Slippery Roots

Planting Slips...

I went outside this morning and thoroughly watered everything. It was unbelievably hot out and the plants needed the max amour of water they could take for the week. Watering was not much easier today with the hose because I had to unroll it and only water the roots. If you water the plants leaves in very high sun and heat the leaves can burn. The entire plant can burn. So I made sure to water very carefully at the base at each plant and around the soil. Once I was done with that I filled up the watering can and walked into PM and watered everything liberally at the roots. I then went back to refill the watering can, another 2 gallons, and saw that the roots on the slips had developed a little but the leaves were dying so I decided to plant them. Mostly because I didn't think they would produce great roots for much longer without completely dying out. So I grabbed the glass and went into PM with the slips, shovel, watering can, and basket. I planted the 4 of 5 slips that had roots, a bit. I figure since people plant slips without rooting them first that mine will make it especially since they have a few nice and thick roots already starting. The raised bed in Patch is officially filled except for the one little, very little, strip plot which I'll fill with radishes. I had but they didn't germinate. I filled the watering can once more and watered the spinach, watermelon bin, cucumbers, and seedlings yet to be planted then I went inside becAuse the heat was unbearable. The garden will look completely different at the end of this heat wave. It won't really end because we're about to be in June but it will go down to the high 80's put of the mid-90's and the garden will have flourished. Already is...

Leafy Greens Galore

Harvesting the Leafy...

I went out this afternoon and checked on everything but didn't water because I knew rain was coming. It was overcast and humid so it was definitely coming. The next 5 days are going to be a game changer. The weather is supposed to be in the low 90's and sunny. All of the crops are warm/hot crops except for the lettuce and spinach. Even the carrots I planted are specifically attune to warm/hot weather so the next 5 days should make everything really blossom, not flower blossom, well maybe some but grow quickly. 

After I checked on everything I noticed that some of the spring mix leaves had bolted, gone to seed, flowered. So I decided to harvest. I harvested 2 full baskets between all four heads and the mix green leaves. Even after the two full baskets I yanked there is still at least 4 more baskets for mixed greens and another unknown high number of lettuce leaves since I'm using the continuous method. 

Basket one.

Basket two. 

After harvesting I went back into Patch and noticed that the cantaloupe container had a new flower and that there was a much larger strawberry than the one I deemed "largest yet" hiding in the 5G bucket. I thinned some carrots and radishes while I was there because I remembered what happened with the last batch of radishes. When I thinned the carrots even though they were orange or large I could tell the small roots were starting to form carrots. It was nice to see that they were "working." 

New! Largest berry.

Thinned carrots. If you zoom in you an see the roots starting to take carrot shape. 

Cantaloupe flower.

Slips...

I forgot to write about how I pulled my slips off of the sweet potato yesterday and stuck them in a glass of water to take root. I did. I did so because the leaves had lost there vibrant green and purple color and turned yellowish but I didn't feel they were tall enough. They haven't started to root yet and I'm not sure that they will but I do hope. 

I took pictures of the changes in the patty-pan and crookneck squashes. They'd grown and lost blossoms. 

Blossom wilted and fruit growing. 

Ladies Present

Runners... 

There hasn't been much to do in the garden not even watering because we've been getting light rain and sun. The one thing I did do was pull off a few runners from the most beautiful strawberry plants ever. I pulled off about 6 runners. The rest of the plants didn't have any yet. I'm sure they will be growing some soon. A runner is a strawberry stem that grows horizontally to the soil and "runs" across. The part of the stem closest to the crown is usually reddish in color but does not have to be. 

Ladybugs...

I finally saw a few lace wings and ladybugs. The one ladybug I noticed first was happily ass deep in a tomato plant eating up all the aphids it could get. I am so glad that we finally have some ladybugs in the garden. The tomato plants were becoming aphid infested. The dark spots on the branches in the picture. Are clumps but the ladies and laces have been doing there job well because the whole plant used to be a dark spot. Yay!! We might need to buy some ladybugs but I'm not sure yet. The Predalure doesn't seem to have work as expected. We do have some lacewings and ladybugs but I don't know that there are more then usual. It actually seem Ike there may be less ladybugs. So a Predalure may be a waste of money, I'll keep you posted.

First tomato in Potagar. A mortgage lifter.

Patty-pan squash blossom, edible. 

Crookneck squash blossom, open then closed. Attached to a 2 inch squash. Ready to harvest at 6 inches.

Largest strawberry on Topsy Turvy.

Danver126, carrot greens, largest and tallest yet. 

Potagar Patch- Video Update

Written...

I went out this morning to check on everything after the wind and cold and things were pretty good but not great. The wooden tomato cage I built was blown over and took the tomato with it. The cantaloupe plants that were in the greenhouse were completely wilted from the chill and the one planted was too. As the sun warmed up things got better and Mr. S. rebuilt the wooden cage so that it was sturdier and not, as he called it, so Charlie Brown. Other than that I didn't do much gardening because I wanted the sun to just warm everything back up. It rained last night so no watering was necessary and even if it hadn't rained I wouldn't have watered because that would have slowed the soil warming process. I thought the strawberries would be affected but they weren't, they are looking so amazing. I have at least 6 sizable berries and 25 small berries that look like they'll become sizable. I have about 50 flowers that should become berries. It's amazing! I took video of it all for you to see.

Video Update...

The video upload button isn't working so you'll have to click the link below to watch on YouTube...UGH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLT46uNoBYY

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. 

Grass Clippings

Cutting the Grass...

It was supposed to Thunder storm today but it was just overcast and sunny on and off. So I went outside and rather than my usually maintenance I decided I wanted to deal with the issue of the grass. The 10 inch tall grass that wouldn't grow an 1/8 of an inch last year but somehow boomed this year. So I got the weed hacker/trimmer out and started trimming. It was an absolute disaster. The grass went flying all over my legs were covered in it and the clippings kept flying into the beds. So I went looking for the lawn mower. 

I finally found it in front of the house. I dragged it and the 50 yard extension chord attached to it to the backyard and plugged it in. I figured out how to turn it on and started mowing in patches around the boxes. It worked better than the trimmer but it didn't get the grass I especially wanted to get, the grass growing so tall it was leaving into the boxes (Potagar not Patch). I raked all the clippings up and put them in a trash bag the tried using the trimmer on just the hedges. It was still I mess so I moved on to the clippers. They were small and too hard to use on such an enormous space. We'll have to get larger clippers and cut by hand. 

I was so hot sweaty and frustrated i did nothing else in the garden, either. 

Bunny Repercussions

No Trellises for Bush Peas...

I recently looked up growing green arrow peas and found out that the type doesn't need a trellis. I was going to leave them in place because they looked good and they would provide a little support but basically they'd be wasted in that spot. They'd still look good but 3/4 of each trellis would have gone unused. Still I would have left them had a bunny not munched on my lettuce (in Potagar) today. The bunny gave me a push to put up the netting, at least around the lettuce bed, and the netting didn't sit right with the tepee trellises in place especially since the netting was already up on the bed in front of this particular bed. So I took them down and decided that since squash plants are pretty enormous they could use a trellis a piece. 

Baby crooknecks with squash blossom.

Trellis per plant. Side view.

Patty-pan and crookneck. Front view of trellises.