Picture post

I got my Bountiful Gardens seed order yesterday. That was fast. The seeds look good and there are plenty of them.
I got things like SeaKale, Schizandra,  Serviceberry, Amole and Hawthorn, among other things

My Horizon Herbs order has not shipped yet, i looked up my account and it says backorder.... so i guess i won't know for a while.  I'm a little annoyed, i wish the website was kept up to date better.  If something is unavailable it should not be purchasable until it is ready. Its not a huge problem to me, but i'm just sayin'.....

Shopping bag-full in the fridge

Out in the garden i have more yellow squashes.  I'm still enjoying it but the yearly novelty has worn off.
I need to pick more green beans today and i'm out of room in the freezer so i will eat or give them away.
They aren't producing enough for a big enough canner-load that i'd consider worth the effort.  If i had ripe tomatoes i'd do some cans of beans and some cans of tomatoes in one load.
I have been enjoying the Canning forum at the Ball website.  Its a bit slow there, but the members do answer questions within a day and seem to know their stuff.  They are also patient with multiple questions.

I have an  Artichoke!

And... what is this?

A little closer....

Ooooh!  Its turning color!

I didn't expect Siberia to be the first to start ripening. It was the last tomato seedling i was able to get in the garden and it was not the first to flower. Its also partially shaded from both ends- the corn in the morning and the other tomatoes by the afternoon....

And look at all these green tomatoes!

Even the Topsy Turvy is putting a real effort forward.

Size comparison with the onions

Hale's Best i think....

Are you ready for some Football?   Almost.

Unfortunately the Pony Yellow cracked,  but there are more.
;;

Surprised this missed my daughter's attention....

Carnival squash

The great pumpkin turning orange

A  Point One cabbage that seems to have fully recovered

Corn silk

And tassels

Siberian Motherwort

The patio set...  sans camp chairs. It was threatening rain so we put them away.  We got those Coleman folding canvas chairs. They are more convenient than non-foldy chairs because we can take them anywhere and they store much easier.

And this is Chuck...  Chuck likes collard greens....

Chuck won't be eating my collard greenss anymore, since he has been relocated to a nice place about 8 miles from here.

Oh, and here's what my hubby calls my Nuclear Reactor

Its the warning stickers that freak him out.


We've had sporadic rain showers but nothing substantial. It has gotten hotter in the last day or so and humidity was really high today. Nothing like the middle of the US is getting.

Still trying to keep up on weeding. That seems to be the way of it this time of year.
The seeds i got from Bountiful Gardens will likely be Wintersown since they are shrubby or hardy type plants.

I need to sort through my collection so i have some idea of what i have going on or else i will end up buying even more seeds....  i can't use them all as it is!


,

Tomatoes....

They have 4 days to ripen if i am going to meet my goal of garden tomatoes before August.
I have never written it down anyplace that i can remember but i don't know for sure when tomato season usually starts.

A lot of them are getting pretty big but no obvious ripening yet.

I tamed the Birdhouse gourd yesterday. I had been pulling at it and trying to redirect the way it grew, but it was going where it wanted anyway.  So i got the big kitchen scissors out. Anything going toward the center of the garden was removed.  I discovered a few little watermelon fruits were hiding under all those leaves.  Some are oval and plenty that are perfectly round.
The gourd was also crawling over my rosemary plot and the two strawberries from seed that made it (those are looking good actually)  and the Shiso plant.
I'll have to look back at my seed list to remind myself of which plants are watermelon, and which are cantaloupe type, also which ones the oval ones belong to.  I know Pony Yellow is a round type, but that is as much as i am sure of.
 

I also toned down hubby's pumpkin. It was getting impossible to get past it in the row and it was encroaching on my onions.  I also had to trim and redirect my summer squash plants. They were trying to crawl into the aisles and they were shading out my globe artichokes.  I had expected my globe artichokes  to be taller in their first year than they turned out to be.  They are barely 8" off the ground, if that. I have no idea if that is normal.  One did try to produce a tiny choke about the size of my thumb. The plants are  fairly wide but not tall at all.

I have lots of things to take pictures of to keep the monthly/weekly growth comparisons current.

From the back:

 

 

 

 

More planting today.

Hubby was tired of looking at the mini greenhouses in the middle of the far end of the driveway.  So, i decided that the rest of the stuff could live temporarily in the empty part of the Tomato Row.  Corn might go there later, but for now there is just a few feet of radishes,  but plenty of room leftover between the radishes and the tomatoes.
So the greenhouses are ready to be put away for a while and all the  plants are technically in the garden... heh.

But i actually did plant the summer squash seedlings and sowed the bulb fennel seeds. I also planted the burdock and globe artichoke seedlings.

Still waiting on the Banana melon seeds to sprout. They are the only melon that wasn't ready for its hill. One actually has sprouted, but i'm doing 3 per hill, so i am waiting for it to have friends.

I put a wired remote thermometer inside the hoops where the tomatoes are, and at ground level the temperature reached 85 degrees around noontime. It feels nice and humid in there too when i reached in to place the thermometer wire inside. Actual outside temps were about 72 and 40% humidity.  So it is definitely creating an early summer climate under the Reemay and i bet the soil is much warmer than it would be without it.  I bet it would be cooler on a breezy day.

Since the pepper and eggplant seedlings were going to be outside anyway i went ahead and planted them too. I imagine they will stay warmer in the garden soil, under the hoops than they would in their little pots in the greenhouses.  I got the "Fooled You" Jalapeno,, New Ace sweet pepper, Slim Jim eggplant and the Scarlet Chinese eggplant all in. The only one left out is the Zsa Zsa sweet pepper seedlings.  I managed to get 3 so far out of the last 6 seeds i sowed on a heat pad.  It looks like a couple more might come up-  but i will wait to plant them because they took so long to sprout, if i pant them too early i bet they won't grow even a smigen more at this rate.

All i have left to plant are a few more tomato seedlings that just came up a few days ago-  Siberia and Empire....
The odd cabbage and Swiss chard seedlings that i extracted from the onion flats, a few brussels sprouts, hopefully some cauliflower- i have all but given up on them...  the original wintersown sprouts are still tiny.
Then, the rutabaga, the salsify seedlings, beets, the Appaloosa beans and the string beans will go in, then the corn when it warms up more and the radishes are almost ready to come out.

Forecast overnight low tonight is 47F
Sunday its 49
Monday:54
Tuesday: 58
Wednesday:49
 No rain in sight as of now.

The grapevine still seems happy and there have been no woodchuck  raids on my garden yet.
I can see that i will have a lot of weeding to do throughout the summer. There are things popping up all over the place.

I still don't think the carrots and parsnips are even close to sprouting yet. I can't see anything happening there.  I have never had good luck with carrots. 

New seeds and old books.

More seeds came in yesterday.  The ones from Specialty Perennials.  I was happy that i got my seeds in 9 days,  from what i was told at Gardenweb, he often takes much longer to deliver. I was content with the idea of having to wait a few weeks or months.

I also found my copy of Crockett's Victory Garden.  I have been looking for it everywhere for the last few months, i try to re-read it every year that i expect to have a garden.  So anyway, i am glad i found it. I was worried it was lost or destroyed.

Here are the seeds i got (i just happened to use the aforementioned book since it was conveniently near) :

And i flipped the packets over to show the quantities, which are a little hard  to see...

Some of these seeds will need cold stratification, so i hope to get them going soon.  The packet containing the paeonia  anomala seeds is full of mold, which i assume must be somewhat normal since it was packaged separately in its own baggie.  I know some seeds have to be kept in their mush until planted out, i expect these are like that.

I have too much stuff to do today that won't get done.

But its nice outside. Almost 60 degrees before noon  already.

*******************

Ok, got some seeds planted.

Leonotis leonurus- Specialty Perennials
Monarda didyma- panorama shades, Specialty Perennials
Rudbeckia hirta- autumn colors, Specialty Perennials
Scabiosa caucasica- house hybrids,  Specialty Perennials

Gaillardia- Arizona sun, Park Seed
Stinging Nettle-  Richters
Siberian Motherwort- Richters
Pleurisy Root- butterfly weed, Richters
Roseroot- Richters
Red Knight, sweet pepper, Totally Tomatoes
Chiltepin, hot pepper, Totally Tomatoes


The things in the greenhouses are looking fine.  The Imperial Star artichoke seeds have sprouted one more seedling, so i may get 2 plants out of the remaining 5 seeds i had.  I hope so, in Johnny's seeds blog, they had mentioned the other day that they successfully overwintered some Imperial Star artichokes under hoops. This is  encouraging since i hope to do that myself this year.

Another Monday...

And its raining, which is fine. Its tomorrow that will be the problem, quite a bit of rain is expected. Along with wind.
The mini greenhouse is holding up and so is the makeshift seedling box.  I managed to get the six-pack flat to accept water enough to sow some Oriental Poppies in it. I hope i get many viable plants from it. I love poppies.

My dad's birthday was this Saturday, so he took the day for himself as he should.  But he did tell me that he works with a guy who boards horses and he can get a few loads of old manure for both my garden and his.

So if the ground stays too wet for him to get to the grass and yard waste compost, we will at least get some well-aged horse poo.

Justin went out Friday afternoon and got me my Remay row cover stuff.  It looks good, giant paper towel roll.  The material looks suspiciously like fusible webbing for stitchery, lol. It seems silly that i feel like i am looking at the same material in a totally new light. As long as it works....and by-the-yard, the real fusible webbing is way more expensive!
I expect, from the thickness of it, that it will let a lot of light through, but i don't think it will last more than one season. But that's ok, i would spend way more than its cost for twice what i need if i were using pesticides.
I am going to get a slug and earwig killer though, i need that to keep the bugs out of my flowers at least.

I am doing yet another graph re-do of the garden, i may steal another 3 feet of space along the shorter side (30'x28') just so i can get one more full 4 foot row. If i don't. i will have 4 rows 4 feet wide and the last row will be only 1 foot wide. I don't need another walking row for the edge rows... so if i don't take 4 more feet, i might just relinquish the extra 3 feet of space that is along the back. It depends on when i plot out the Square-Foot method if i have more room than i really need.
I also need to remember to get myself a few bundles of cotton clothesline to run along the tops of the hoops to make a sort of backbone.
Then bricks, i will need at least 30 nice bricks. I hope i can find some with rounded edges so the Remay isn't worn more quickly than necessary.


I am starting to wonder about my wintersown seeds. I think  its newbie jitters i guess. This year was an experiment, so i shouldn't let it get to me.  I tried a few things that i know may not work, but i had to try for myself. This has been such a bizarre spring it just might work out anyway.
I'm most concerned about those darn Imperial Star Artichokes.  I think it was last year, i tried the method that requires chilling the seedlings for a week,  i did something wrong because the chilling simply killed them. So this year i wintersowed them, but i'm not sure if that will just kill the seeds... and the seeds were from 2008 anyway and artichokes do not have the greatest germination rate. I think i sowed 10 of them..? I guess i didn't write that down. Even if they do sprout, i don't think the early start will replace the chill method that is supposed to convince them that they have already lived one full year.
Even if they don't produce the first year, i may be able to save some root cuttings and use something of a forcing method on them. So its not my only shot as long as the seeds sprout and the plants last the summer.
I love artichokes  so much that i don't plan to stop trying until i am sure i am defeated.

Off, to plot some square foot plantings, study succession crop timing and review companion & intercropping ideas.