Potting Up Tomatoes is Now Easier!

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

Contech Scarecrow; many uses in the garden!

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

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.