Freezing Cold

So much for...

I don't know that I think global warming just makes the earth warmer I think it could just cause drastic changes but that's not really what this entry is about. It's about the fact that I woke up freezing my tush off, when I went to sleep burning it of because it was so warm. 

The weather has been absolutely nuts. It was freezing, rainy, and windy today. I did get one moment outside to check on things, make sure that the freeze wasn't killing everything but I didn't get to do anything else because the weather was not conducive to gardening. While I was out there I noticed that all of my plants must really love the heat because the last few days of boiling weather has caused almost everything to grow like crazy, almost overnight. One of the crooknecks ha an open bloom on it. It's absolutely beautiful. I'll post a pic tomorrow. The cantaloupe has started growing up the trellis which means in height it's grown at least 3 inches  and its grown a whole new stem and leaf set. Amazing. The carrots have gotten taller in the last 3 days then they have in the last 3 weeks and carrots are a "cool/warm" crop. It's amazing to see what soil temperature really does to plants. How much it causes them to grow when it warmer and stunts them when it's cooler. 

I'll most likely be able to get out and garden tomorrow so I'll take a video or a lot of pictures for a visual update. 

The flower that blossomed over the last 2 days. 

Slow Thumb

Today was a boring gardening day... I basically just watered and checked on everything. I hate this whole waiting to do stuff part. In a few weeks I know I'll have weeding, fertilizing, and side dressing to do but at the moment all I have to do is water and sometimes the rain takes care of that for me. To be honest, although all of my tests and seedlings have worked out, it seems like I have a slow growing garden.

My radishes are definitely not going to be ready to harvest in "22 days." My spinach is not going to be ready "30 days" after planting for baby spinach. I may have a green thumb but its also the anti growth hormone green thumb. I don't know if that makes sense but when I post my video update with the current length of time everything has been growing you'll see that things are about 2 weeks behind. Not the warm/hot stuff either. That would make sense because it hasn't been very warm, it's been cool, but things like the spinach that are COOL even cold crops are taking forever too.

Didn't do much more than that today. If anyone knows why veggies would take longer to grow than they are supposed to please let me know. An I missing something? Nutrient? Mineral? Water? Too much water? Anything I might have missed in my reading? And in turn ill of course let you all know if I find something.

Diggin' for Gold

Filling the Beds...

I spent most of today outside in the chilly clouded weather finishing the filling of the beds. I had to fill the wheelbarrow, add Perlite, mix the Perlite, wheel to bed, and pour. Digging into the pile and filling the wheelbarrow was one of the hardest parts but unlike I expected it was not the hardest part. I think the hardest part was pouring the compost/perlite mix into the actual beds. The beds were not anchored to the ground so tipping the enormous industrial size wheelbarrow over the edge would cause the bed to move and most of the compost mix would remain inside. I'd then have to rake the mix out, shake the barrow, and/or push it all the way over so that it was upside down over the bed. I had to do this all without shoving the bed over too much because once the beds were a certain amount full they could not be straightened out properly. Let me tell you, beds arranged the way that our beds are arranged do not look very good when they are crooked. The most visually appeasing part of laying them out as we did is the lines, straight lines across the space. Anyway, I had to do this about 5 or 6 times. It took me awhile. After I'd had filled all the beds I filled the wheel barrow one more time and spread the contents between all the beds just to make sure they were properly topped off. Then, I raked them all out making sure that the compost was level and the corners were filled in, it was hardest getting the corners filled because I tried doing so without tossing any compost mix out of the bed. 

Tomato Tepees...

After I filled the beds I worked on the tomato cages made of bamboo, done tepee style. What I did to make them was take 3 bamboo sticks make all of the ends level on one end and wrapped a rubber band around them. Then I'd spread the tepee out and take one more bamboo stick and break it into 3 pieces attaching them to the 3 sides of the tepee with 1 rubber band for each end of the broken piece. This made a tier for the tomatoes to rest on. That way we won't have to tie the stems to the tepee. The tomato will find its own way up the tepee-stake and rest its stems on the ledges. I made 3 more before running out of bamboo. We'll need one more pack to make 2 more tepees, one for the green beans, and a trellis for the squash. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to make the trellis but I have a couple ideas. I also saw some very cool easy ones on Pinterest that I may want to copy. When I was done I placed all 5 of the completed structures outside in the beds they'd be living in this spring and summer. I wanted to make sure that the sizes were adequate. They looked good, if you asked me. I went back inside to work on seed tape directly after finishing the tepees. 

Bean Tape...

My last garden task for the day was to make seed tape for the green beans. We have very few items planned for the garden that are cool/warm weather crops but the ones that we do have are a little late. We need to plant them as soon as possible. So I wanted to make sure that the one that the one crop that needs the longest cool/warm weather was ready for tomorrow before I completed my "gardening" day. I cut 12" strips of newspaper and mix flour and water to make a paste. I used a ruler to mark every 3 inches with a pen and put down a drop of flour paste on each mark then dropped a bean in the paste. It went much quicker and was much easier then the carrot, radish, and spinach tape because the beans are so much bigger. I was done in a few minutes and left them to dry. Before I cleaned everything up I went upstairs to strain the other seeds that were soaking. I wanted them to dry out a bit for tomorrow when I make their seed tape. When I strained the Mesclun mix I noticed that many of the seeds had pre-germinated  a bit during there soaking. So I left them in a little water and will just broadcast them on there plot. I put the spinach seeds and mesclun mix in separate zip lock bags and finally finished everything I'd set out to do for Potagar Schoultz today. 

Once I plant the cool/warm weather plants I'll be focusing my attention on Patch Market and the tests I've been waiting to get results from... some have produced results that I just haven't had the time to tell you about but don't worry I'll report everything later in the week. I should be done with the Potagar for a little bit, anyway, after tomorrow. 

FYI- Tomorrow is officially our Last Frost Date, April 16 2013!

Potagar Schoultz with filled boxes and tepees in place.