Some Big and Little Growth Spurts 2020

First off, the Broccoli and Cauliflower were outgrowing their hoop covers as shown in earlier posts. So we created a tent with PVC and were able to wrap the cover around them to keep the vicious cabbage moths away. Those critters will ravage the small plants in a matter of days. When the plants are larger, we will take the tent down. I'm betting neighbors are wondering what on earth we are growing in there.  But I want to keep these plants protected because with all the rain, there is nothing "natural" that I can treat them with, without the treatment being washed away in the rain. I refuse to use crop pesticides. Won't do it.  I didn't want to cut all the PVC down, so that top support piece, is 10 ft long.  The plants outside of the tent are my bush beans that are finally looking a bit better.  They were quite yellow and shriveled a little over a week ago. Used Blood Meal the first week, and then 10-10-10 this week, brought their coloring and new growth back in line.

Tent to protect broccoli & cauliflower

Other side of tent

Next, the lettuce plants in the buckets in the greenhouse are, absolutely, to die for.  I've been using the special liquid 10-10-10 on them, as well. I honestly have never had my lettuce looking this wonderful.  That's one seed, yes one plant per five gallon bucket! The cilantro is also doing very well this spring.

Buttercrunch Lettuce	Salad Leaf Lettuce
Two Red Sails	Cilantro

Struggling still with the squash and the cucumber plants.  I planted more in the cloth pots in the green house, while also planting some in small pots in the new "mini" growtent that we got on sale. The special light is helping to start our plants indoors MUCH better. As you can see from the green house pots, only the squash in one (of two) buckets came up, and there are two cucumbers, one in each bucket that came up. And let's just say I OVER planted the seeds in there this time.  Part of the issue is the inconsistant temps, too hot, too cold and not enough sunlight.  Then, compare them to the seed I started in the growtent, and Santa Vaca, what a difference.  Today, I planted some dill, basil and lavender seeds in an egg carton. Will see how long that takes for them to sprout and then I can put them out into the garden soon.

Greenhouse Acorn Squash	Greenhouse Cucumber Start
Growtent Cukes & Squash Starts	Just plantes Dill, Lavender & Basil

Potatoes are starting to bloom, so that's an indication that they are almost done.  The Strawberries are starting to get ripe.  I think we will actually get some this year.  I had to put petroleum jelly on the bottom lip of the buckets to keep the ants out.  So far, so good.  Again, used the special organic liquid 10-10-10 on these berry plants, and we should have some nice sized berries this year.

Potatoes are Blooming

Berries are turning red!!!!

Early June Garden Updates 2020

I truly don't have as much planted as I hoped.  We have had some rather crazy weather. But plants are happening, little by little.

On May 30, there were thunder storms and downpours.  So I covered the most delicate of the plants to keep them from getting knocked down.

Protecting beans, broccoli and cauliflower	Protecting Corn
Protecting Onions and Garlic

Monday was great. I was able to get the tomatoes transplanted into buckets. This year, we are going to put the buckets into the ground (as shown in photos below) and put plastic tarps and bark mulch around the buckets so that we don't have to mow around them, and can protect them from the winds and rains during the summer months.

Comparison of plants	Cloned Starts are almost 3x larger
Keep Ants/Slugs away from Strawberries	Corn was started inside this year!
Oregano thriving 2nd Cutting	Potatoes starting to bud/bloom
Creeping Rosemary transplanted

Garden & Chicks - Early May Update 2020

Yes, still have a lot of chicks.

Lost a few small ones and nursed a couple more that seem to be doing better.  Yesterday, one of the little Rhode Island Reds cut her head, right behind her ear and others were picking on her.  They were chasing her away from food and I thought we were going to lose her. Washed her little face off and isolated her in a separate cage inside the pen, to ensure that she was able to eat, drink, and sleep.  Within a few hours, she was alert and ready to go back. The others didn't pick on her anymore and all seemed better.  Then, today, I noticed one of the Barred Rock chicks had pasty butt.  It still had food in it's crop, and was still eating, so I think I caught it early. I had to soak the chick in a pan of warm water to  get the poop off.  Holding it on a warm washcloth just wasn't doing a thing and the cloth just kept getting cold. Within a minute of putting the chick's butt into the water, the pooh released and fell off into the water. I wrapped her up into a little wash cloth and held her on my chest to keep her warm until I found the hair dryer.  Set that up about eight inches away and let it blow on her until she was all dry. Wasn't even ten minutes because she's so small. Put her back with the others, and she went right to the food and started eating. Fingers crossed on both of them.

We decided to add an extra feeder into the pen and put the other warmer into the pen.  That's been a big hit. Plus, every day is Sheet Cleaning Day with this many chicks.  I try to change the sheets every day simply because, well, there are a lot of little poopers in there all at the same time. Normally, I can wait about three days between changes. But not now!

24 hours of pooh from 16 chicks

The baby RIRs are starting to fly and jump over things. That's a good sign that we are about ready for shavings.  BUT, the baby BRs are not quite there yet.  They seem to be about three or four days behind the RIRs at this point.  When we got them, the RIRs were much smaller than the BRs.  Now the BRs are much smaller and somewhat delayed in abilities.  It's all good, but I would like to have them all in shavings at this point so I won't need to keep washing sheets.

The other BRs finally figured out their dust bath!  It was almost full and now it is almost empty.  They are mite and lice free at this point with just a few nits left. I am still keeping the heater going as that will help those nits hatch and fall into the DE.  One more week and I will clean out the entire cage to ensure we have all mites and lice out of there, and put all fresh stuff in there and we should be back on track, pest free. These BRs have gained weight and have more feathers, so they look much better.

4 or 5 wk Barred Rock Pullets

Dust Bath Emptied

In the greenhouse, we have tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro and lettuce.  I had transplanted the plants from the nursery into gallon milk jugs because they were getting root bound in the containers. They were doing really well outside until the storms came in and started pelting them.  One of the bell peppers got the most damage, so they are back in the greenhouse for now.

Cherokee Purple Tomato Clones

Sweet Bell Pepper Clones

My starts, from seed in March, are finally looking good.  The lettuce also is doing very well.  I have three types of leaf lettuce.  The cilantro just sprouted this week. I will need to thin that out.

My Itty Bitty Starts are Growing

Potatoes are finally looking good. Strawberries are still blooming. Peas  (planted on two weeks apart three times) are all doing very well. The marjoram that I started last fall in the green house, then struggled to keep the bugs from killing it, is actually thriving. Last winter, I just took the pot outside and figured I would just start over in the spring. But it just came back on its own. Go Figure?

Cilantro Sprouts	Leaf Lettuce - unknown type
Leaf Lettuce - Red Sails	Topped Off Potatoes with Soil
Strawberries still blooming	Marjoram Revived itself
Peas Planted 2wks apart

And lastly, the clover seed that we sprinkled out last week has already sprouted. We tried to dig out all the thistles that had taken over some areas of the back yard and it looks like the clover is going to fill it all in.  So today, we scrapped out some areas that were filled with moss in the shade to see how long that will take.  Little by little.  I purchased 10 pounds of seed, so we have lots of areas to experiment and see how it does.

Crimson Clover Sprouts

Mid June Garden Updates 2019

This top photo is of one lonely basil sprout.  I am hoping it survives and that others pop up soon. I tried to get a photo of the dill, but those are so tiny, and my lens is not strong enough to show them yet. I don't know if the thyme are sprouting. I don't know their sprouts from weeds, yet.  Carrots are also sprouting, but, like the dill, are too small to photograph. 

Tiny Basil Sprout 6-14-19

This is the one lettuce pot, of the three, with the most seeds that germinated.  I have since thinned it out to two sprouts per location (5), so that they don't crowd each other. Each pot has a different type of leaf lettuce. 

Leaf Lettuce in Pot 6-14-19

 This is a group of potato blossoms.  This barrel has the most blossoms and most foliage. 

White Potato Blossoms  6-14-19

Radish.  While I did not plant a lot of these seeds, only half have popped up.  I will replant this weekend to fill in the empty space.  

One of a few Radishes  6-14-19

Now that we have the ants under control, I get to pick five to seven fresh strawberries every morning. YUM!

Strawberries Galore  6-14-19

My beans are looking good.  Like  the Basil and Radishes, the beans are also in my square garden bed.  The past few years, I have planted the beans on the East side of the garden, but last year's crop was slim.  I only ended up with two bean plants that survived.  This year, I planted them on the south side of the garden.  Eight popped up this week. Two were mowed down by slugs. I have put slug bait around the outside of the garden and  then, over the weekend, two more beans popped up.  I have thinned it down to five solid starts.  

Bush Bean sprouts  6-14-19

These are some of the largest of the strawberries that are almost ready for picking.  You can see that I layered the soil with leaves to keep the berries out of the wet dirt.  I like to use leaves because they don't contain any weed seeds, like straw/grass contains, and there are no splinters like bark shavings have. 

Large Strawberries  6-17-19

I think I mentioned that I had four cucumbers starts.  Then suddenly poof, over the weekend, one vanished into thin air.  No roots, no stem, no nothing! I have never had that happen before. I have replanted in an attempt to get one or two more seeds to pop back up. In the meantime, these three are getting larger and seem very happy. 

Three Cukes  6-17-19

I added blood meal to the tomatoes again.  This will be the last time for adding blood meal, and from here on out I will use a "fruit" fertilizer every other week to help with the actual tomatoes which should be starting soon.  I have lots of blossoms on the SunGold cherry tomato plant, and we may actually have some cherry tomatoes to eat by July. (Fingers Crossed.) 

The Four Tomato Plants  6-17-19

The potatoes are continuing to look healthy.  No more fertilizer.  Just a good watering once or twice a week and pull them under the shade of the maple tree on the really hot days to protect them from burning. 

Close Up on Potatoe Blossoms

That's my garden update for the middle of June. 

Gardening Update June 9 2019

I took a lot of photos, so let's start with the newest sprouts. The radishes are sprouting and so is the lettuce.  The radishes have full sun in my square garden bed. The lettuce is planted in small two gallon pots in the shade of my trees to minimize burning from the sun.
Tiny radish sprouts even cool weather	The lettuce sprouted too this week
This past week (Wed. - Saturday) we had very cool weather and rain, which normally would have little impact on bell pepper plants, except we had a heavy hail during one thunder storm on Friday... And, yes, the poor bell peppers got hit hard.
Holes in the Pepper plant leaves	Pepper plant leaves sliced and diced
A different type of damage to my berries.  I pulled the berries into the greenhouse (along with the tomatoes) before the cold temps set in. So they were protected.  On Saturday, I even ate my first sweet taste of strawberries of the season. But, I'm not the only one who loves sweet strawberries.  The ants came in for the meal last night.  I have since sprayed WD40 around the buckets to keep new ones away. This does a nice job of keeping them out of the berries (since they can't fly) and I am not inclined to spray anything ON the plants. But, yah, those little buggers make quick work on some very nice ripe strawberries!
Looks GREAT from the back side. Ha!	Half the berry eaten by tiny ants!
Newer Berry Plant from Last Year	Biggest Producer this Year
Okay, so now let's look at the Garlic and Onions.  Hey the fall planted Garlic is still looking great.  Fingers crossed that we actually get nice, solid garlic from this crop. This is the last month and they should start sending up some spiraly scapes soon. Cut those off for cooking since leaving them will hinder the size of the garlic. I never seem to have very good luck with onions. But I keep trying.  So, this year's got pummeled in one of our thunder/wind storms back in May, and I just don't think they are going to revive. In two 5 gal buckets are the ones I salvaged from the garden bed before I prepped it for this year's garden. Some are surviving, two have gone to seed, and three are struggling.  So it is anyone's guess.  I have photos of the "buds" on the two "seed" onions, below.
Garlic near the end	Beat Up Onions
Salvaged Onions	Onion Blooming for Seeds
At least I was smart enough to pull in the tomatoes before this week's storm hit. They are doing well; growing fairly fast.
German Blooming	Purple Cherokee Blooms
SunGold Tomatoes -n- Blossoms	SunGold Different Angle
The hail storm did NOT phase the potatoes.  The potatoes are developing a lot of blossoms which is a sign that the potatoes are on the vines under ground and are growing.  We will need to pull these barrels under the trees for the cooling shade (like we have for the lettuce), or the hot sun will stunt the growth of the potatoes. Once the blooms die back, the leaves will also start to dry, and then we can dig up the potatoes for storage in a cool dark box in the garage for the rest of this summer. Red Potato Blossoms
And that sums up the first week of June's crazy weather!