Second Harvest (first real harvest)

This has been a long time coming, but we finally harvested a respectable number of leaves of lettuce, kale and chard. I am sure that the long, rainy, cool spells did not help, but, next year I want to be harvesting lettuce by the end of April. Note to self: start 32 lettuce at the beginning of March next year.

Bloom report

In our front yard, purple petals are beginning to show beyond the green sheaths of the iris, ants are busy preparing to open the peony buds and the apple trees are shedding their petals and beginning to fruit. This is the first May in the last two years that we did not have a late frost, which bodes well for an apple harvest this year.

Nearby, the honeysuckle has been blooming for about a week. In Buffalo, the chestnut trees are blooming and the cherries have lost most of their petals.

We planted three winter squash last night.

Homemade Earth/Grow Boxes

We worked hard this weekend in the midst of Irish dance, ballet and piano recitals to build planters for our tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and peppers. We managed to finish three 3' containers to house all nine of the tomatoes and six of the basil that were started in April.

Originally these planters were to be regular planters like the ones that I built for friends last year, then I received an advertisement in the mail for "The Grow Box". In a shameless act of reverse engineering, I came up with a plan to use the same concept of continuous bottom watering for my homemade planters using a catch basin and a layer of gravel below the soil.

Speaking of soil, after following Mel Bartholomew's 1-1-1 recipe for a planting mix for a couple of years, I have decided to begin using a product called "Bumper Crop" in a 2:1 ratio with vermiculite. The Bumper Crop already contains peat moss, along with a host of other organic soil amendments.

Iris are very close to blooming and most of the newly planted asparagus have emerged. Strawberries and blueberries are blooming though we don't expect a large crop since they were just planted this year.

Weekend update

We finally saw a few breaks in the clouds today. It has been very gloomy with lots of rain falling every day since the end of the first week of May. Nothing compared with the flooding in the Midwest, but a challenge to the spirit nonetheless.

This weekend we planted seven blueberries, two currants and sixty onions. We also divided the roots of the comfrey that were planted last year to make a 15' x 20' comfrey patch. This will be used for making compost. I have ordered some sorghum grass that will ultimately be added to the compost pile as well. With luck we will be able to manufacture our own compost for the garden frames next year. At $40 per frame for the Bumper Crop product, plus lumber, chicken wire, landscape cloth, organic fertilizer, vermiculite and peat moss, building new frames is a fairly sizable investment; however one can expect to save more than that amount as a return on investment in a typical season.

On the one sunny day which is forecast for this weekend, I hope to get the tomato containers built, planted and settled on the front porch. Peonies are beginning to bud, the apple trees and quince bushes are the only thing blooming in the front yard except for a single protected tulip, eldest daughter picked what was left of the daffodils to give to a friend. We are anxiously awaiting the blooming of the irises and peonies to brighten up our front garden beds, we may even see the lilacs bloom this year.

Quick update

Buttercup and acorn squash were transplanted into soil blocks, garden frame four was planted with soil block spinach sprouts and lettuce, and the morning glories from 5/6 are sprouting. The tomatoes, squash and cucumber are all growing at an alarming rate.

Apple blossoms

This morning, I weeded the first frame which was seeded completely from scratch. There are a lot of tomatoes popping up from fruit that was left on the ground last fall. Apple blossoms are fully opening today.

First harvest

Transplanted 5/6 cukes into soil blocks and the last of the 4/27 pepper sprouts. I picked my first harvest of greens this morning from the seedlings that were transplanted on Saturday.

Tomato graduation day

Tomato soil blocks were transplanted to larger containers. The lettuce from 5/6 is sprouting. Lettuce is dependable enough that I think I will start it right in the 3/4" soil blocks from now on.

Filling garden frames

Today youngest daughter planted a new frame (G3) with all of the seedlings (kale/lettuce/chard) that were started in March. I prepared another garden bed (G4) with what materials I had on hand. This meant making do with Bumper Crop, peat moss and backyard soil.

This is the first time that I used something other than "Mel's Mix" for a garden frame. Vermiculite is becoming very expensive and difficult to obtain so I figured I would follow the nursery's recommendation of one part Bumper Crop to two parts soil. I have not been very happy with the results. It is not the nice loamy growing medium that I have become used to and when I water, it puddles easily and runs. I think that I will try strictly Bumper Crop in the next frame with a little perlite or vermiculite mixed in. This will mean that each frame will require about $50 of growing medium (8 cu ft).

I will be ordering some sudan grass (sorghum) as a compost crop to complement the comfrey for making my own compost next year in the hopes of reducing the cost of filling more frames.

All prior year garden frames have now been moved into the new more narrow pathway configuration. Next week, I hope to build four more frames to bring the total to nine.

This evening, I started pickling cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crookneck, acorn, butternut, and buttercup squash in baggies.

Soil blocks and baggies

Transplanted 4/27 spinach sprouts into soil blocks, started lettuce, yellow pear tomato, and heavenly blue morning glory seeds in baggies. Forget-me-nots and quince have been blooming for a few days now.

The system is coming together

More basil, pepper and spinach sprouts were transplanted into soil blocks last night. It does feel good to have a working system now for growing these seeds (baggy/soil blocks/SF raised beds). Now if I could just get a few extra garden frames ready outside, it would free up the bottleneck of getting the plants out from under the lights. If I hadn't decided to rearrange the frames this year to make the paths more narrow, I wouldn't be in this situation. But by next year, we will have at least nine frames ready to go from the beginning.

In the falling dark, and the falling rain

Last night, I planted 26 asparagii (asparaguys?) as darkness descended on our sleepy little town and the rain was fallin'. What a surprise when I visited the garden this morning, to find that some furry critter had dug up several of my asparagus roots. Fortunately, he did not find them very interesting because they were mostly intact. This is a great reminder of why I go through the trouble of completely enclosing all of my square foot garden beds with chicken wire. I may need to put down some livestock fence over the asparagus until they get established to discourage further digging.

Raspberries

The remainder of the raspberry plants were planted last night in the falling dark, twelve in all. I noticed this morning that one Poblano pepper seed and several more basil have sprouted on top of the grow lights. If it is not raining too hard tonight, I will plant the asparagus.

Progress

The garden frame that was seeded on Easter Sunday (8 days ago) is now beginning to sprout. I spied kale, beet and lettuce peeking through the soil. I removed the plastic plant protectors from the seedlings in garden 2 since we are expecting mild (though rainy) weather for the rest of the week. The progress of the seedlings is encouraging and the tomato plants inside the house are about five inches tall.

Sproutlings

We have six spinach sprouts now transplanted from the baggy to soil blocks. That is six out of twenty-four Melody spinach seeds. One of the twenty Bloomsdale seeds have sprouted. This took 5 days.

About half of the twenty basil seeds that were placed in a baggy on top of the fluorescent light fixture have sprouted and been transplanted (5 days). I had zero basil seeds sprout from the original planting in soil blocks.

April broke many records for rainfall in our area. According to Aaron Reynolds, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Buffalo, "“There’s only been six days without rain this month. The only day that was above 60 degrees without precipitation was April 9 (the high was 62 degrees).”