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...