The Big Dig

As promised, here are the pictures from the second day of the garden expansion.

Step 1: Start digging.

That's me, starting out the second day. 

Step 2: Keep digging.  

Step 3: Sift the dirt and backfill.

I angled the sieve so that the larger rocks rolled themselves
down and into the wheelbarrows waiting below. 

Step 4: Till and level the new bed.

I think it looks nice. Planted peas along the back edge, and
brussels sprout, cauliflower, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins
down the center line and front edge of the planter box.

Beefsteak Tomatoes

Other Garden Pictures 

Our Lone Pepper

Roma Tomatoes

Cobbles, Gravel, and Bentonite...Oh My!

I apologize for starting out this post with a big yawn, but I am wiped out.  I spent most of my afternoon "renovating" our new garden real estate.  It's gonna be a crazy day when you have to bust out the ol' pick axe from the side of the house. I kind of felt like one of Snow Whites long lost dwarf (Oh, what I wouldn't have given to have the whole gang with me). Anyway, the plan was (actually still is, since I have more to do tomorrow) to break the new area up into thirds, break up and dig out the soil down about two and a half feet, sift it (separating the volcanic rock from the soil), returning it back to the garden, and layer in a bag of organic compost and a quarter of a bag of blood meal (per section). So, the score at the end of the day, me-2, native prehistoric pain-in-the-butt volcanic/bentonite mess - 1.  Yah, I'm tired and punchy, but feels great to get dirty. Promise to have pictures tomorrow.  Time to sleep...yeah!

The Lone Pepper

Here I am again, working to put our daughter to bed, and I just wanted to post a quick note. Earlier this evening, while watering the garden, I noticed that we have the coolest little jalapeno pepper growing. It being the first pepper of the season... for that matter, the first pepper I've actually grown, I'm pretty jazzed. Next time I am out in the garden, I will remember to snap a pic to share.

Up, Up, and Away!

Tonight, sitting on the floor in the upstairs hallway, across from our daughters bedroom (working on getting her to sleep), remembering that so much has happened with regards to the garden since my last post. It's kind of blowing my mind here.

The first Zucchini of the season. Yum!

Let's see...it was about Tuesday of last week, I finally decided it was time to bust out my new soil nutrient testing kit, I purchased during my

Budding Bell Peppers

outing to the local nursery with our daughter (Ah, what a great day that was!). Following the directions, I collected 1 part soil (from the center of our garden), and in a glass mason jar added 5 parts water, then shook the ever-love'n-bajeezus out of it. 24-hours later - ding - the liquid was clear enough to extract and test. The test results indicated the soil had a pH of about 6.5, and contained adequate amounts of phosphorous and potassium. Nitrogen levels, however were depleted. Luckily, I had picked up a box of organic fertilizer,

Roma Tomatoes Waiting to Turn

sprinkled that around the garden, and watered it into the soil. All I had to do left was wait, and oh yeah, continue day-dreaming about my plans for my fall/winter garden.

New Real-Estate

My day-dreaming about a fall/winter garden led me to visit a couple of seed supply company websites. I finally ended up at Burpee Seed and Plan Company, and ordered sugar peas, organics sugar pumpkins, Long Island heirloom brussels sprouts, multicolored cauliflower mix, organic goldetti spaghetti squash, and yellow dutch shallots.  Adding to my excitement of growing a fall/winter garden, I've been offered a new area to expand the garden into. This new real estate will at least double the current size of our garden. The only thing holding us up is the necessity of getting paid. So come next month, we will plan a trip to the nursery. COME ON AUGUST!

Finally, over the past week, I added a trellis to the garden in an attempt to grow our cucumber plants vertically. I thought about doing this last year, but never got around to it. The reality of it was that we had plenty of space to just let our cucumber plants grown along the ground. This years garden is thriving in a much small area, which I think it makes perfect sense to trying an grow any many of our plants vertically as possible. I'm an already thinking of employing the same design in the fall garden for the peas. 

Intervention

"I can stop! Really, at any time." -- "Beefy" Tomato

What does one do when it becomes apparent that your plants have a drinking problem...ya head on down to your new favorite local nursery and treat yourself to some new toys, and a bit of garden bling! Okay, so calling it an intervention may have been slightly dramatic, but really it made for  a great excuse to spend some awesome father-daughter time together in the garden.

Designer Tomato Scaffolding

I'd say it all started Friday afternoon, when we stopped off at the local Home Depot to pick up a couple of trellises. During the proceeding week, we had experienced a significant warming trend, resulting in a growth spirt for most of our plants. At the Depot, I found and bought four wrap around cages. Called the "Ultamato Plus", these cage kits came with three 5-foot long stakes, and nine adjustable (10 to 14 inches) horizontal supports. What really attracted me to these cages is the ability modify the configuration of each cage (teepee, cone or straight column shape), and that when were done, the cages can be broken down for reuse later.

Back home and in the garden, I choose the straight configuration, or at least that's what I attempted to create. Let's just say, at times the rocks in the soil posed a few minor challenges. The cages were a breeze to set up, so much so that our daughter even helped to clip the supports onto the stakes.

With the cages constructed, I decided to spend some time pruning our plants, and weeding. That's when I noticed several problems with out plants. First, I noticed that the zucchini sprouts - mentioned and pictured during my last post - had yellowed and all but died; second, the pepper plants appeared to have started to develop blossoms, but they too faded; and finally, the leaves of our tomato plants appears to be wilting (as pictured above). I suspect that the problem might be associated with either amount of water the plants are getting, or nutrient level of the soil. So, Saturday morning, after a very very fun father-daughter pancake breakfast, we drove over to a nearby nursery.

Wow! I felt like we were both two kids in a candy store. Hand in hand, excitedly we explored the nursery, looking at all the beautiful colors, stopping to smell all of the sweet flower blossoms. My daughter would spy something new, look up at me, and say "look at this", or "what's that".  Fun, fun, fun!

At Armstrong Nursery, we picked up an at home soil pH an nutrient test kit, a soil moisture probe, a box of organic vegetable garden fertilizer, a pair of garden shears, and...a humming bird. "Agh, it's so cute" my daughter said as she played with it's spring hinged wings, and that sealed the deal for me. Into the cart it went, and shortly thereafter our daughter proudly placed it into the garden. Total Visa card moment, right! "Metallic humming bird...price, six bucks, the price of seeing such pure joy on your daughters face...priceless".

Soil Moisture Levels - July 9, 2011 @ 19:30

Optimal Soil Moisture Level Measured

That evening, with our new soil moisture meter in hand, I made measurement at each plant grouping, at depths of one, two, and three inches. Based on the meters literature, the different plants the optimum moisture content number should be between 2 and 4. My reading were much, much higher. Oopps. With this information I created the following plots. Okay, granted they might be a little difficult to understand, so let me help. On the right side the graph are depths which the measurements were taken. On the bottom are the numbers 1 through 5, representing the five plant grouping (1 - Tomatoes, 2 - Peppers, 3 - Cucumbers, 4 - Zucchini, and 5 - Beans). Finally, the soil moisture is represented a multiple colored layers, coming out of the page toward the reader. Of the two graphs to the right, the top graph represents current soil moisture conditions, while the lower graph represents optimal soil moisture conditions. It is my goal to make the top graph look like the lower.

Soaking Up The Sun

Zucchini

Watering our plants last night I noticed that not only are the tomato and zucchini plants thriving, but several vegetables are starting to develop.  Excitedly, this afternoon I set out, with camera in hand, to take a few pictures our our new veggie sprouts to share with everyone.

Cucumber

Tomato

I have to say, that having the bed this high is great! It makes weeding a breeze and is awesome for making these kinds of observations. I think that when the time comes to harvest our vegetables, it will be really nice.

A New Beginning

Last week we took a quick trip over to our local Home Depot, and there we picked up one large, and three medium sized pots, two bags of organic potting soils, and several starter plants. I had every intention of starting our garden this year from seeds, but since we felt that were getting such a late start, and the varieties available to us were those we had already intended on planting this year...why not. So this year we bought a total of seven starters, of which there are three tomato plants (Roma, Yellow Pear, and Beefsteak), three pepper plants (Sweet Red and Yellow Bells and an Anaheim Chili), two Burpless Hybrid cucumbers, and a Black Beauty zucchini squash.

Retuning home from the store, I was extremely eager to get started planting our garden. However, before I could get started my father-in-law (who we are temporarily living with) stopped me and offered the use of one of his planters. He mentioned that he too had ever intention of planting a garden this year, but life just managed to get in the way. He also added that while clearing out the backyard, we had come across a couple back of compost, which we were welcomed to use. So without hesitation, I gathered up a couple shovels and a steel rake, and began turning the soil. Our daughter helped to supervise my work. Once I had dug down about two feet, I layered in the bags of potting soil and compost, and then turning the soil once more to blend. I really liked the way the soil looked afterwards.

Once I finished with preparing the soil, it was finally time to plant our starters. Our daughter, full of excitement, helped plant every single plant. With each plant the process was we used our hand-shovel and dug a small hole, pulled the tag from the plastic pot, pulled out the starter, messaged the roots a little, placed the plant into the hole, and backfilled the hole. It was a blast planting our garden with our daughter. I do think that she enjoyed, even more than planting, watering the new plants. Although she still isn't quite clear on the concept of keeping the water where the plants need it, still a heck of a lot of fun for all.

Several days later, while at work, a co-worker of mine brought in several trays of starters she had, but could not use this year. What great luck! So, as you might imagine, arriving home with more plants just made our daughter smile. We planted two Pole Bean plants, and a Poblano Chili plant. So far everything seems to be taking. I think the other day, I even noticed some flower buds developing on our tomato plants. Fun, fun, fun!