Hey everyone, how does your garden grow? My seed starting station was a great success. In fact too much so. I didn’t monitor it too well and after a week I decided that maybe a few seeds may have sprouted. Yeah, the tomatoes looked like bean sprouts and hit the plastic top, curled over, and had grown half way back to the seed pellet. The bell peppers were just about touching the plastic top. I decided to just pull out the white stemmed spindly tomatoes and restart them. The bell peppers were good and look great. After four days the tomato seeds have popped up and are well on the way to producing tomato plants. They may be just a little small when I plant them around May 15th but that just means I’ll have tomatoes later in the season. I’ll probably buy a six pack or two just to have some earlier tomatoes. The lesson learned is to monitor those seed starts every day. The weather has been so nice that I don’t even use the grow lights but just set them out side during the day to get the real thing sunshine. It looks like I have four nice and sturdy Rutgers volunteer tomato plants already growing in the garden. I’ll let them get a little bigger and transplant them to their proper spot for this year.
Here’s the plan for the bottom of the fence. The last 30 feet of fencing will be cut into strips two foot wide and thirty feet long. They will be attached to the bottom of the existing fence which then will be tacked to the wood that will be in a shallow trench. Hopefully this will deter any digging critter from digging under the fence. If that don’t work then I do have a plan “B”. Plan “B” is to lay a two foot strip of chicken wire horizontally down in front of the wood and pin it to the ground with the big staple looking pins and cover it up with dirt. The idea is that if a digging critter decided to dig, their claws will catch in the wire and keep them from digging. That has been put on hold until the inside of the fence garden is finished. I don’t think any thing is going to eat the tomatoes, cucumbers, or bell peppers.
You can and see the weeds are coming back with a vengeance. Sadly I had to resort to chemical measures to contain the weed population. I really wanted to deep mulch them with broken bales of hay but I’m having a difficult time getting permission to haul the old hay away. The property that they are sitting on is owned by a limited liability corporation. I think a few folks got together and formed this corporation to buy investment property. The real estate company gave me a number to call. The fellow that answered had no idea what I was talked about. The address that I found from public records for the company was a house for sale. My only recourse is to keep a watchful eye on the property and wait for the farmer that grows crops on the 25 acres to show up so I can ask him if I can haul it away for mulch. However, as you can see weeds wait for no one. The plan is to only do the chemical control once and not on my inside the fence garden.
Here’s my lovely free daylilies. Yeah, they just happen to be right smack dab in the middle of my gate. Aren’t they really healthy and looking strong. I decided that I’m not so much in love with daylilies any more. My original plan was to transplant them along the outside of the fence. Aaaaa, well, I can do that later if I really want. I discovered they are a little tougher to transplant than I thought. It looked a lot easier in mind. So they have to go. I have several other patches about this same size on the property so there is not going to be a lack of this resource if I decide to get crazy and use them for border plants. Although, I would like to see a rabbit try to dig through those tangled roots.
OK, nothing but a pile of compost to be hauled away. The good old pick axe and I rooted them out of the dirt in short order. Let’s get on to the next step in the taming of Terra Nova Gardens.
Here’s one path and two garden beds almost finished. Now why on earth would anyone dig a trench in the garden. Some years ago I read an article about building raised garden beds. The article said that since the path would only be used for walking skim off the four inches of good top soil and put it on the garden bed. Not that I really need to do that here since the top soil goes down at least 18 inches. My idea is to get more height for the garden beds and then to fill up the trench with wood chips. Maybe a tree service would be willing to donate a load or two of wood chips for my garden paths and parking area. It would do wonders for looks and be nice to walk on.
Well, the flag is flying, the sun is shining, and the tools are ready. So until next time, I’ll be working in the garden. I just may have to buy a camp stove coffee pot for working in the garden just to keep the coffee on. It’s just not the same out a thermos bottle.
