Some Transplanting

This weekend Dierdre and I transplanted all the beans and zucchini, and planted the green onions, onions, carrots, and some sweet potato chunks that had sprouted in the pantry! We'll see if they actually grow. Everything else is coming along quite nicely, with at least the cucumbers ready to go in by the coming weekend.

I also punched the holes in the irrigation tube and tested the system out. It is now operational and seems to work fairly well.

Irrigation

We did quite a bit of work this weekend. On Saturday we borrowed a rototiller and tilled all the beds. I also found free horse manure on CL, and the people even have a tractor to load up your truck. That was much easier and cheaper then buying 30 bags of the stuff at the big box store. So all that got mixed in with the tiller as well. Then today I installed drip line and a timer/filter/inline fertilizer deal. Should significantly simplify the watering and fertilizing process this year.

Here we go again

With some encouragement from Dierdre we decided to plant a big fall garden again this year. We started most of the seeds today. We planted:

• Contender Bush Beans
• Olympian Hybrid Cucumbers
• Dwarf Gray Sugar Peas (bush)
• Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
• Legend Tomatoes
• Tyee Hybrid Spinach
• Black Beauty Zucchinis
• Calwonder 300 Bell Peppers
• Cilantro
• Oregano
• Thyme
• Aster, California Poppies, and Cosmos flowers

We have Imperator Carrots, Early Yellow Globe Onions, and Evergreen White Bunching Onions left to plant, but we are going to try and start them directly in the garden, so that we can plant all the seed (it would take way too many cups otherwise) When I did it in cups, as each seed just yields one carrot or onion, etc... I ended up with not too many of them. So this time all the seeds go in rows in the garden, and then we'll thin them out if necessary.

Hopefully next weekend I'll fertilize and till the garden, then we'll get that stuff planted.

Transplanted everything except the tomatoes yesterday. They are still pretty small. Everything else seemed pretty ready to go. The beans were maybe even overdue. Today I sprayed them with Organocide, since the white flies seem to already be out and about.

Today I spread manure, mixed in soil sulpher, ammonium phosphate, and then turned the soil again, mixing everything in as best I could. I then otherwise raked and prepared the beds for planting, and put up my garden fence. I just need to water it all in a time or two. Plants themselves are coming along nicely, though due to company last night, I did not water the plants, and they got pretty wilty. A good watering this afternoon seemed to snap most of them right back, though a few continued to look a little rough. Not sure if I'll lose them or not.

Season Two Begins

Well, it's been ages since my last post. As the fall harvest is going on elsewhere in the country, here in the sunny southwest it is planting time for the winter veggie garden. I used my seeds from last year, as I had plenty left over, and I kept them in the refrigerator. So far they seem to be sprouting just fine. I'm not planting as much overall as I did last year, but I am planting more of some things and less of others. It is my second go after all, so hopefully I've learned a few things. For example, eight zucchini plants (or something like that) that I planted last year, is a LOT of Zucchini, and really two or three healthy plants with lots of room will probably suffice. Somewhat the same story for the cucumbers, which I hope to actually get some of this year. Last year they were destroyed by spider mites before they could yield any of their fruit. This year, more beans, as they can be easily frozen and stored for later. Same thing for the peas. Also more lettuce, planted in weekly intervals, to get a more continuous harvest. Etc.... I'll post pics later, but suffice to say the sprouts and cups look about the same. I am however, only digging two plots as opposed to one. Everything was started from seed in the cups on Labor Day.

Pass the Peas

I picked a nice bag of peas yesterday to share at community dinner. They are tasty. Peas, beets, lettuce, and spinach are all that is left. We had several frosts over about two weeks centered around Christmas that killed off everything else. I need to get my palm tree removed so that I can set up my permanent raised bed layout, and finish spreading gravel in the rest of the back yard.