something keeps cutting leaves

...off of my pepper plants.
...and off of the garden beans.
...and something ate the corn when it was 8 inches tall... sheared off the whole thing, and took the leaves.

54 degrees at 6:30am on July 15th

Why does weather.com have a forecast of a low of 65 degrees today

Forecast Conditions

Today
Jul 15

Mostly Sunny

High 84°
Low 65°

when right now it is 54 degrees?

Right Now for Lansdale, PA (19446)

Sunny 54°F Feels Like 54°F Updated Jul 15 06:25 a.m. ET

Building a Trellis for the garden

In hopes for great things this year in the garden, I wanted to have several solid trellis built. The hope, no the expectation is for tomato plants reaching for the sky and cucumbers and beans that climb until there's nowhere else to go. And I definitely want to give watermelons and even pumpkins the chance to grow off the ground. It'll be fun to see what these things will support.

I decided to build ones according to the square foot gardening design, using conduit and nylon garden webbing. And I figured I might as well go whole hog and try building ones that have rounded corners because I like things to be difficult. Rounded corners means bending pipe... which of course, I have never done. So I put myself in a learning on the job position and head to the store.
First, I needed to buy the conduit. After looking around, I decide on the 1/2 inch diameter because it seems like a strong enough width. I was looking for lengths of 5 feet. But when I was looking at the prices, this is what I saw.
The conduit was $1.77 for 5 feet.

Whereas the price for 10 feet of conduit was $1.65.

This bit of pricing wizardry aside, I learned quickly that it is pretty easy to cut conduit if you have a hacksaw, which I have. So, I bought pipe and a pipe bender, which was actually not cheap, I think it was around $40, so finding one to borrow would have been a better thing to do.

Making a Trellis
First, here were the materials I had.

10 10' lengths of 1/2" conduit
Pipe bender
Hacksaw
Measuring tape
Some 2x4s
Coupling (for holding the pipe together)

Next I cut the pipe into 5' lengths


After a test run bending one of the pipes, I found that 2.5 inches was the right length from the end at which to bend the pipe. So, I marked the end of each pipe 2.5 inches from the end and used a pipe bender (following the little attached instruction booklet and the example of student pipe bending videos on youtube). and voila! Bent pipe.


To bend the other side, I lined the first bent side up between 2 blocks of wood and did my best to keep it perpendicular to the floor, while I bent the other side.

While it was not a perfect method, it did make the 2 bends parallel enough for my purposes.

After the pipe was bent into a u-shape.

Then, I connected the U to 2 straight 5' lengths of conduit with the connectors.


And behold, the basic structure of the trellis


Setting it up
I have fewer pictures here. To set up the trellises, I put rebar into the ground next to the boxes to support the structure. In order to make sure that the rebar wasn't too bent, I tried fitting conduit over each one in the store before putting it in the cart. Once it was set up, I tied the netting on. I was able to find the netting at a local garden store called the Rhoads Garden but it is also think it is available online through burpee.com.
Here is a picture of a set up trellis after the netting has been tied on.

weeding

I always ONLY do my weeding with a martini.

I highly recommend it.

something has cut down my sprouting okra and muskmelons

Leaves completely cut off of the sprout. Bah! Not sure what it is. Didn't see anything nearby asleep or crawling in the soil.
Except, ants. I think I have lots and lots of ants. And they crawl all over the pepper plants, which I think would make the plants prime candidates for aphids. Not sure, though, if that would sever leaves from the sprouts though.

dead red pepper and good sprouts

One of my red peppers is gone. The leaves pretty much shriveled and either fell off or drooped so that they weren't useful anymore. We've been getting sooooo much rain this spring. Although I think the beds have pretty good drainage, it has definitely been a moisture onslaught.
Out of the 8 lima beans I planted, 1 has sprouted.
Out of the 8 garden beans, ditto.

As for the outlook from today,

Chance of Precipitation

	Today Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri 50% 60% 50% 10% 10% 40% 10% 10% 20% 60%

We are in no need of watering.

On the plus side, 3 canteloupe sprouted.
So, with that in mind, I need to build trellises and soon. I'll probably be heading out to the UK this weekend and it could be for 2 weeks, so I need to get things in place. I splurged and bought the new Square Foot Gardening book to have it on hand. I will likely use its directions for building several trellises, which will require a trip to the hardware store for fence and pipe and to the Burpee Outlet store to get the garden trellis netting.

And for kicks, I put in watermelon seeds and pumpkin seed in the ground this morning. Definitely need a trellis definitely.

As for the state of the state, here is how things are looking.

We have a couple yellow cherry tomatoes.

The mushmelons have sprouted. Yeah, canteloupe!

Cucumbers are coming along slowly but I'm not worried yet.

Okra has sprouted. I will be psyched if I can grow this successfully.

And we have a lil green tomato on the beefsteak tomato vine. We also have more cherry tomatoes on other vines. So far so good on the forgiving tomato plant front.

Planted: jalapeno, okra, tomatoes

4 okra: Box 4 - DB, DC and Box 5 - AB, DB
2 jalapeno (seeds) - Box 4 CB and Box 5 CB
16 chives: Box 4 DD
2 Tomatoes (San Marzano) - Box 4 - AC, AD
1 Tomato (yellow pear) - Box 4 - AA

More on Swiss Chard sprouts

After a little digging around, I came across this swiss chard page on growingtaste.com.

A chard "seed" is actually a cluster of seeds in a dried fruit: often, several seedlings will grow from each fruit; hand-thinning is almost always necessary (and important). Chard is notoriously slow to germinate, so the seedlings may emerge over a relatively long period of time, making a stand of different sizes and ages of seedlings.

So, there it is. when the seedlings are another half inch or so, I'll have to thin.

Swiss Chard sprouts

For the swiss chard, I am pretty sure I planted a total of 8 seeds, four per square, each 6" apart. The seeds are pretty big, so I think I would remember cramming more than one below the soil. All of the swiss chard though pops up with multiple sprouts. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to cut down any of them to let only one produce or not. For now, I'll leave it, but I may need to do some research here.

Planted: Radishes, Lima Beans, Garden Beans, Raab

16 Radishes: Box 3 CA
18 Lima Beans (Baby Fordhook): Box 4 CB, Box 5 CB
18 Garden Beans (French Filet): Box 4 BB, Box 5 BB
3 Broccoli Raab: Box 4 AB, AC, AD

Rainy day today

We look like we're getting the rain and cool air today. Nothing but 50-something degrees, gray skies and fat ol' rain drops. This is because I planted muskmelon (cantaloupe) seeds yesterday, which I am told needs average soil temperatures to be warm. Well, it is supposed to be in the 70s tomorrow, so we'll mend this temporary temp dip shortly.

The marketmore cucumbers (Box 3, Column D) popped up yesterday.


And a couple of the Kentucky Wonder garden beans (Box 6, Column A) did, too.


And you may be able to see a few of these sprouts in the photo, but our make you feel good about yourself, tried and true swiss chard is coming up too.

Planted: Cilantro, Basil, Muskmelons, tomatoes???

8 Cilantro - Box 3 AA, AB
8 Basil (Genovese Italian) - Box 3 BA, BB
16 Basil (Genovese Italian) - Box 1 Row C
4 Muskmelon (Earlichamp) (Cantaloupe) - Box 4 Row A

I removed all of the radishes from Box 1. They did not fair so well. I'll replant and get them some more sun. We'll see if that does the trick.

Memorial Day Weekend

Look at the garden and our pine needle walkways! Cedar Run Landscapes sells pine needle mulch which Lauren and I took a shine to. There is cardboard underneath everything, so I don't expect too many weeds to come up through the walkways. It is looking almost like a garden... if only I could get something to grow ;)

Alex was here this weekend. He helped me trim the trees to give the garden a bit more light during the day. I think it will continue to be less than optimal with sunlight for the garden, but we'll see what happens over the summer.
Alex also started digging around the yard to see what is busted with the sprinkler system. It appears to have been sub-optimally built and further destroyed by the changes the previous owners did through remodeling the house and regrading the yard. The best option seems to be to redo the whole thing. I'm excited by the prospect of getting water directly to the beds through underground pipes and whatnot. This may take some time though... it is quite a mess.

Planted: Salad Bowl, Butterhead, Carrots, Parsley

8 Lettuce Leaf (Salad Bowl): Box 3 BC, BD
8 Lettuce Butterhead (Tom Thumb): CC, CD
8 Flat Italian Parsley: Box 3 AC, AD
16 Carrots (Carnival Blend): Box 3 CB

Charlene planted the carrots!

Alex brought his knowledge to the yard and advised us to soak the seeds overnight.

Planted: Swiss Chard, Fennel, Cucumbers, Garden Beans

8 Swiss Chard: Box 2 CC, CD
8 Fennel: Box 2 DC, DD
8 Cucumbers (Marketmore): Box 3 Column D
32 Garden Beans (Pole) (Kentucky Wonder): Box 6 Column A

radish envy

What it is is not what I was going for.
 
Common wisdom places this as either a lack of sun or too much nitrogen in the soil. Let's assume lack of sun. Leaves have grown in on trees and perhaps my placement of the garden is not ideal.

garden under construction

 

rise and fall of the cucumbers - part 1

I started seeds a week ago.



15 tomatos (that's a lot) - 5 sugar sweeties (cherry), 5 brandywine, 5 san marzano.
5 cucumbers - marketmore.

The cucumbers sprouted in 5 days to much fanfare and hoopla around the house.
I proceeded to water them and bring them into full sunshine.

Full, 95 degree F sunshine, with the cover on or off, I can't remember.
I killed those cucumbers as soon as they were born.

Layout

So, the planned layout for the boxes is in my mind. Essentially, it will be something along these lines:

1	2	3
6	5	4

I decided to figure this all out now because there were deep footprints next to the tomatoes and in the lettuces. I need a fence. Doesn't have to be perfect right now, but any barricade to keep, what I believe is the neighbors' dogs out of the small patch of earth I have claimed as my own.
I dug up the fence posts that marked off the previous owners leaf, branch, trash pile and used those as my four corners. Also, bought about 50' of 3' high fence to wrap around. With the existing fencing around the old leaf pile, this gave adequate space.

Further identification of what is where in each box I've done is by a row/column naming, so I can track what I planted when and where.

Row D	AD	BD	CD	DD
Row C	AC	BC	CC	DC
Row B	AB	BB	CB	DB
Row A	AA	BA	CA	DA
	Column A	Column B	Column C	Column D

First Planting

With a clear sense of impatience, I went ahead and planted radishes and carrots and tomato plants and lettuces.
In Box 1 (see Layout post), I planted 2 rows of radishes and 3 rows of carrots in Row B. I planted an entire packet of Lettuce Mesclun mix in Row A. And 4 different tomato plants in Row D.

The result, a mix of Wow! green things are growing tempered with Yep, still don't know what I'm doing. I also, planted 6 peppers in Box 2.






I picked up a copy of Square Foot Gardening (my parents used to watch this on PBS when I was a kid) from the Horsham Library. I learned that I planted the radishes and carrots and lettuces all wrong.
I'm waiting the radishes and carrots out to see what I can see, mostly. Actually, I transplanted half the radishes close to the tomato plants. This is probably a mistake. None of my radishes seem to be showing the real roots that make them recognizable as radishes. They might not be getting enough sun.
Also, moved about 16 lettuces to Box B. We'll see how this goes. Box 1 will likely be completely redone in the near future, but that happens regularly anyway... right?

what I don't know...

... could fill many books. Early/mid April I trekked around to the hardware stores with the thought of putting together boxes for a garden. We moved in late January into a house that has space in the backyard. Aside from just having space, it is space we can work with.
From Lowes I picked up 4 8' x 8" cedar boards and had the store cut them in half. With a couple 2 1/2" L brackets, the two boxes were born. I went out back, inexpertly scoped our a place for the two boxes, dug out the layer of sod, and plopped the 4' x 4' boxes on the ground.
I figure dirt needed to be added, so went to the nursery down the street Green Acres and bought some 10 bags. Each box needs more than 5 bags, so I went back to get some more. Hence, it begins...