The Rest of the Garden is In!

From last week to this week I've been slowly adding to my garden.  Finally I can say that all of the components of my garden are in.  Here are a few images of the garden.

In my last blog I had mentioned I wrote about getting my tomatoes in.  In addition to this here are the other items that went into the ground.

6 Celery seedlings









6 Italian Parsley seedlings








3 Cucumber seedlings








All of these where planted in my long side raised garden bed, next to my tomatoes.
In the garden bed on the side of my house, I planted the following:

6 yellow Hungarian Pepper seedlings






 3 Zucchini seedlings.  The big reason why I grow these are for their flowers!!!



6 cayenne peppers








Rosa Bianca Italian Eggplants








And lastly I've sowed 3 more rows of Green Swiss Chard.  Currently my chard is not growing and I'm getting a bit concerned.  If this does not work I will put a fresh soil / compose mix down and will try again.






There are a few other interesting developments in the Garden.  I've noticed that I have 4 new zucchini plants that have come back from last year in addition to 3 tomato plants.  I will wait to see how the tomato plants progress, but I will pulling up the zucchini as it can take over the garden.  Plan will be to share them with my neighbor Barb.

Lastly, today I planted to additional Sun Gold Tomato Plants today.  The Director of my daughters school had two extra that she was going to get rid of so my wife took them.  I'm at capacity in my raised beds, but have planted the two Sun Golds in pots.  My philosophy is that you can never have enough Tomatoes! 

Tomatoes Went into the Groud Today!

A lot of work in general went on today but the most exciting thing to report is that my heirloom tomatoes went into the ground today.

Here is what I've planted:  2 New Big Dwarf, 1 Paul Robeson, 1 Black Prince, 1 Aunt Ginny's Purple, 2 Moskvich, 1 Lemon Boy, 2 San Marzano, 1 Green Zebra, 1 Aussie, 1 Super Sweet 100 and 1 Sun Gold.

Please refer back to my past blog on Heirloom Tomatoes to get a description of the tomatoes listed below.

Here are a few images I took of the plantings.

In this image I've first laid out the seedlings in the approximate distance I want the plants.  Approximately 20 inches apart.

In this image you can see the white around the seedlings.  This is the ash from wood that I burned last night.  The sulfur is excellent for the soil in lowering its pH.  
To see why, sulfur is good, check out this link.  http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0507.html

Also you can see my irrigation hose.  Tomato leaves do not like a lot of water, and thus I've set up an irrigation system to get water to the Tomatoes stem and roots.

When you plant your seedlings, make sure you put at least 1/3 of the seeding into the ground.  If there are leaves already on the lower portion of the seedling, don't worry ad it will become part of the plants root structure.  In burying 1/3 of the seedling you will ensure a strong root system for your plant.

Here you can see how deep I've buried my seedlings.









 
Once I finished putting all of my seedlings into the ground, the next thing to do is water and then fertilize.  The fertilizer I use is Neptune's Harvest.  It is expensive but a very good organic fertilizer.

For use, be careful in not using too much as you'll burn your plants.  Here is my process.  I'll use a cap, about the size of a shot glass and will then combine that with roughly a gallon of water.  Very simple process.  Shake your Neptune's Harvest pour your cap sized portion into a watering can, fill it up and begin fertilizing. 

Back to Work

Well it has been a while since I've last blogged, due to some travel and not so great weather.  Now it is back to work.  Let me get you up to speed on where I'm at with the garden to date.

Back on April 17th I've but up a basic garden net to keep my neighbors 2 cats out of my garden bed.  Fluffy & Crooked Tail,  or whatever the names of those cats may be are no friends of mine.  Actually they infuriate me as they think my garden beds are large kitty litters.  I've been told that if I catch them in the act of doing their business I should hit them with a super soaker.  Unfortunately I've never been in the right position to hit then.  So in the interim I've wrapped my raised beds with basic netting.

So far so good.  Since putting up the netting, neither cat has been bold enough to exploit the minor holes I have in my netting.  It is getting the job done.

April 22nd:  My wife and daughter planted salad seeds in our primary garden bed.  The other side garden bed is generating salad from last year.  Here is what they planted.

Italian Swiss Chard.  This image is with the green stem but we planted and prefer the chard with the green stem.
This was planted in the corner of our garden bed that faces due west.  The chad does very well in the area and yields great quantities into November.





The next thing that they planted was arugula.  This two if facing due west and is also very prolific in our garden.  One interesting to note is that this Arugula is already coming up.  At some point I will need to separate out and provide better spacing for it.  Because the seeds are so small, it is easy for multiple seeds to fall into one hole and thus the overcrowding. 




The next thing that they planted was Italian Chicoria, (Chicory).  These seeds were compliments of my mother-in-law who brought them down from Toronto for us.  The Italian Chicoria is more easy to come by there and she provided us with a healthy pack of seeds.

If you like salads, this is a great addition to mix in with other greens.  It is very bitter and provides that added depth in flavor to your everyday salads.

We were fortunate enough to have some of our Chicoria come back from last year, and I had it tonight for dinner in my salad.  The bitterness was not that bad, but the leaves were old and had the texture of fur.  It was delicious!

Lastly, my daughter and wife planted Romano Bush beans.  These are great seeds to give to your children to plant.  They are large and grow rapidly.  Children love watching their beans grow and them picking them straight and eating them. 






May 5th.  Moved the lawn for the first time this season.  After a trip up to Toronto the week prior to this one, when I returned my grass was above my ankles!  So I usually cut my grass in the mulch mode except for the first two cuttings and the last two at the end of the season.  This gets the first cut off the ground and helps promote new growth.  Tomorrow, May 16th, I'll cut it again.

Today, May 15th.  Today I picked up my Heirloom Tomatoes and will plant them tomorrow.  I'll provide and update on the status at the end of the day. 

Another item on the list for tomorrow is transplanting my fig trees.  Fig Trees you say?  Yes.  Fig Trees.  I will tell you more about them in a future blog