reached the pinnacle of stardom. There is no greater honor than becoming a Chia!

Cha Cha Cha Chia!

I'm ready for the worms!

2009-02-24T22:13:00.008-05:00

12 years ago I wrote a newspaper article about raising worms as part of my Master Gardener certification. I had the privilege of interviewing a local expert on worm composting who taught me that the proper term is vermicomposting. Visiting her at her house I discovered that she had many "worm composting pits" in her back yard. What surprised me the most however, was that she also had a can-o-wormsin her kitchen! Ever since, I have wanted to buy my own can-o-worms. The Can-O-Wormsis basically a multi-tray composting system raised up on legs with a tap on the front to drain excess water as "worm tea".

Since this popular unit costs over a hundred dollars, I was never able to get one.

Last year, I finally decided to try my hand at vermicomposting in a makeshift plastic bin. It was fun and worked for a little while. My bin didn't provide adequate air for them and since it was sitting on the basement floor, ants invaded the bin. I made all sorts of mistakes and the worm farm failed.

This year, my wife said that she would like to try again if we could find a cheaper alternative to the Can-o-Worms.

I had my eye on this unit:

The 4 Tray Green Gusanito Wormswrangler Worm Farm Bin. It was available for $68.95 - much less than the can-o-worms.

Meanwhile, my wife found the Worm Composting System from Gardens Alive which also had four trays and a spout. It was $99 but they offer an online $20 off coupon. That got it close to the Gusanito system price. Since we already love and trust Gardens Alive, that's the one we bought. Besides, I had some other organic products to order from them. I don't think I could keep my garden organic without Gardens Alive's great products. By the way, if you are interested in the $20 coupon, you can get it here: $20 Off Any $40 Purchase

Sorry, I'm getting off topic a little here. That was the introduction to my post!
Here's the real post:

Our new Worm Factory has arrived and the worms will be here any day! It only took three days to get here after we ordered it. We quickly opened it up and spread out the pieces.

Our cats were very curious about it. Remember Our cats Macy and Maggie? They show up in our pictures from time to time. Hey cats, get off the table!

We began putting the worm bin together. I had to screw on the legs and attach the tea spigot.

Then came time to test the spigot.

It works! Although next time we use it, the water won't be that clear! All done except for the residents of the worm factory. It also came with paper bedding and a block of coir to add to the bedding. We have to start with only one tray and stack new ones up as the worms and their bedding/compost fill up the first tray.

To keep the basement ants from attacking again, and to prevent neglect, we will be putting this attractive new vermicomposter right next to our table and hutch in the kitchen dining room.

Weird, huh? We are excited. Does this seem strange to you, or are you a vermicomposter too? It will provide wonderful compost as well as conversation when visitors are here!

Anything to keep us thinking of Spring!

Step by Step How to build a Cold Frame

2009-02-22T20:19:00.013-05:00

Last year I posted about the new Cold Frame that I built and I was asked to write a more detailed how-to post. I bought the materials to make another one, but never found time to build it... until now.

Last year's cold frame looked like this:

It was basically a 4'x4' cold frame built by following the plans from one of my favorite books called The New Victory Garden by Bob Thompson.

The new cold frame I built was created in basically the same way but instead of the traditional 48" in depth, I made it 40" so it will fit the raised bed in my new greenhouse. That's the beauty of building your own cold frame - you can tailor make it to fit your needs.

The New Victory Garden was written way back in 1987. It was the first vegetable gardening book that I bought and I learned a whole lot from it! It truly was instrumental in my obsession with veggie gardening. There are many great things in the book including easy to follow plans for how to make a coldframe. I will attempt to explain the steps involved in the remainder of this post, but I'm sure I won't be able to do it as well as Thomson. Let's start with the materials needed:

All you need are some tools, exterior nails or screws, two hinges, a 4' piece of good plastic sheeting, 3 - 8' 2x6 or 2x8 untreated boards, two 8' 2x4s, two 8'a 4' piece of wooden dowel, 10 feet of 1x3" lumber and some furring strips. I'm sure I missed something in that list, but we will go over each step below:

Begin by cutting the 8' 2x8s in half to create six 4' boards:

The boards will basically be arranged like the last panel of the above picture. 4 boards make a box for the bottom layer. One more board goes on top in the back, and the last board gets cut diagonally for the sides.

This is probably the most difficult part of the whole process. Draw a line from one corner to the opposite corner and cut down the line. The way I accomplished this was to clamp it to my table. After the cut is made, you should have two identical diagonal boards.

Next, attach each diagonal piece to one of the side boards with small pieces of the 1x3s. Do the same with the two 4' boards for the back. You can use exterior 3" screws or galvanized nails. I used some of each.

Now that the back and sides have been created, we have to attach them. This is one of my favorite features of the Victory Garden's plan. If you simply nailed the sides together, you would have to build the frame in place because the entire unit would be too heavy to move. This design allows you to easily take apart the frame to move it around or store it.

Each corner is attached by using galvanize eye screws and wooden dowels. You alternate the eye screws in the corners and then slip the dowels in.

Next you build the lid or top of the frame that will be hinged to the frame using 2x4s. The front and back is made from 4' pieces and the sides from whatever length you are making (this frame needed to be 40" total front to back length, so the side pieces were 37"). The most difficult part of this is that the sides need to be cut at an angle so the lid fits securely. The easiest way to do this is by lining up a straight edge with the boards below.

The 4 lid pieces are then attached by nailing through the ends. You might find it easier to use an "L" bracket to line up each corner first.

After the lid is solid, you can attach it to the frame with hinges. Then you can add plastic to the top by stapling it down and nailing furring strips over the plastic.

The thicker the plastic sheeting you use, the better. I used 6 mil greenhouse plastic for this one. Last year I just used plastic from the hardware store and it was probably 4 mil. The book calls for wire fence to be put down first before the sheeting is attached. I did this last year, but didn't think it was necessary for this one. If you do use fencing beneath the plastic, use "U" nails to attach it to the top of the lid.

We're almost finished with our new coldframe now! After you've nailed down the furring strips over the edge of the plastic, trim the excess plastic away. Then you need to measure the middle of the front and drill a hole in it. This will be used to slip a carriage bolt through to attach a post that will allow you to vent the frame when needed.

My finished cold frame looked like this:

All ready to be taken outside and put in the greenhouse. It will soon house tender young plants to help me get a jump on the growing season. If you want to know more about the uses of a cold frame, see my post on Simple Green Frugal Co-Op or visit the library and get some books about it. There are many books available that include ways to use cold frames for season extension. Among my favorites are Four-Season Harvestby Eliot Coleman, Solar Gardening, Growing Vegetables Year Roundby the Poisson's, Gardening Under Plasticby Bernard Salt, and my new favorite where I got our greenhouse plans from - The 12-Month Gardenerby Jeff Ashton.

Now I just have to do more seed sowing! Oh, I almost forgot to mention the final step in building a cold frame - sweep up the saw dust and add to your compost pile :)

Eye Grow: New Fun Gardening toy for kids!

2009-02-19T21:54:00.007-05:00

You never know where you might find a fun garden-related item. I usually start looking at all of the garden centers this time of year to try to find a cure for my Spring Fever. Every once in a while you discover something when and where you're not even looking. This happened to me last weekend when my family went to Michael's craft store because my daughter was looking for something to use on her American Girl Doll website. That's where I found these cool little "Eye Grow" plants at Michael's.

The "heads" are actually a nylon mesh filled with soil. The top of head is contains ryegrass seeds that grow to become the hair.

These remind me of the Chia Pets a little, but I like these Eye Grows better. I think they are more fun for kids because they are pretty cheap and very colorful with big cartoon-like eyes. Each one comes with a sticker sheet of mouths so you can design the expression yourself.

I searched the Internet to find out more about them and found nothing. The company listed on the Eye Grow boxes is Sourcing International. When I searched for Sourcing International, all I found is a site about their Grow-A-Head products. Here is one of the pictures from that site, their grow-a-pets:

I've never seen these before. It's strange that they don't mention their Eye Grow products at all. I couldn't find any references to the eye-grow anywhere on the Internet.

I can't wait to start these growing. I am giving some of them to my niece and nephew, but I will post pictures of the ones we keep as soon as their grass hair has grown out. These are perfect for a little Winter gardening fun. A year or so ago, we had fun with the Magic Sproutz secret message plants in a similar way. Come to think of it, I haven't been able to find those again either.

So what do you think about the Eye Grow plants? Has anyone else seen these? Would you buy them if you saw them, or am I just a big kid for thinking they are cool? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Do Upside Down Tomato Planters Work?

2009-02-16T23:15:00.012-05:00

About fifteen years ago, we moved into our first small house. It had a nice little car-port complete with multiple hooks for hanging plants. The whole neighborhood was the same style house and there were so many beautiful flower arrangements hanging from the end of each carport. We followed suit and hung a few baskets of petunias.

I wasn't very excited about it until I saw a house with more than just hanging flowers. They had a hanging strawberry basketand a hanging container full of herbs. That got me thinking about other edibles you could grow in hanging pots, and before long I had a hanging basket of lettuce. Tomatoes were too big to grow in a hanging pot, but I managed to grow one out of the bottom. It worked pretty well and I was able to grow marigolds in the top part.

I never considered using anything other than a traditional hanging basket, but now there are containers on the market that are designed specifically to grow tomatoes from the bottom. I first saw these a couple years ago but resisted the temptation to buy one... until now!

I now have my very own Topsy Turvy Upside-Down Tomato Planter- as seen on TV even. I don't watch much TV and have never seen any commercials for this product. My daughters laughed when I showed them my new Topsy Turvy Tomato planter. They said, "That will go well in your Tomato Playground. It's like the one on the commericial". I guess it really is seen on TV. Some people are drawn to the "As seen on TV" slogan but I usually shy away from products with that claim. So what do I have with my Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato Planter (other than a mouthful title)? Will it work? I think it should work fine. It will be a pretty cool novelty addition to my container garden section this year.

It will be great, according to all that is written on the box. Here is the list of positives they cite:

Grow delicious & Juicy Tomatoes all Season Long

Hangs on Deck, Balcony or Patio (I would add Car-port)

Eliminates Weeding, Caging and Staking

Can Grow Organic Too! (Always)

Also grows other vegetables including Green Bell Peppers, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Eggplant, and more!

How it works:

Uses gravity as a vertical growing advantage

Vertical grow bag heats the plant like a greenhouse so the root system explodes

Gravity pulls the water and nutrients directly to the roots

It features:

Swivel top for easy turning

Simple to set up and maintain

Uses ordinary potting soil

Great for growing your own organic vegetables

UV-resistant, durable materials to last for years

I didn't make all of that up. It is what is written on the back of the box.

The Topsy Turvy isn't the only upside down tomato planter on the market. Look at this funny, but pretty cool Hot Pepper Vertical Grow Bag:

It seems that I am late to this vegetable hanging party. The more research I did, the more I found. The Topsy Tervy people also make a big stand up system called The Upside-down Tomato Garden. Check this out:

That is really cool - and you can grow flowers in the top part like I did so many years ago with my home-made upside down tomato planter.

So what's the verdict with these upside down grow bags? I would love to hear from those of you who have tride them before. Do they work? Do they work better than a "normal" patio container? Did you have fun with them, or were they a hassle to deal with? I will be answering all of these questions this season as I experiment with my Topsy Turvy Tomato bag. I think I will also try to make some home-made upside down tomato planters just for fun.

What do you think? Are they worth a try?

Valentine's Day is for Love... of Tomatoes!

2009-02-14T23:43:00.011-05:00

It has become a tradition now that I start my extra-early tomato varieties on Valentine's Day. After all, tomatoes used to be called "Love Apples" because of the belief that they were a powerful aphrodisiac.

Of course that's not the real reason I start my early tomato seeds on Valentines Day. As I described last year, it is easy for me to remember planting dates based on holidays. One of my major goals each year is to have ripe tomatoes about two months before my neighbors. The normal time around here to pick ripe tomatoes is late July or early August. Last year I harvested my first tomato on June 5th. It took quite a bit of effort to get that to happen. You can read about the entire season's efforts in the early tomato department here.

The goal for the first tomato harvest this year is... May 25th - Memorial Day!

Is that too ambitious? Is it even possible? I really don't know. This year's process for getting extra early will be about the same except now I have a greenhouse with permanent growing beds inside. If the greenhouse helps like I think it can, then Memorial Day is not out of the question. May 25th is exactly 100 days from now. If I can't hit Memorial Day, May 31st will be my secondary goal. I will outline all of the steps I take again this year as I go along. Today however was just the beginning.

Even though I now love using my soil blocker to start seeds, I still use the cell packs for the early tomatoes. I plant one 6-pack for each early variety and I put two or three seeds in each individual cell. Later I will thin to one plant per cell and when it comes time to transplant, I will pick the best plants available. Eventually I will have 2 of each variety to move outside in the greenhouse.

It makes it easy starting with six of each tomato cultivar because I can label the whole cell pack with tape and a marker.

The varieties I started today were Siletz, Sub-Arctic Plenty (World's Earliest), Orange Blossom, 4th of July, Early Girl, and since my new variety Mountain Princess has not arrived yet, I also planted some New Girl.

After covering the seeds with light soil mix, I added some hot water to the tray and put on the clear lid. It fogged up quickly.

I hope I can keep it warm in there so the seeds will germinate quickly. Usually they do pretty well in the Laundry room where the dryer and the furnace keep things toasty.

I plan to keep better records of each variety's progress this year. Last year 4th of July was the first to ripen. I wonder which one will win this year.

The 2009 tomato season has begun. Let the race begin!

Happy Valentine's Day and happy gardening!

Watch Out for Killer Compost!

2009-02-09T00:24:00.002-05:00

That is the title of a report by Cheryl Long and Barbara Pleasant in the new bookazine, Mother Earth News - Guide to Growing Your Own Food.

I just bought this gem a few days ago and I love it. It is filled with great articles about how to garden better. Many great topics like organic pest control, seed starting basics, preserving your harvest and container gardening are covered. I enjoyed them all but this one little half page article jumped out at me most of all.

It documents Dow chemical's marketing of the herbicide Aminopyralid as a control of perennial weeds in horse and cattle pastures. It also spells out how the U.S. EPA has approved it even after a previous Dow chemical herbicide, clopyralied (Confront) was found to be the contaminant in compost that killed garden and nursery plants in Washington, Pennsylvania and New Zealand.

The major problem with Aminopyralied is that Dow's own research showed that Aminopyralid is expected to remain in manure for over a year! Many times there is enough herbicide residue even in the composted manure to kill tomatoes and other vegetable crops. This is a real concern for organic gardeners like me who rely heavily on compost and often acquire manure from elsewhere.

Dow's Aminopyralid was associated with the loss of thousands of home gardens in Great Britain last year! If you are always searching for compost ingredients like me, be careful where you get your manure. The Authors of this piece warn us to ask questions about safety before buying manure or compost that contains manure.

They end the article with these words about this problem: "Alert your friends and local composting facilities - gardeners work too hard to lose their food to corporate greed and government loopholes." I agree! That is why I am doing what they advise by telling all of you - my gardening friends.

Pick up a copy of Mother Earth News - Guide to Growing Your Own Food for more details. The article I'm referencing will make you angry, but the rest of the bookazine will cause you to get excited for the promise of the new season ahead. Just watch out for killer compost!

Thanks Cheryl and Barbara for this warning.

Greenhouse Snow and Ice Removal

2009-01-28T19:53:00.006-05:00

Over the past two days the weather here in Kentucky has been crazy. We received 6 inches of snow, then a half inch of ice and then 5 more inches of snow!

We don't usually get so much snow and ice so we wanted to make sure the greenhouse was okay. Ever since we saw on Throwback At Trapper Creek how snow can collapse a greenhouse structure, we have wondered how our new greenhouse would hold up. There is nothing growing in it yet, and the vents (windows) are still opened to allow the wind to flow through. Unfortunately that means there is no heat being generated to help melt the snow cover.

After the first 6 inches of snow, we could already see that the plastic was beginning to buckle under the weight.

So we decided to knock the snow off and the whole family pitched in.

Overnight the snow turned to freezing rain and ice. In the morning, the hoop house was covered in a half inch sheet of ice.

Again I had to use the broom to clean off the plastic. Removing the ice was easier because in broke into big pieces and slid right off.

Just about the time I finished with the ice, the snow picked up again at the rate of 2 inches per hour! When it finally stopped we visited the greenhouse a third time. By now the pile of snow and ice was getting pretty large. Luckily I had plenty of help clearing it away...

... as well as removing the rest of the ice.

After the work was done, there was plenty of time for fun!

Is it Spring yet?

Tomato Playground Part 2

2009-01-22T17:10:00.007-05:00

In my last post, I listed 5 fun things I am planning for my tomato garden this year (other than eating lots of tomatoes). Here is the list again:

See how big I can grow a tomato.

See how early I can produce a ripe tomato.

Grow at least 7 different colors of tomatoes.

See if I can grow a 15 foot tall tomato vine.

Make some time-lapse videos of tomato plants growing.

The first two were explained in that post, but now let me explain the others.

Number three is simply to grow many different colors of tomatoes - a tomato rainbow of sorts. Last year I accomplished this with my cherry tomatoes.

I grew several colors of full size tomatoes as well but they ripen at different times. I never really got a good picture of all the different colors together. This year I plan to pay more attention to the number of days it takes for each variety to mature, and have some of the plants timed to ripen together.

The next silly thing on my list is to grow really tall tomato vines. Climbing Triple Crop tomato is supposed to grow 15 feet tall. I have seen pictures in magazines of tomatoes growing on lattice up the side of a two-story house and thought that was interesting. My Chinese Red Noodle beans reached the top of my 8 foot trellis last year, so I had planned to build a new 10 to 12 foot tall trellis for them this year. Now I will extend that trellis for these tomato plants.

I plan to build these trellises with PVC pipe similar to what I used on my cinder block raised beds last year.

I love growing veggies vertically, so this trellis system may get a little complicated. I will write much more about it when the time comes.

The last thing on my list is to produce some time lapse videos. This idea has been brewing for over a year now. My nine to five job is at a video production company, so I'm not lacking the know-how. The difficulty will be in the discipline to regularly take the shots or the video. I want to make a wide shot time lapse of the whole vegetable garden as well as one of a single tomato plant from sprout to full grown. More to come on this as well.

A bonus idea for my tomato playground will be to grow some as hanging plants. I want to make something similar to the topsy turvy upside down tomato planter, or the hanging tomato baskets. Last year I saved some fending and big seed sacks for this purpose, but I haven't yet worked out the details of how to make this.

So those are my ~~five~~ six odd tomato goals. What about you? Please tell me that I am not alone in having strange goals and experiments in the garden. Do you ever do things other than planting, tending and harvesting the vegetables? Several things come to my mind other than these tomato tricks. Have you ever tried for giant veggies, grown cucumbers is a bottle or forced squash into a "face mold"? Are you going to try any of these crazy things this year? Please give me more ideas!

I think it makes things more interesting to garden for food and fun. Do you?

Tomato Gardening is my Playground!

2009-01-20T12:24:00.004-05:00

My last post about growing 35 different tomato varieties attracted some great comments which made me realize that many of you out there think I'm crazy. Chris actually called me nuts, but then he added that it was in a good way. Alan who is an actual farmer seemed to think I was being wasteful. He was very nice but in a normal way of thinking, he is right.

When it comes to tomatoes however, I don't think normally. I wanted to take a few moments here to explain my oddity. Tomato gardening is my playground. Not only do I love eating massive amounts of tomatoes, but I love growing them and trying crazy things with them. This year I have 5 fun tomato growing goals:

See how big I can grow a tomato.

See how early I can produce a ripe tomato.

Grow at least 7 different colors of tomatoes.

See if I can grow a 15 foot tall tomato vine.

Make some time-lapse videos of tomato plants growing.

Let me explain these endeavours a bit more. The first one was simply growing a giant tomato. Last year two of my tomato fruits weighed in at almost 2 pounds.

I didn't do anything to promote this, but supposedly there are things you can do to help increase fruit size. You can allow each plant a lot of growing space and compost. You can pick off all but one or two fruits when they are small to put all of the plants energy into the remaining fruit (talk about wasteful - but fun). It also helps to grow varieties that have the ability to become large. Two of my selections from Baker Creek this year are for this purpose. Delicious produces 1 to 3 pound fruits. Someone once broke the world record with this variety by growing a 7 lb 12 oz. tomato! Another potential giant is Omar's Lebanese, a pink pink tomato that promises 2 - 3 pound fruits.

#2 was to see how early I can harvest a ripe tomato. This is a game I've been playing for a couple of years now. I live in northern Kentucky, zone 6a, where main season tomatoes are harvested in late July/early August. In 2007 I got my first ripe tomato on June 15th. Last year, I put the plants outside earlier and added a makeshift greenhouse tent to protect them.

That helped me beat the previous year by ten days as I picked my first ripe tomato on June 5th.This year, since I now have a real greenhouse to help me, I hope to get ripe tomatoes in May!

I would like to further explain the other 3 goals, but this post is getting a bit lengthy and it is getting pretty late. I will save it for my next post. Hopefully after explaining the fist two goals, you can better understand that I grow tomatoes for food, and for fun!

Do you still think I'm crazy?

Is Growing 35 different tomatoes this year too many?

2009-01-14T17:34:00.006-05:00

I really appreciate all of the suggestions I received in the comments on my previous post about what new heirloom tomatoes to try. I really did take them into consideration and choose a number of them to try this year. It has been a really hard decision. Matron's comment said it best with her statement "There are just too many varieties to choose from!!"

Every year while it's cold outside, I like to plan the upcoming garden out on paper and choose what varieties to grow - almost like you would choose what players to have on your team. I want to assemble a championship team like those competing this weekend in The NFL conference championship playoffs. In the NFL they have a 53 man roster, so I should have 53 tomato varieties right? If only I had room for that many. I have narrowed down this year's tomato team to 35 varieties, so let me announce my starting lineup:

A football team consists of different player position groups; lineman, running backs, receivers, defensive backs etc. My tomato team is also arranged in different groups.

All of these are heirloom varieties except for six. The hybrids are designated with an (H) after their name.

First up are the early tomatoes. This is a big passion of mine so this group is heavily represented. They are:

Returning from last year,

Siletz

Sub Arctic Plenty

Orange Blossom

4th of July(H)

Early Girl(H)

This year's rookie is "New Mountain Princess" from Baker Creek, chosen because it can be ripe in 45 days.

The next group is your normal "Red" tomato category which is what has managed to stick around even with the wonderful other colors and flavors added. Also returning from last year:

Celebrity(H)

Burpee Super Beefsteak(H)

Park's Whopper(H)

Delicious

And the rookie in this category is "Climbing Triple Crop" from Pinetree Seeds because it can grow up to 15 feet tall. Cool!

The next position group is the Pink tomatoes:

Brandywine (my all time favorite)

Pink Flamingo

Caspian Pink - recommended by Connie on my last post

Mortgage Lifter - recommended by Kelli Simone

Omar Lebanese - new this year because it is supposed to produce mammoth 3 to 4 pound tomatoes!

The Orange tomatoes this year will be:

Kentucky Beefsteak

Pineapple - recommended by Connie

Persimmon - recommended by Throwback at Trapper Creek

Garden Peach - recommended by Jen and Janet

and Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge, which looks really cool.

Black/Purple Tomatoes will be represented by:

Black Krim - the veteran in my garden

Black Brandywine - invited because I love pink Brandywine

Prudens Purple - recommended by Happy Girl

Japanese Black Trifele - recommended by Patrick and Melinda Are they really pear shaped?

Starting for the Yellow Tomatoes:

Yellow Brandywine - mentioned by Harmony

Dixie Golden Giant

Lemon Boy(H) - for my Father-in-Law

The Green (even when ripe) Tomatoes this year will be two returning favorites:

Aunt Ruby's German Green

Green Zebra

Small but powerful - The Cherry Tomatoes:

Sweet Million(H) - Red

Sun Sugar - Orange

Aunt Ruby's German Cherry - Green

Black Cherry - Black mentioned by Melinda

Finally, last and least - this year's White Tomato:

White Tomesol - the punter on my tomato team.

Wow, I'm exhausted now! There you have it - 35 tomato varieties. The re-cap:

28 Heirlooms

7 Hybrids

6 Early Tomatoes

5 Red Tomatoes

5 Pink Tomatoes

5 Orange Tomatoes

4 Black/Purple Tomatoes

3 Yellow Tomatoes

2 Green Tomatoes

And a White tomato in a Green Garden!

I am also trying 11 kinds that I have never seen and listened to nine of you from my last post's comments. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions.

So, is 35 too many? Too few? How many different varieties are you going to try? Are you growing more than just red tomatoes? Heirlooms or Hybrids?

I can never get enough tomato talk!

Looking for new "strange but good" heirloom tomatoes

2009-01-09T12:01:00.003-05:00

If you have visited my blog in the past, you probably know that I am addicted to tomatoes. I'm sure my wife wishes that I could stop with that statement because she too loves tomatoes. Unfortunately for her, I also have an unusual fascination for wierd tomatoes - the stranger the better, as long as they still have great flavor.

Eating plain red tomatoes is a bit boring to me. I would rather my BLT look something like this:

or this:

The first picture featured Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes and they are fantastic! The second picture was a new heirloom variety that I tried last year called Kentucky Beefsteak. Since I live in Kentucky, I am particularly proud of it. It boasts tasty large orange fruits.

Of course my all time favorite unusual colored tomato is Black Krim. It isn't exactly black in color, but look at them in comparison to the red Roma tomatoes:

Another new unusual heirloom tomato from last year was Green Zebra:

It has great flavor and the markings make it very interesting to look at. I do wish it produced larger fruits though. Here it is plated with red Brandywine (the king of flavor) and Black Krim:

Not every wild and wacky variety that I try turns out to be great. This is why I think my wife gets aggravated with my obsession. For every variety that "makes the team" there are two or three that don't get invited back. Last season's disappointments included the White Tomatoes. How cool is a white tomato? Unfortunately when you take all the pigment out of a tomato, some of the tomato flavor goes with it. They do look cool though:

The above picture is Great White and the below picture is White Tomesol:

Actually, to be fair, the flavor is still good but pretty different. I may still grow some this year, even if for no other reason than the novelty of it.

So this year I am perusing the seed catalogs and seed company website in search of more "strange but good" heirloom tomatoes. My keeper list from years past include Brandywine, Black Krim, Orange Blossom, Ky Beefsteak, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Kellogg's Breakfast and possibly White Tomelsol. A clear winner in the Pink Tomato varieties have yet to surface.

So help me out - am I missing out on a truly great heirloom tomato variety? What is your favorite? Least Favorite? What should I be looking for for my new rookie sensation this year? I'm a bit worried. I have successfully found worthy varieties to join the rooster each year, but I'm not sure about this year.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Doesn't this make you crave a garden fresh BLT?

Today is one of my favorite days in the garden season!

2008-12-18T21:59:00.011-05:00

I would have to say that my favorite day in the garden is the first ripe tomato of the season. My second favorite day just might be today - the day the new Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog arrives!

As I stated last year, Baker Creek is my favorite seed company AND my favorite catalog. This year's catalog is even bigger than last year! It is full of rare and unique heirloom seeds. There are detailed descriptions and loads of beautiful color pictures!

You definitely know what you are getting when you order from them. I never get the feeling that they are hiding anything or are trying to make their varieties sound better than they really are. Everything that I have grown from them has done well and has grown just as they describe. Their 2 foot long Chinese Red Noodle Beans were amazing. Baker Creek helped me grow many colors of heirloom tomatoes - red, yellow, orange, green, black and white. This was fun to do in the full size tomatoes as well as with the cherry tomatoes.

If you are not yet familiar with Baker Creek, you really should visit their website. They are located in Missouri but have collected heirloom seeds from around the world. The owners of the company are Gere and Emily Gettle and they are great people. Here they are pictured in the front of the catalog with their daughter Sasha:

I was lucky enough to meet them because another cool thing about them is that they host many garden festivals at their site. They have built a whole little town called Bakersville to host these occasions. My family and I drove about 12 hours just to attend the Spring Planting Festival earlier this year and we had a wonderful time. I posted about our trip when we returned home. In that post, I put on a record 30 pictures of the Baker Creek Festival! You can see that post here.

I would love to go again this year - maybe to their end of summer harvest festival!

Well, I better end this post so I can start looking at this new Baker Creek Catalog! How will I decide what to buy? I think the size of the garden will have to be doubled again this year!

I can already tell that I'm going to like this year's edition even better than the previous years because their are several pictures of little Sasha with the veggies.

How cute - and have you ever seen such big cabbage heads?

Garden Fresh Thanksgiving Produce!

2008-11-26T22:12:00.001-05:00

I finally reached a goal that I have been striving for - fresh organic vegetables from the garden for Thanksgiving. The stoop houses worked and I picked loads of broccoli and four heads of cabbage a couple days ago. I know those aren't traditional Thanksgiving veggies but fresh coleslaw and broccoli casserole will go nicely with potatoes from the garden, turkey and all the other trimmings.

We have had an unusually cold November this year. It sure was strange picking from the garden the other day when it was only 12 degrees Fahrenheit outside!

Look at the ice buildup on our newly constructed greenhouse:

The greenhouse is not any warmer inside than outside because I never finished building the vents. Right now the bottom 2 feet along the sides are still exposed and there are several opened windows. I need to fix that soon so I can use the greenhouse this winter and early spring.

Luckily the temperature under the small hoop houses is higher than in the greenhouse and the outside. It has stayed warm enough to keep the broccoli and cabbage from freezing.

See the water droplets on top of the broccoli? Those are actually little beads of ice.

The only casualty under the stoop houses was the lettuce. It still looked good, but after picking it and bringing it inside, I could tell that it had been frozen. For lettuce harvesting now, we will have to turn to our indoor lettuce growing under lights.

It is a little extra work keeping the garden going in the Fall and in the cold, but its worth it! I've got cabbage and broccoli ready to be prepared tomorrow along with the other Thanksgiving goodies!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Building Stoop Houses to help with Frost Protection

2008-11-09T19:05:00.008-05:00

In last week's post I showed you my broccoli plants and this week the heads have continued getting larger. We have been lucky enough to have no frost this week, so the leaves have not been damaged any further.

The Cabbage and lettuce beds are also looking great.

Frost is coming back tonight however, and we are in for a very cold week or longer. If I keep only using the row covers over the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and lettuce, the season will finally be over.

I don't want harvest season to end, so today I put up more hoops and plastic sheeting to make mini greenhouses. In The 12-Month Gardener, Jeff Ashton calls this type of frost protection a "Stoop House".

That name is appropriate because to tend to the vegetables, you lift up the side of the plastic and "stoop" down.

How to Make a Simple Stoop House:

My raised beds are framed with untreated 4x6 lumber and are four feet wide. Ten foot PVC pipes bend over the four foot span to make nice hoops. The key to doing this is providing a way to attach the pipe. I used 3/4" diameter pipe and attached pipe brackets to the outside of the raised beds.

I found it to work best if I put two brackets per pipe on each side. The top bracket was the 3/4" size and the bottom one was the 1" size. This kept the arch at the correct angle.

After getting the brackets attached, I slip one side of the pipe in.

Then I bend it down and slip it in the brackets on the other side. A pipe should be place every three to four feet. One of my stoop houses is covering a 4 foot by 12 foot bed and the other covers two beds that are four by four.

After the hoops were up, I put the row covers back on to add a second layer of protection.

Then I put the 6 mil plastic sheeting on. Greenhouse plastic is best, but I just used normal plastic sheeting from the hardware store. I have greenhouse plastic I could use because I bought extra when we built our greenhouse last month. I'm saving that plastic to expand the actual greenhouse next season. Besides, these stoop houses are temporary and will work just as well with regular plastic.

I staple the plastic directly to the wood frame on one side.

I only staple to one side, not the other or the ends. That way I can easily vent one side or take the plastic completely off during sunny days. You don't want to keep the plants completely covered on sunny days because the hoop house can quickly heat up and damage or kill the plants. Remember, these stoop houses contain cold-tolerant vegetables. The main purpose of these mini greenhouse poly tunnels is to keep frost off of the plants. At least until it gets really cold, I will probably pull back the plastic each morning, and batten down the hatches every evening. This is what the stoophouses will look like every night:

I sure hope they work. I want to be able to still be eating fresh salads and broccoli in December.

I'm back!

2008-11-05T14:07:00.003-05:00

If you tried to come to this site in the past day and a half, you noticed that it was down. Sorry about that. There was a major problem with my DNS control ip address registered with the domain name. It wasn't able to talk to blogger and redirect my blogspot pages to gardendesk.

Hopefully it is back now.

It has made me look into some other things though, and I think I will be migrating this site to typepad along with Veggie Garden Info. I haven't been able to add to veggiegardeninfo.com for some time now due to a problem that I can't seem to solve with wordpress. If I move it to typepad as well, I can resume adding content and links to all the great garden blogs out there. I understand typepad fairly well now thanks to my 14 year old daughter who has a site about American Girl dolls hosted there.

See, when us old people can't figure out computer issues, it always works to turn to a teenager who has had the Internet all of her life. My daughter will help me get everything squared away!

Anyway, enough with the rambling. It was awful having gardendesk down. I'm glad its back. Sorry for the inconvenience. The next post will be about gardening again :)

Fall Gardening Continues

2008-11-02T18:45:00.005-05:00

This week the weather is going to be nice, but last week's low temperatures got down in the 20s. I have been keeping everything covered with row covers.

The hoops are there to put plastic over when it gets really cold. I still need to cut a piece of greenhouse plastic to go on them.

This is one of the beds that broccoli is growing in.

I did cover the hoops with a small piece of plastic and sheets on the coldest nights, but we have had frost several other nights with just the row cover as protection. The broccoli florettes still look good, but some of the leaves were damaged by the frost.

A few of the broccoli heads are large enough to pick now, but there are others that still need a week or so. Next weekend we will undoubtedly be eating fresh broccoli and broccoli casserole. Hopefully, there will still be plenty left at the end of the month as well for Thanksgiving. Yum!

Picking Carrots, Planting Potato Onions

2008-10-26T21:25:00.004-04:00

Today was a beautiful Fall day here in Kentucky. I cut the grass for the last time this season and cleaned up sticks and leaves. I also was able to work on the greenhouse a bit more.

My younger daughter came outside about when I was finishing up and asked if there was any gardening that she could do. Of course there is always something to do in a four-season vegetable garden, so she got to work picking lettuce and carrots.

Then, together we got a growing bed ready by adding compost and turning the soil over. Here, she planted some more garlic and potato onions.

Not many people are familiar with potato onions. If you like onions and have never grown potato onions, I strogly suggest that you look for some to try. They are a bunching onion similar to shallots, but they actually produce round bulbs. Here is what they look like while they are growing.

Last year was the first time we grew them and they were great. We ate them just as we eat regular onions. They are even easier to grow than regular bulb onions. They are planted in the Fall, and sprout in the Spring about the same time that daffadils do. They aren't harvested until mid to late Summer. It is a long time from planting the bulbs to harvest, but other than watering, he gardener has nothing to do for them. The potato onions that we grew are an heirloom variety so any bulbs not eaten can be planted again in October for the following season. That is what we did today and I can hardly wait to harvest them next summer.

It is really great to see garlic and potato onions growing tall and green in early Spring. For our vegetable garden, that has become the official beginning of the new growing season. It'll be here before you know it.

First Fall Frosts; Gardening Continues!

2008-10-21T15:37:00.006-04:00

Our first Fall frost hit pretty much on schedule, and now three out of the last four nights we have seen heavy frost.

For my friends and neighbors who have a vegetable garden, this marks the absolute end of the season as they peer out at their now dead tomato plants.

For me however, vegetable gardening continues. Frost simply marks the beginning of an exciting Fall garden. This weekend my family transplanted the last of our broccoli and cauliflower plants, planted garlic and potato onions and harvested lettuce and other greens. My daughter enjoyed planting the garlic.

We have lots of cabbage and broccoli coming on, but full heads won't be ready for another week or so.

Our best Fall garden success so far has been with salad crops. In just a couple 4x4 square foot beds we have been picking all the salad we can eat for the past month, and hope to continue for at least another month.

Lettuce, greens and Brassicas all grow well when it is cool. Many gardeners raise them in the Spring but don't think of growing them in the Fall. Now that it is freezing at night though, the trick is to keep the plants from freezing. This week it is only getting down into the thirties, so covering them with row covers is enough protection.

Soon I will cover the beds with hoops and plastic or cold frames for added protection. The last of the lettuce transplants will be planted inside the insulated greenhouse beds to hopefully extend salad season into December.

Growing vegetables in the Fall and Winter is a little extra work, but I think it is worth it. It was pretty neat being out in the garden in the cool air this weekend as the Canadian Geese sang above me on their journey south.

The geese show that nature is getting ready for Winter, so I must ready my garden for it as well.

How about you? Those of you who are also headed into the cold season, do you continue growing or harvesting in the Fall and Winter? All tips and pointers are welcome.

Garbage Can Potato Harvest!

2008-10-15T11:09:00.007-04:00

I like to try new things in the garden. Every year I find new things to grow and new methods to try. One of the "experiments" this year was trying to maximize yield by growing potatoes in a garbage can. I have been receiving many questions about the status of these potatoes. Well, we finally knocked over the can to see if it worked.

The idea is that you plant the seed potatoes down in the bottom of the can. As the plants grow, you fill more soil around them. Eventually, the can is filled to the top with soil and the plants are growing out of the top like this:

With proper nutrients and moisture, the potato plants send out new tuber growth all along the buried stems. The hope is that at harvest time, the garbage can would be filled with potatoes. You can see my first two posts about this idea here and here.

So it is finally time to harvest these garbage can potatoes. Here we go:

Wow, looks great doesn't it?

I could stop with the above pictures and say that everyone should switch to this method, but I won't. I always say that the purpose of this blog is to document happenings in my organic garden - to report what works and what doesn't.

Writing about what works is more fun, but this potato can actually didn't work very well. Here is a picture of the complete harvest:

That's not any more than I would have gotten if I had just planted these potato plants in the ground. So what happened?

First of all, I had four or five plants growing out of the can in the first picture of this post. All but one plant died in July. This is what the can looked like before I knocked it over:

All of these puny little potatoes might have come from this one plant. The bigger problem I think I had was that the plants didn't get enough water. When I try it again next year (and I will), I think I should change my soil mix. This mix was mostly compost, peat and regular garden soil. Next year I will add sand and have much bigger drainage holes at the bottom of the can. I want to be able to water more often and more thoroughly without the worry of being too wet.

What about you? Do you have any ideas about how to make this concept work? I know it can work. We have done it before on a smaller scale. My daughter had success with this last year with potatoes in her garden bed by enclosing two plants with wood and raising the soil around them. I know other gardeners who have raised potatoes like this in tires and even in garbage cans. What is the secret? If you have had success with this, please let us know. I know I've read about this on other good blogs but I don't remember where. If you have posted about this, please share the link for us. And if you haven't written about it, but have had some success with potato growing like this, please give us some tips.

I'm sorry to say that I am not an expert on this yet (obviously), but together I think we can perfect this method. It does work - but how?

Simple Green Frugal Co-op

2008-10-13T00:54:00.004-04:00

I am excited to announce a new co-operative blog being put together by Rhonda at Down to Earth called simple | green | frugal co-op

Simple Green Frugal is by a group of writers from around the world who focus on simple, green and frugal issues from a variety of experiences and viewpoints.

I am honored to be one of the writers. Come check it out!

Why we built our poly tunnel hoop house

2008-10-09T23:20:00.005-04:00

I have wanted to have some kind of a greenhouse for the past 15 years but to buy a pre-built greenhouse that is big enough to turn around in costs many thousands of dollars. We have found that with many home improvement projects, it is much cheaper if you can do it yourself. So for the past year or so, I have been researching how to build your own greenhouse. I read many books and magazines and these are my favorite books about building a greenhouse, hoop house or poly tunnel and how to use them after they are built:

Some books speak only of how to use a greenhouse structure but the best are those that teach all of that AND a way to actually construct a hoop house. Through my long search, I have whittled the books down from dozens to my favorite four. They are Four-Season Harvestby Eliot Coleman, Solar Gardening, Growing Vegetables Year Roundby the Poisson's, Gardening Under Plastic by Bernard Salt, and my new favorite where I got our greenhouse plans from - The 12-Month Gardenerby Jeff Ashton. These four books convinced me that I MUST have a greenhouse.

Using row covers, cloches and cold frames for a few years showed me that I could extend the growing season in the Spring and Fall. A Poly Tunnel is one step further in that direction. Consider what Eliot Coleman's wife Barbara Damrosch wrote in the Forward of his book. Damrosch is an expert in her own right and I love the way she writes. After explaining the harsh conditions that each season hits the gardener with, she says how we can overcome those things with cold frames and a hoop house. She writes "Imagine, instead, a scenario in which spring work begins more gradually, summer spares time for other outdoor pleasures, fall is a gearing-up rather than a giving-up, and winter, best of all, is a time to reap a fresh harvest with almost no work." Yes, Barbara, that is what I want! And with the tough economic times we are in, my family needs to grow much more of our own food.

Speaking of economics, what did our greenhouse cost? We put much more wood in the end walls than you have too, which raised our cost. Even still, I got all the materials for a 14 foot by 24 foot greenhouse including an exhaust fan and professional greenhouse plastic for around a thousand dollars. It probably could have been done for much cheaper but we wanted a permanent structure. (The dimensions of our greenhouse in the previous post are 14x12, not 14x24. We will build the 2nd half next year after the retaining wall is constructed.)

The design we used from Jeff Ashton's book originally came from an organic farmer named Steve Painter. Painter built his greenhouse in 1970 and other than changing the plastic and a little maintenance, the structure is still the same to this day! How's that for permanent?

Okay, so exactly what can you achieve with a poly tunnel? Bernard Salt lists many advantages in Gardening Under Plastic.He says spring is 6 weeks early and winter is 4 weeks later, bedding plants are grown very cheaply, half hardy perennials survive the winter, flowers are not damaged by wind storms, animals can not get to the crops, tender crops are more easily grown, and rain doesn't stop the gardener from gardening.

Eliot Coleman states that putting a layer of protection over a crop is like moving that spot a growing zone and a half warmer. For me that means our tunnel takes us from zone 6 to zone 7.5 (if there were such a thing). What's beautiful about this is that I plan to have a smaller plastic covered hoop over the inside growing bed, which will take that bed to zone 9. We're talking Florida temperatures here in Northern Kentucky! That's why I'm hopeful that we can keep things growing in the winter.

Since we just built our greenhouse and haven't been able to see any of these benefits yet, here are my two favorite things about it so far; My daughters really like it...

and it looks really good next to the garden.

Here we are digging potatoes with the hoop house in the background.

By the way, we finally tipped over our potato garbage can so I will be writing about it soon. The girls had fun with that too. It is so great to garden together as a family!

Greenhouse Almost Finished!

2008-10-07T07:14:00.004-04:00

My wife and I literally worked all weekend to get our new greenhouse built.

It was much more involved than I thought it would be. There is still a little more work to do but we are very excited to have the plastic completely covering it now. It is 14 feet wide and 12 feet long, but next year we will expand it to 24 feet long. I am calling it a greenhouse because the book that I got the idea from calls it that. Also, the plastic covering is called "greenhouse plastic". This kind of structure could also call this a poly tunnel or maybe even a hoop house.

Instead of explaining the whole construction process here, why don't I just show some quick pictures? Later I will write a more comprehensive "how to" post if anyone is interested.

I think from the previous post, I left you here, with the PVC pipes being put in place:

Even before that phase, we first had to make a spot to put the green house. We wanted to put it in front of the garden by the fence where the early tomatoes were last year, and the kid's garden was the year before that. This spot was too narrow so my wife had a great idea to build a retaining wall to extend the space out another 6 to 8 feet! We had to move a lot of dirt to back fill the wall, but it worked out well. Later we will finish the other half of the wall and fill it too.

This wall created the perfect footprint for our new structure.

We had to drive metal stakes in the ground at each corner and every 4 feet in the middle and then cut them to the right height.

Is that straight? After the metal pipes were secured, I put the big PVC pipes over them.

Here's a picture of my wife consulting the book at this point to see what the next step would be. We got this particular style greenhouse idea from a great book by Jeff Ashton, called The 12-Month Gardener: Simple Strategies for Extending Your Growing Season. I plan to buy a copy because it also has a lot of great cold frame and cloche ideas. More on the book later.

After the PVC pipes were secure, we had to frame up the ends with 2x4s and add pipe supports to the wood and the PVC hoops. In the above picture, I am putting tape over the wire used to tie everything together in order to protect the plastic sheeting.

My daughters came out to check on the progress and decided to come on in. After the walls were finished and everything secured, we stretched and stapled the plastic on the end walls.

After the end walls were done, it was time to tackle the top plastic sheeting.

My wife and one daughter lifted it up to me while my other daughter took the pictures.

We got it put in place, used about 1,000 staples connecting it to the framework, and trimmed off the excess.

We finished just before the sun went down. At this point, the outside temperature was about 65 degrees. Inside the greenhouse it rose to 100 degrees! I still need to install an exhaust fan and get vent windows put together to control the inside temperature but I am encouraged by the fast temperature rise. I built insulated raised beds in half of this polytunnel and we plan to grow salad crops in there all Fall and Winter and then start many early plants in the Spring.

We have more to learn about how to care for plants inside a greenhouse, so any advice is welcome.

Happy Fall Gardening!

October Greenhouse Creation!

2008-10-02T15:41:00.005-04:00

That's right, I am building a greenhouse!

Many gardeners have put away the tools for the season, content to wait until Spring to ramp it back up. A few of my regular readers and friends have asked me if that is what is going on with me.

It's true that I haven't written much lately, but as for quitting garden activity - NO WAY, NOT ME! I have been extremely busy in the garden, planting many Fall/Winter crops and designing and building my very own Greenhouse.

It has taken about a month to gather all of the materials needed and get it framed in. Tomorrow I am taking a vacation day from my regular job so I can finish building it this weekend. I have always wanted to have a Poly tunnel or greenhouse but I didn't have room for one. My wife had an idea to build an enormous retaining wall and back fill it to create a space for a greenhouse. The digging took quite a bit of work!

Anyway, I will post a full report on it when it is complete. I just wanted to let you all know that I haven't disappeared and I surely haven't lost interest in gardening.

It has been getting cooler now and the Broccoli, Cabbage and Cauliflower that I planted in late Summer are doing really well. The lettuce has been excellent! Here is my wife and daughter harvesting some from one of the little beds:

When the greenhouse is finished, I will plant more lettuce and spinach inside it so we can harvest all winter long. I will tell you more about the greenhouse and my plans in a few days. In the meantime, its back outside with the tool belt. Wish me luck!

White Tomatoes?

2008-09-13T21:55:00.002-04:00

I have been gardening for most of my adult life and my favorite thing to grow has always been tomatoes. A few years ago I began playing with heirloom tomatoes that ripen in colors other than red. I've always known there were yellow tomatoes and orange tomatoes, and last year I discovered black tomatoes and tomatoes that stay green when ripe. This year's new tomato color is White. This Spring when I wrote about the whitest of white tomatoes called White Tomesol there was quite a bit of interest. I think I even helped Baker Creek Seeds sell out of them. Not many places sell these seeds but I was still able to get some. I grew White Tomesol and Great White this year, and they are indeed pretty white.

As usual when I try a new color of tomato, I'm never quite sure when to pick them. I think I harvested some of them a bit early because when sliced they still had a bit of green color to them.

The flavor seems to be the same no matter how ripe they are. So what about the flavor? A little different from "red" tomatoes but not as unusual as I expected. The seed catalogs tout them as tropical tasting. I expected these white tomatoes to taste more like melon than the Kentucky Beefsteaks. Here's the odd thing; eating a whole white tomato slice tastes pretty much like a tomato, but if I take a bite out of the meaty part only - that is where the unique taste occurs. It took me a while to figure this out. Take away the gel and seed part and the meaty tomato part tastes kind of nutty and not at all like a tomato. As an entire package however, you are back to tasting like a tomato. strange.

There isn't a big difference in taste between White Tomesol and Great White, but the color of Great White is a bit more of a cream color.

If you are looking for a true white color tomato, White Tomesol is the one for you.

As for me and my family, the verdict is still out for whether or not we want to add white tomatoes to our permanent list. They are pretty cool and a great novelty, but maybe just maybe they are a little too weird for even me. After eating a few more it is possible that they will win me over. We'll see.

Do you think white tomatoes are too weird? Have you ever eaten one? I'm sure there is a better description of the flavor than I have given. I'd love to know what everyone thinks!

Tomatoes Galore and introducing Ky Beefsteak!

2008-09-03T17:11:00.001-04:00

Wow have I been busy lately! I'm sorry that I haven't had enough time to post regularly. Its certainly not because I don't have anything to write about. The garden this year has done wonderfully! August has been the month of the tomato, and September promises to be as well.

We are now harvesting all of our tomato varieties. Many of them are heirlooms and they come in all different colors. My favorites continue to be Black Krim, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Brandywine Red and/or Pink and Kellogg's Breakfast Orange. I plan to post individually about each of these and about my new white varieties, Great White and White Tomesol.

Today's post is to introduce another orange tomato variety - Kentucky Beefsteak.

It is an heirloom that originates from the hills of Eastern Kentucky and it produces pretty big fruit. This one matches my big Brandywine at 1.8 pounds.

The reason I want to share Kentucky Beefsteak with you is because it is the most unique tasting tomato I have ever tried. I like it but it doesn't really taste like a tomato. This sounds strange but it almost tastes like a watermelon or cantaloupe. Even with its odd taste, it does pass my BLT test. You can't even see the bread under that giant tomato slice!

I guess It resembles a melon because it has an incredible water content. The meat part of the tomato is by far the juiciest I've seen. You can see the water content glistening in this closeup of the tomato slices:

It sure looks pretty but I'm not sure if it will make the cut next year. Each plant only produced a couple fruits and my family isn't eating them. I like them and I do live in Kentucky, so maybe they will make next year's team. We'll just have to see. Has anyone else grown or eaten these heirloom Kentucky Beefsteak tomatoes? If so, I'd love to know what you thought of them.

More talk of odd tomatoes to come soon!

Olympic Sized Pink Tomatoes and Purple Beans!

2008-08-12T20:36:00.008-04:00

Matron at Down on the Allotment posted a very creative vegetable olympic rings logo, and asked which veggies in your garden are worthy of the olympics. She asked which ones are FASTER, HIGHER or STRONGER than any others? Well I'd like to add BIGGER to that list and nominate my Glick's Brandywine tomatoes and my Chinese Red Noodle Beans.

My brandywines are more than a pound each!

This one weighed in at 1.8 pounds - a monster!

They are not supposed to weigh that much so I don't know what happened. They sure are big and delicious!

Even crazier than that are these Chinese Red Noodle Beans:

These beans are two feet long!

Look at them growing on the trellis compared to the Kentucky Wonder Beans next to them.

I measured them and they really are 24 inch pods!

It was hard to measure them accurately because our kitten Maggie kept playing with them and pulling the beans away.

I'm not really sure how to eat these Chinese Red Noodle beans. I'm going to try some smaller 18 inch pods in stir fry or simply sauteed. The only problem is that Maggie may eat them all before I can cook them. :)

Glick's Brandywine and Chinese Red Noodle Beans; Veggies of Olympic proportions!

Great post idea, Matron.

My Cherry Tomato Rainbow!

2008-08-11T15:30:00.004-04:00

The cherry tomatoes are all producing well now. I always used to grow only red cherry tomatoes. Last year I added orange and really liked them, so this year I decided to add many more colors and grow a Cherry Tomato Rainbow!

Okay, okay, I realize that the colors don't exactly match the Crayola versions. My yellow tomatoes are more of a pale orange, my black tomatoes are more of a dark purple and my white tomatoes are more of a pale yellow, but aren't they pretty cool anyway?

Going left to right up the rainbow we have Sun Sugar as our orange variety, Gardener's Delight (my favorite red cherry), and Aunt Ruby's German Cherry as our green variety. I highly recommend all three of these tomato varieties. Sun Sugar and Gardener's Delight used to be the only two that I grew.

Sun Sugar is probably the sweetest tomato there is. My kids like to eat them when they are still yellow before they ripen all the way. At that stage, they are really sour like those war-head sour candies. Last year my youngest daughter aptly named them the Sweet-Tart Tomatoes. You get really sour or really sweet - your choice.

Last year I added Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes to my list of favorite odd heirloom tomatoes. The bigger Aunt Ruby's Green is a late tomato, but these Aunt Ruby's German Cherries mature early and taste and look just like their bigger cousins. Yum!

Next we have Egg Yolk tomatoes. My daughter picked these from the Baker Creek catalog just for the novelty. In Baker Creek's pictures, they look exactly like egg yolks. My Egg Yolks just look like yellowish cherry tomatoes. They do have pretty good flavor though.

The next one is one of my new favorites, Black Cherry. They are just like miniature Black Krim tomatoes!

Lastly, as our white tomato we have Italian Ice - the only hybrid in the rainbow. I have Kimberly from Life of a Garden blog to thank for these. She saw that I was growing White Tomesol and Great White heirloom tomatoes and thought I would like to try a white cherry tomato, so she sent me some seeds. It does add to the rainbow nicely. Its flavor is, well, different. It almost doesn't taste like a tomato. I'll hold my judgement until I get to eat a few more. I'm also excited to try those White Tomesols.

I am growing two each of last year's favorites, Gardener's Delight and Sun Sugar. For the other colors, I only have one plant each. Eight cherry tomato plants will produce an almost infinite amount of cherry tomatoes! They are growing nicely on my tomato trellis.

With all of this good tomato eatin', life is just a bowl of cherries!

How can you tell when the corn is ready?

2008-08-05T17:08:00.007-04:00

How can you tell when the sweet corn is ready? When the raccoons eat half of it!

First of all, thank you to all who commented on my last post and especially those who voted on which post they would like me to write next. The winners were the potatoes in a garbage can update and the extra high raised bed trial details. Even though there weren't very many votes for my corn efforts, I have to write this one first because it is more timely.

I put up a six foot tall fence around the corn bed and I knew that wouldn't keep the coons out entirely. I was planning to fasten a roll of floppy chicken wire to the top of the fence to keep them from being able to successfully climb over it. I headed out to the corn with my roll of chicken wire only to discover that they had struck the night before:

I was too late. Look at how they diligently ate every kernel! So now, instead of taking the time to put on the chicken wire, we decided to pick the remaining ears of corn.

The raccoons ate over half of the ears but we still got a nice basket full. I'm happy with that especially considering the poor start this corn had.

Look how beautiful they look!

That last closeup doesn't really show the bi-color aspect of this corn. This is the Japanese Bicolor corn - Mirai 301BC. I first wanted to grow this early last year when I wrote a post about this Mirai corn from Park Seed.

This is a better picture of the bi-color aspect:

I have to say, Park delivered on its promise. This might very well be the best sweet corn I have ever eaten. Next year I hope to find a spot far enough in the yard to grow another variety (probably Silver Queen) along with Mirai for a true taste test.

As for this year, the Mirai was delicious but I failed in part in my battle against the coons. Before I leave you, let me at least show you how I wanted to keep them out but was too slow. First of all, I was going to aim my Scarecrow at the corn. The scarecrow was on the night of the attack, but it was guarding the beans against a groundhog attack.

Secondly, I was going to use the chicken wire like I mentioned earlier. I went ahead and fastened a portion of the wire to better show you what I had planned. This is what it would look like:

The chicken wire is fastened only at the bottom to the top of the fence. It stays floppy at the top with no support so when a raccoon attempts to climb it, it folds down on him which essentially dumps him off. Allow me to demonstrate with my daughters stuffed animal:

The ~~leopard~~ raccoon climbs the fence and reaches the chicken wire. When it continues up the chicken wire, its own weight causes the wire to bend down over it.

Not this time Ricky!

I'm pretty sure this would work well but I'll have to wait until next year to confirm it. I hope this idea can still benefit someone else this year.

I will soon be writing the raised bed post, a rainbow of cherry tomatoes post, and I will soon be dumping over the potato can to see how well that worked. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

Producing Prolific Produce!

2008-07-25T23:35:00.004-04:00

July has seen great yields from the vegetable garden. Our new harvesting containers are these "Peach Baskets", and now it is taking three or four baskets to bring in all that is ripe.

July has been the month of the tomatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic, green beans, potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and now peppers and okra.

Regardless of what else is in the basket, there are always tomatoes. The extra-early tomato plants have done very well - we are now at 400 ripe tomatoes picked! The main season tomatoes are beginning to come in and my wife says it is time to stop counting the number of tomatoes harvested. I'll probably still try to sneak a count though.

Every time we bring a basket in, our cats Macy and Maggie have to check out what is new.

I can't let them look for long because they soon begin to want to sample the veggies. See Maggie licking her lips?

We quickly put everything away in the kitchen and set the baskets down to be ready for the next harvest day. Sometimes the cats think they can get a head start on us by hanging out IN the baskets!

July has gone by way too fast! I have been overly busy. Sorry that I haven't been able to post or comment on other garden blogs. My normal job has been very busy. I work in management at a large television production company and we are in the process of moving our entire operation to a new building - hectic! I will be working the next couple of weekends as well.

I have still had time to tend the garden though, and it is doing very well. I have many pictures and a few stories to share when I get caught up.

I have a few posts in my mind ready to go and pictures to go with them. Please let me know which one of these you would like me to write first. Maybe I can squeak out one or two of them in the midst of the move. Here are the posts I have in mind:

How my corn is doing and the extraordinary pest deterrents I am employing.
How my new experiment with extra high raised beds are doing well and why.
My first attempt at worm composting. The success and failure and surprises I've seen.
This years tomato support systems.
How great the trellises are doing now that they are covered with pole beans.
This years chronicle of a nest of baby robins growing up in front of my camera.
Another garden insect photo safari.
An update on the potatoes in the garbage can.<.li>
My plans for the Fall garden.

See, I've still been active in the garden and thinking about posting. I just haven't been able to do it.

So what is the main one or two items in the above list that you would like to read about and see pictures of? I will begin posting these things in about a week.

Thank you for your continued patience and happy gardening!

Surpassing our 100th tomato harvested!

2008-07-03T10:30:00.005-04:00

My daughters were excited to take a picture of this Orange Blossom tomato because it was the 100th tomato picked this season!

After picking the rest of the 4th of July, Early Girl and New Girl tomatoes the count elevated to 136!

We know for sure that the count is 136 because our kitten Maggie counted them again for us!

Contech Scarecrow; many uses in the garden!

2008-06-30T12:21:00.002-04:00

My previous post was partly about all of the animal pest problems I have here in rural Kentucky. Although I didn't know it yet, as I was writing that post my newest animal problem was beginning. Squirrels are stealing my apples! I surprised one sitting in the apple tree and while running away, he dropped this apple from his mouth:

My previous post was also partly about my new garden gadget, the Scarecrow from Contech. This got me thinking that I remember seeing something on their website called SquirrelStop. Contech has many neat products but SquirrelStop is a bird feeder that spins rapidly when a Squirrel hangs from it. It would be pretty funny to see a surprised and dizzy squirrel get spun off of a bird feeder. In my case the Squirrel Stop would not help. How could I keep the squirrels from eating my apples?

Of course my answer was right in front of me. I was going to wait and use the Scarecrow water sprayer to defend my corn but why not try it out on the Squirrels first? They had already eaten almost all of the apples in the tree closest to the woods, but they haven't touched the next tree yet. I set up the Contech Scarecrow next to that tree but couldn't wait to see if it worked. My daughters were picking tomatoes in the garden so I called them over to the apple tree.

It works!

This is a fun gadget. The apple tree limbs blowing in the breeze do not set it off so I guess it isn't a simple motion detector. It seems to only go off if a living thing approaches. It nearly knocked a poor sparrow to the ground! The range of the detector is pretty far as well. It "saw" me working in the garden 50 feet away. The spray doesn't shoot that far but the noise would probably scare animals away even before they get wet. You can also set the radius on how much it sprays. I've got it trained just on the apple trees, but you could make it spray nearly 360 degrees. If I got one more of these I could probably guard my whole garden. Cool!

Persistence; A Gardener's Best Attribute

2008-06-28T22:06:00.001-04:00

Things don't always go as planned in the garden. This is particularly noticeable in the vegetable garden since the goal with each plant is to produce food. If the food is never eaten, that particular planting failed. Problems can range from weather issues to plant disease to pest damage. That is my common problem. Last year, a groundhog ate practically everything. What he didn't destroy the raccoons got.

What can a gardener do about these problems? Be persistent!

Growing corn has been an area where I have needed persistence for years. Raccoons have been my Nemesis here. Last year I devised a plan to beat them but when it came time to build my fence, I failed to get it done.

This year I vowed to build that fence and started the corn in soil blocks indoors. Things were progressing well until it came time to harden them off. I took the two trays of my Bicolor Mirai Corn soil block seedlings outside. All was well until we received the biggest downpour in history! It rained three inches in a hour and the soil blocks were ruined!

Instead of soil blocks, I now had a tray of soupy soil with corn plants jutting out of it. It would be impossible to separate the corn plants without severely disturbing the roots. To make matters worse, I was behind schedule on my garden expansion. I didn't even have the corn area ready for planting yet.

Instead of giving up and throwing the trays out, I decided to once again be persistent. I quickly built a new raised bed, let the corn trays dry out, did my best to separate the corn plants, planted them in the new bed and crossed my fingers.

To my surprise, they are now doing great!

Don't they look great? Oh but I still haven't built the fence and I can see the raccoons watching from the edge of the yard rubbing their little paws together in anticipation. What can I do now?

Building a fence would still be a good idea, but I may be able to get by with a little help from my friends at Contech. I now have a Contech Scarecrow that will be able to guard my precious Mirai Corn when it matures.

This is a really neat product. It is a high powered water sprayer with a sensor that detects when animals come near. Just when the hungry raccoon has its eyes on my corn it will get zapped with a noisy blast of water! I'm sure it will work great. I've already tried it out on my children and I got pretty wet setting it up too.

I will write an entire post about it soon since it is such a cool garden gadget. I sure hope it helps me finally get some good home grown corn.

Persistence is the name of the game.

Loads of Birthday Tomatoes!

2008-06-24T06:11:00.004-04:00

Last year my goal was to have the first ripe tomato by my birthday, June 24th and I had this small tomato to celebrate with:

My actual first ripe tomato last year was June 15th and the birthday one was only the fourth or fifth tomato.

This year's early tomato production has been even better! My first ripe tomato was on June 5th, and today on my birthday we have these:

A whole windowsill full of garden fresh tomatoes!My daughters and I have decided to count how many tomatoes we pick over the entire season. So far we are at 40! The most recent ones are Orange Blossom Tomatoes. They are larger than the early girl variety and much larger than the 4th of July tomatoes.

They are delicious, a great birthday tomato! They are very meaty and flavorful. This year's garden birthday present will be orange blossom BLTs - colorful, delicious and salmonella free!

Potato Plants to the top of the Garbage Can

2008-06-22T20:10:00.003-04:00

There seems to be more interest in growing potatoes in a garbage can this year. I have seen several garden bloggers doing it. I don't remember them all, but my friends Tracy at Outside and Gina at My Skinny Garden both have good starts of potatoes in a can growing.

I am very pleased with the progress of my can-o-taters so far. The plants have reached the top of the can.

It has been easier this year because I had another can of good compost, peat and soil ready ahead of time. Last year I was always scrounging for some good growing medium. Soon I will add the rest of the soil mix and the can will be completely full. It will be good timing because the potato plants are beginning to bloom.

With this method, it is hard to rob the plant of "new" potatoes early in the season like I do with other planting methods.

With the garbage can potato method, I'll wait for the plants to die back, dump the can over and harvest a whole lot of spuds!

After the can is full of soil, the only thing for me to do for the rest of the summer is to be sure they stay well watered. Then its time for baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, home made french fries, scalloped potatoes, potatoes au gratin, hash brown potatoes .....

Intercropping and Succession Planting - Keys to Square Foot Gardening

2008-06-16T10:08:00.009-04:00

I use raised beds for the vegetable garden instead of rows, and practice many Square Foot gardening techniques. I continue to expand the number of beds I grow in, but the best way to get more vegetables out of a small garden is by intercropping and succession planting.

Intercropping, or Interplanting is the practice of growing different kinds of vegetables together. Typically they have different growth patterns and therefore don't compete with one another. One example of this in my garden is that I plant lettuce and tomatoes together in the same bed. Tomatoes are planted 2 feet or more apart because they need two feet of space when they are mature. At time of transplant however, they only need about six inches of space. If I only planted tomatoes in that bed, there would be a lot of unused space for at least six weeks. By planting salad crops in that space I get maximum harvest from that space. The lettuce is harvested before the tomato plants require the space. I do the same thing with tomatoes and onions.

Succession planting is similar in that when you harvest something, you immediately plant something else in that spot. It can be the same thing or a different vegetable. In one bed, I plant Spring broccoli followed by Summer green beans followed again by Fall Brassicas. I also use beans in succession planting with lettuce and spinach. In my lettuce/tomato Intercropping example you don't succession plant after the lettuce because the tomatoes will be ready to use that space by then. This is the fundamental difference between Interplanting and Succession planting.

Sometimes I use a combination of both techniques as I do in my pea beds. In early spring I plant peas on the trellis and lettuce in the front. In one bed, I harvest some of the lettuce and plant bush cucumbers in their place. Later I harvest the rest of the lettuce allowing more room for the cucumbers (intercropping). I also plant vining cukes by the trellis after the peas are harvested (succession planting).

In the other pea bed, I also plant lettuce in front. I harvest the leaves over and over for my salads and they keep growing back. Eventually when the hot weather decides to stick around and the lettuce gets bitter, I remove all of the plants to the compost pile and plant bush bean seeds there. The peas remain on the trellis for several more weeks. The only caution here is that you have to chart where you put everything if you succession plant with seeds. You also have to remember to warn your kids friends not to step on the new bean seedlings while picking peas!

Perhaps the best example of using both techniques simultaneously is with the trellis in this pea bed. Right now I am enjoying the last of the peas on the trellis.

The heat is starting to take its toll on the pea vines and production is beginning to wane. A week or two before I remove the pea vines I plant pole bean plants right along side the peas. Remember the beans that I started in the soil blocks?

They are of nice size now so it is time to plant them. It looks funny planting them right in with the mature pea vines but soon the peas will be gone and the beans can take over the entire trellis. See the small bean plants tucked in amongst the peas?

Soon I will take all of the pea vines out and put them on the compost heap. That reminds me of a very important part of succession planting. When you start the next planting, be sure to add a generous supply of compost or organic fertilizer to re-energize the soil. Growing many plants in the same space uses up a lot of nutrients. That is okay if you concentrate on feeding the soil instead of the plants - another important key to organic gardening. Growing in raised beds and square foot gardening makes this easier too since you don't have to spread compost or fertilizer over a whole field.

I will post about the pea/bean transition again later to show you how the same trellis can serve multiple needs in the same season. Happy gardening!

Gardening, Children and Friends; A Winning Combination!

2008-06-14T21:21:00.004-04:00

I have always loved seeing my daughters enjoying the garden. Recently they had some friends over and they all joined in the act. They picked and ate all of the ripe strawberries before I could even get the camera. Then they set out to pick the peas.

These were Maestro Peas and they were magnificent with eight to ten peas per pod!

After the girls filled their bowls with these plump pea pods, they retreated to their treehouse to shell the peas.

They had so much fun with it. They did not consider it work.

They were surprised how many peas they had ready for the kitchen by the time they finished.

We cooked them for supper that night and we all thought they were delicious except for one friend, and that was only because she didn't even try them!

It was really fun for me to watch them all enjoying the harvest!

First Ripe Tomato on June 5th!

2008-06-05T23:37:00.003-04:00

The name of the tomato variety is July 4th, but here it can be called June 5th!

Only one is fully red but I guess it still counts as having a ripe tomato on June 5th.

My goal was to have a ripe tomato by June 1st but I didn't quite make it. Last year's first tomato was on June 15th so I beat that mark by 10 days. By June 15th I think we'll have lots of tomatoes ready this year. Last year's first was an Early Girl tomato. This year the Early Girls, New Girl tomatoes, and Orange Blossom tomatoes are all doing well and should be ripe in a week or two.

The first variety of course is the 4th of July tomato. In a week we should have many of them but for today we just have this one little guy.

Not big enough for a tomato sandwich but I bet it will still be delicious! After all it is home grown and organic! Yum!

Soil Blocks to the Rescue!

2008-06-03T12:24:00.002-04:00

We haven't had much rain in the past month so it has been pretty difficult to get new seeds planted out in the garden to germinate. I have had to water the bush bean area everyday to keep the top of the soil from crusting over. On days that I miss, the top layer of the soil dries out and the seeds can't break through. While dealing with this frustration I got to thinking, there has to be a better way.

What about my soil block maker?!

Beans and corn are two vegetables not usually grown indoors and transplanted because they have very delicate roots that don't take well to transplanting. Squeezing the seedlings out of a cell pack or wrestling them out of pots can be harmful to them. With soil blocks the transplant shock should be minimal or nonexistent!

A week or so ago I set out making blocks and planting seeds for my pole beans and my Mirai 301BC corn.

If you don't know what a soil block is, I wrote about them earlier this year. I got mine from Johnny's Selected Seeds. If you want to know more about soil block makers, Johnny's has a great PDF file explaining them better. Also, Jason, who has commented on this blog before, has a whole website devoted to soil blocks. He calls them potting blocks and his site is pottingblocks.com.

What will make soil blocks great for beans and corn is that there are no pots to remove, so the roots won't be disturbed. I can gently place the block in a small hole the garden and cover up around the block with garden soil.

The major difference in dealing with soil blocks under lights is the way you water them. As I have stated before, I am a big fan of bottom watering seedlings under grow lights. With the blocks, you have to spray from above daily to assure that the blocks don't dry out. After the plant roots have taken over the block, you can then lightly pour water into the block.

Here are the pole been seeds popping through the soil block:

Every seed germinated since I have better control over their conditions than if planted directly outside.

Here are the baby corn sprouts poking through on their first day:

What makes corn so difficult to grow indoors is that the taproots grow very quickly. Look at it sticking out of the soil block on day two after germinating!

These corn plants are already outside hardening off and will go into the garden very soon. The key is to transplant them only about a week after they sprout inside in the soil block.

So there you have it - soil blocks to the rescue with guaranteed germination. This morning the McCaslan pole beans were transplanted into the garden and the corn and other pole beans are waiting for tonight. Living in Kentucky, I have to grow Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans of course. My third pole bean variety is the crazy Chinese Red Noodle Bean that grows 18" pods! More on that later....

Ripe Tomatoes by June 1st?

2008-06-02T08:01:00.004-04:00

One of my goals in the garden this year was to have red ripe tomatoes by June 1st! I planted the seeds on Valentine's Day, potted them up inside multiple times, warmed the outside tomato bed with black plastic, and planted the tomato plants outside in Early April under a clear plastic tent.

June 1st has now come and gone, so its time for an update. Here are some pictures taken on May 31st:

They are not red yet, despite all of my hard work. It was an unseasonably cold May here. Even giving the plants a huge head start did not overcome the weather. I almost lost the plant on the end when we had consecutive nights of 26 degree lows. Notice how much smaller it is then the others.

Even the main season tomatoes that I planted two weeks ago have not grown a bit. I may still be able to beat last year's early tomato mark of June 15th. One thing is for sure - when I do get early ripe tomatoes, there will be a lot of them! Last year I only had two extra early plants. This year I have 12 plants of 5 different varieties. You can track both year's early tomato progress with this Label.

So am I disappointed that I didn't eat organic garden fresh ripe tomatoes yesterday? Not really. The fun is more in the journey than in the destination. There are two reasons that I am not disappointed. The first is that I still will have loads of ripe tomatoes a full month before my friends and neighbors.

The 2nd reason it didn't bother me that I couldn't enjoy red ripe tomatoes from the garden this weekend is because my family enjoyed red ripe strawberries from the garden instead!

The strawberry defense plan worked! nothing got in to eat the berries except the slugs, and now I have a great way to get rid of them too! Stay tuned for a future post about my new SlugsAway which is a little battery-operated electric fence. Weird but cool!

As for now however, I'm going to enjoy the strawberry harvest and hope that the tomatoes are ripe before June 15th.

Happy June everyone!

Potatoes in a Garbage Can?

2008-05-27T09:27:00.004-04:00

I really enjoy trying new things in the garden. It makes my friends and neighbors consider my vegetable garden as "weird". For me though, the weirder the better. People think its odd that I grow white and black tomatoes, that I use strange methods for supporting those tomatoes, that I don't garden in rows and that I grow many things up tall trellises.

My new "weird" thing in the garden is growing potatoes in a garbage can!

This is not my original idea, but it is a great one. You drill a bunch of holes in the bottom of the can, fill it with a foot of good compost and soil and then plant the seed potatoes. You probably should only put four potatoes or cured potato pieces in the can but I over did it a bit.

Then you cover the potatoes, water well and watch 'em grow. When the tops get about a foot tall you add about six more inches of good soil to the can, burying the lower portions of the stems. Keep that up all summer and eventually the can will be filled to the top with soil and compost and the plants will be growing out of the top of the can.

More tubers will form all along the stems that you buried so at harvest time you will have a whole can full of potatoes! This is my first year trying this, but I know it will work. I have seen other gardeners do it successfully and I have applied this principle on a smaller scale before. For the past few years I have grown potatoes in a small raised bed and added extra wood sides and more compost as they grow. My 10-year old daughter even did this last year in her garden. If you don't want to have an ugly trash can in your garden and you, unlike me, don't want to be called "weird", you could at least try my daughter's wood box around the potatoes idea. You could probably even add it to some of your existing potato plants.

As for me, these aren't the only potatoes I'm growing but I am looking forward to playing with my ugly blue potato can at the end of the garden. I planted them a few days ago and now they have sprouted!

Weird gardening is fun.

Defending the Strawberries!

2008-05-20T23:21:00.001-04:00

When it comes to the garden plants, my cat isn't the only animal that I need to be worried about. Outside there are raccoons, groundhogs, skunks, opossums, foxes, deer, and many birds that are watching my garden to see what is ripe and ready for the taking! Last year, the critters ate a lot of my garden! The first major front that needs defending this year are the strawberries. It looks like it is going to be a great crop!

We planted these strawberries last year using the hill method. The hill method for strawberries is not mounding up the dirt, or planting on top of small hills. We planted one long row of strawberry plants and then meticulously cut the runners back as the plants sent them out. We didn't let any daughter plants form like you would in a matted row system. So much energy stays in the main plant that the plant grows twice as big as they would with the matted row method. The plants grow to be two feet tall! Since there is only a single row of plants, the plant "looks like" a hill, which is why it is called the hill method.

So now that last year's work is paying off and I have many green strawberries ready to ripen, there is no way I'm going to let the animals have them! Tonight, as it was getting dark I gathered up some scrap wood, a hammer and nails, the roll of flexible fence that I recently bought, and the garden shears (for clipping back the runners) and got to work.

I built a little wood trellis down the center of the strawberry bed.

I then stapled the flexible fence to the landscape timbers on one side and stretched the fencing up over the wood trellis. On the other side I stapled the fence to removable scrap boards. This formed a little temporary A-frame fence.

I attached the fence in three foot sections, overlapping the sections as I went along. The removable boards can be lifted up a section at a time to reach in for harvesting.

I'm pretty sure this will keep the animals out. The only thing left to be concerned with are slugs. I haven't seen any on the strawberries yet but I have found some on the lettuce. I plan to put out saucers of beer to attract the slugs when the berries ripen.

It is crazy how defensive you have to be with food gardening. I am looking into what it would take to put an electric fence around the entire perimeter of the garden. That would take care of everything but the deer. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself with this though. Tonight, I can sleep a little easier knowing that my strawberries can now ripen in peace. I can hardly wait.

I'm off to bed to dream about....Strawberry Shortcake!
mmmmmmmm!

Heirloom Pepper Plants Attacked!

2008-05-18T23:25:00.006-04:00

Today I managed to plant out many tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, more potatoes, and peppers. Before I could get the peppers outside to harden off and then to be planted, they were attacked. I got them at the Baker Creek Festival. They were only inside under my lights for a few days when I noticed holes in some of the leaves and other leaves were outright missing.

There was a lot of damage but I couldn't tell what caused it. These were heirloom sweet bell peppers. I once wrote about pests being more attracted to heirloom tomatoes than hybrids. I guess its also true for heirloom peppers.

I just had to figure out what caused this devastation so I set up my new Cannon PowerShot G9 camera on a tripod with high speed motion detectors set to take a picture of the perpetrator overnight.

When I checked the camera the next day, I found this!

That's right, Macy - our pet cat was eating my precious pepper plants! There have been hundreds of plants in the basement under lights since Valentine's Day and she has never bothered anything before. These must be pretty sweet sweet pepper plants.

On the bright side, only one plant is damaged badly - the Chocolate Beauty Pepper. The others should still be okay even with holes in their leaves. I went ahead and planted them all out in the garden and we will just hope for the best.

As for Macy, after I scolded her a bit we made up and she apologized.

Of course I quickly forgave her since she is such a sweet kitty.

My daughters are gardeners too!

2008-05-13T23:26:00.008-04:00

I still have much to write about our visit to Baker Creek, but for the last two evenings my time was occupied with spring planting. The best part about it was that my daughters helped.

Tonight my 14 year old helped plant the third and final wave of the early tomatoes. We planted "Siletz" and "World's Earliest". It was a big help having someone help me remove the plants from the recycled CD spindle containers that they were planted in.

We put crushed egg shells in the planting holes to give the tomatoes added calcium.

My 11 year old daughter is great with a rake. Last night she worked up the soil in several of the existing raised beds.

I have different sized beds but I think my daughters like the 4'x4' beds the best. Just like Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Gardening says, it is easy to reach any part of the bed from all sides. Here my daughters are planting green beans in one 4 foot by 4 foot bed:

Another great thing about raised beds is that you can sit or kneel in the grass and reach in to work the bed. Below my daughter is planting red onions next to the first early tomato batch. Onions are great companion plants for tomatoes.

Gardening with my daughters is great fun. I love when they want to help, but I never make them. When I was a kid, hoeing the garden was part of my chores and I hated it. It took me many years after that to actually like gardening. That is probably also why I don't like hoes (sorry Carol).

I want my daughters to enjoy gardening, and I think they do. They have grown up playing in the garden and helping as much or as little as they want. Now that they are getting older, when they do help, it helps a lot! Why this is great is not because more work gets done. This is great because it gives us some wonderful quality time to talk and be together in nature. I'll gladly take as much of that as possible, even if nothing we planted together grows at all.

Gardening with your children is a priceless gift indeed.

The Baker Creek Spring Planting & Heritage Festival

2008-05-11T20:40:00.011-04:00

It has been a whole week already since we were at the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Spring Festival. We went both days and had a great time. It was fantastic! We took several extra days and made a family vacation out of it. We also visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home & Museum, The home of the "Throwed Rolls", Lambert's restaurant, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

As for the Baker Creek Spring Festival, it is pretty hard to explain so I will show it to you instead. Following are many pictures taken at the festival.

There were lots of great farms selling plants and other vendors:

There were at least three areas with fantastic live music and entertainment going on constantly. This was my daughters' favorite part of the festival.

There were also great speakers in the speakers barn. I was too busy listening to them to take pictures but my favorite was Len Pense. The day after the festival, we went to his farm to visit his revolutionary garden. I will be writing an entire post about him soon.

In addition to the speakers, the music and the vendors at the festival, it was fun seeing all of the buildings that make up "Bakersville".

Of course the most important building at Bakersville is the Baker Creek Seed Store where you can get seeds of hundreds (maybe thousands) of common or highly unusual top quality heirloom varieties!

I only bought a dozen or so seed packets because I had already ordered from Baker Creek by mail. Next year maybe I'll go back to the festival and buy all of my seeds there instead of by mail. I strongly recommend any serious gardener to do the same. If you don't want to wait a whole year to visit Baker Creek, they have another big festival in August and smaller ones every month.

I loved our trip to Baker Creek. In my next post I will let you know about some of the cool things I bought at the festival and about some of the people I met. And then I have to give a big update on my gardens here in Kentucky. We are now in the busy gardening season. Isn't it great?

Busy potting up tomatoes and getting ready for Baker Creek

2008-05-02T12:49:00.005-04:00

I have been extremely busy potting up over 100 tomato plants this week.

I had to transfer them from cell packs to individual peat pots or plastic cups. I wasn't planning to transplant so many, but lots of my friends and family are interested in my crazy heirloom varieties. I should have stopped saying "sure you can have a few of them" a long time ago. I was hoping to be able to speed things up this year by using soil blocks, but abandoned that effort early on. I don't have the larger 4 inch block maker yet which I would like for these tomatoes. I try to give these precious little tomato seedlings a lot of room to develop into strong healthy plants. I hope to get the larger soil block maker for next year.

As for this year, I have a few more varieties left to transplant today before we leave for the Baker Creek Spring Planting festival in Missouri that I wrote about in the last post.

I'm taking my laptop with me so I may still have Internet access. Email me or comment here if you will be at the festival too. My family and I are looking forward to it. See you in Bakersville!

Green Thumb Sunday Tomatoes and Going to Bakersville!

2008-04-27T09:15:00.005-04:00

The early tomatoes that were planted outside this week are doing great! Here is my first baby picture:

See it? Its right in the center of the picture, small but oh so cute. Grow quickly little fella!

Around here folks always say that if you don't like the weather just wait a day or two because it changes drastically. It works the same way in reverse too. Thursday and Friday were perfect Spring tomato weather days with highs in the 80's and lows in the 60's. Last night however it got down to 36 degrees and tonight is supposed to be even lower! Yesterday I had to spring into action and construct the temporary lean-to greenhouse. Last night, this it what my early tomatoes looked like:

Here is what they looked like inside:

It was enough to get them through last night. Hopefully tonight and the rest of the cold front will be okay too. If I would have left them out in the open, I probably wouldn't have them today for Green Thumb Sunday!

Don't forget to visit other Green Thumb Sunday participants!

Join

Next Sunday I will get to be with the man who possibly has the greatest green thumb of all - Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

What an amazing business he and his wife Emilee have established by collecting and growing 1200 unique heirloom seed varieties. The reason I may get to meet him next Sunday is because I'm headed to Bakersville! Next Sunday and Monday, May 4th and 5th is Baker Creek's Annual Spring Planting and Heritage Festival.

Yes, Baker Creek is in Missouri and I live in Kentucky. They are 9 hours away but I can't think of a better gardening pilgrimage. Last year they had over 5000 people attend and many vendors. It will be neat to see their set up, the town they have built and the period costumes and demonstrations. The speakers at the festival should be spectacular as well. If you live anywhere near Mansfield Missouri or are willing to drive long distances like me, you should really check out this event. I would love to hear from anyone who has attended in the past and find out if anyone I know is going this year. It would be fun to meet up with a fellow garden blogger or someone who reads this blog.

I am pretty excited about going. My family and I are making a whole vacation out of it. See you in Bakersville!

Big Grow Light Stand Annex

2008-04-25T16:33:00.005-04:00

Much has been going on in the garden lately. I have planted broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, chard, peas, potatoes and my first installment of extra-early tomatoes outside. Inside has been even busier. I now have peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and over 100 tomato seedlings under the lights. The problem is that I still have 10 giant extra-early tomato plants also under the lights. Things were getting pretty crowded!

I couldn't fit everything in and I couldn't get the lower lights to go any higher. The plants were growing into and over the lights.

The only way to fix this without abandoning my extra-early tomato plan was to build a light stand annex. I rounded up another old table, some more hooks chains and shop lights and presto - a lovely annex on the other side of the room!

They are already growing up to touch the lights, but I can keep moving the lights up higher now.

Moving these plants around has reminded me that I never shared with you my creative container choices. Anything goes when I get into the larger pot size.

I won't be able to use these double pots again since I had to cut out the bottom. I have already planted some of these out in the garden and I had to completely cut away the pot to get the plant out. The sand pail is a better idea. Just remember, if you use something that wasn't originally intended to be a planter, you need to drill holes in the bottom for drainage. This sand bucket won't hold water anymore!

I have already transplanted five tomato plants in the prepared outside bed. Soon I will have pictures of them. They were Early Girl, New Girl, Orange Blossom, and two 4th of July plants. I did manage to put black plastic down over the bed to heat up the soil but I have not yet built my makeshift lean-to greenhouse to go over them. I haven't had to yet because it has been unseasonably warm this week in the mid 80's! Next week's weather will not be so tomato friendly though. It is supposed to only get to about 50 degrees with overnight lows in the 30s - yikes! That is why it is crazy to plant tomatoes outside here in April. I hope I can get my plastic up soon and it works!

In the meantime I will be potting up the inside tomatoes to even bigger containers. They are looking very happy in their cozy warm indoor environment.

Too bad I can't grow them to fruit stage inside. Sooner or later they have to brave the elements outside. I am still dreaming of ripe tomatoes here in northern zone 5 by June 1st! Wish me luck!

Garden Journal: Peas, Potatoes, Lettuce, Tomatoes

2008-04-11T21:44:00.002-04:00

I can't believe it has taken me a whole week to post this. Last Saturday, when we got home from vacation I took inventory on the garden happenings and wrote it all in my paper journal like the old days. I really do like paper records better than digital ones, but journaling on the computer allows one to post photos much easier.

So I think I will be journaling here at Garden Desk. These posts will be a bit different than my others because it will just be a list of how things are going. It may be more for me than for my readers, but you are welcome to read along. Maybe you can help me by commenting on how I could fix my problems or improve things.

So here goes, my first 2008 Garden Journal - 4/5/08:

I already wrote about the new potatoes I bought last week. I have been pretty frustrated with my peas. The germination rate is listed as 7 to 14 days but after 18 days there was still nothing. Finally, they are emerging!

In the pea beds, I transplanted the lettuce plants that I grew inside and hardened off in the cold frame.

I was delighted to find that the beds were teeming with worms! I hope that means that the soil here is healthy.

Now the beds look prettier. I hope the lettuce grows bigger quickly.

Also growing well outside are potato onions and garlic. Inside, the early tomato plants were looking great.

Uh oh - upon closer inspection maybe not. What are these tiny spots on the Orange Blossom tomatoes?

I had no idea, but a gardener is only as good as his gardening book library. I hit the books and found out that I had Septoria Leaf Spot.

I found it in my trusty Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals. It has an extremely long title, but it is also extremely helpful! It says that Septoria Leaf Spot is Fungal. The control is simply to remove and destroy infected leaves, so that is what I did. Now, a week later I'm happy to report that there are no new signs of the fungus. I will have to keep a close eye on them. Luckily it was only on three of the four Orange Blossom tomatoes and none of the others. Even if the Septoria leaf spot comes back and damages or destroys the Orange Blossom tomatoes, I have five other early varieties ready and will be raising almost 30 other varieties. I guess I could afford to lose one variety.