Oh beautiful day!

As the day began

We had one of the most delightful days in a very long time today.  The forecasters were dead on this time.  I planned on getting a very early start to the day given the forecast and what I really needed to get accomplished.
I actually look forward to beating the sun up because it is a very special time of the day to me.  The world is quiet for a while and you can just take in all of God's beauty.  It affords me time to breathe and just exist.  Even the birds aren't quite up yet.  And in the area where we live, that is saying alot as we have a very big population of loud birds.  Sometimes I can imagine me as a farmer and being out in the fields and just taking in the day before getting on to the business of farming.  You know, looking down from a hill over the rolling fields below just as morning is approaching.  It has to be one of the best offices with a view in the world.
So,  I was up at 5:15 and raring to go.  I put on my headlamp as it was dark outside and began the day.  I had a pile of limbs that needed to be cut up and bagged along with other yardwaste.  I sometimes have to wonder what my neighbors think when they see me up that early.  Then again, they may not even be up.  So here was my view at 5:30AM

I said it was dark didn't I?  I began clearing the pile and cutting up the pile when it occurred to me that most of the limbs were rather substantial.  Then it hit me - why not?

Permaculture anyone?

I decided to practice a little permaculture gardening.  Never heard of it?  Well, it is quite complex but one of the parts of it is to use what your land produces.  In this case, I decided to attempt to employ the various branches of the tree in my yard as plant supports in my garden.  I tried it last year with my Peppers and it worked very well for me.  So, I trimmed the various large branches down and bagged the waste products and the little limbs for disposal this week.  When I started, I thought I might get maybe 10 or so limbs for Pepper supports.  Here are the culled limbs.

After about an hour or so, I had all my limbs trimmed and ready for use in the garden.  And the bounty from nature was far more than I anticipated.  Here are the Pepper supports.  All 15 of them!

And here are the Tomato supports.

There are 11 of them.

Frugality?

Now, my experience is that these will last for about 2 or 3 years.  But then again, who cares?  I looked at tomato cages and supports and they can cost anywhere from $4 to $9 each.  Even at $3 a piece, that is a savings of $78.00 all totaled not counting taxes.  That seems significant to me.  I have been and continue to be frugal if nothing else when it comes to my garden.  Maybe I am a throwback given my experiences but it all adds up.  And readily free materials are available if you look for them and use your imagination.  I will go into this further in a subsequent post.

Sprucing up!

I've decided this year to tighten up the look of my gardens.  I noticed that the fence posts that I use were pretty well worn from the many years of service so I bought some spray paint to bring them back to life.  I think the results speak for themselves.  Before:

and after:

A small but I think significant improvement.  I'm going to paint the rest of them next chance I get.  \

Winter garden progress  

During the day, I checked in on the progress of the winter garden I kept going all through the winter. I wasn't expecting the lettuce to be doing okay as the temps were high and this garden was covered with three layers of protection.  So, I uncovered them in the 80 degree heat we had today and this is what I found.

Quite an early salad garden!  Not at all what I expected but I will take it.  I removed the extra layer of the thick greenhouse plastic to insure that it wouldn't get too hot in the greenhouse this week.  Of course, I will have to keep an eye on the weather to make sure it doesn't get too cold.  At this point, it looks like it will be normal without any drastic low temps.

Shared garden?

I have a freind who with his wife wants a garden this year.  They are really busy so I volunteered to help them this year with the garden.  When he told me he'd have 400 square feet of garden I kind of thought he was over shooting it.  He contacted me to come over to look at the space today.   Here are the spaces.

This is one plot.  Here's the other.

And here's the rest of the above space.

He wasn't kidding.  This is probably a little bigger than 400 sq ft.  It's what I call - big fun.  The nice thing about this is that it runs east to west and there are no trees to shade the sun.  The bulk of the space will be in full sun.  Should work for most plants but it defintely won't work too well for lettuce and such.  

Next?

Lots for sure.  Just seems that you run out of time regardless of how early you get up.  I have yet to ramp up with the community garden I have been helping out with and I am behind in growing my plants.  Having a full time job and doing serious gardening is sometimes overwhelming.  I mean, I put in 10 hours in on my garden and yard today and it feels like I did not get enough done.  Where did all this work come from?  But, you know what, I got to spend 10 hours on things I needed to and in my garden.  Not a bad day actually. 

And you?

Hopefully you are ramping up your garden activities just about now.  There is certainly alot to do this time of the year regardless of where and what zone you live in.  I hope you are getting your hands dirty and the soil tilled.  And, until next time, happy gardening everyone! 

       

Tomatoes!!!

I started 16 tomatoes from seed this past Wednesday.  I used the Jiffy seed pellet system you can find at almost any home improvement store and maybe a few grocery stores.  Having never used them before, there was a little intrepidation on my part.  So, I followed their instructions and set my seed in each moistened pelet and covered them with the supplied lid.  It made a mini greenhouse that held the moisture in.  I placed the greenhouse on top of our refrigerator and let them sit there until Friday night.
At that point, there was only one packet that had shown a shoot coming up out of it.  I decided to put them into a warming greenhouse seed starter to give them heat to help along the process.  I have had that system for probably 8 years so far.  So, I put them into the warming tray without the top and filled the warmer bed with water on Friday night.  As can be seen from the picture below, there was great progress made over the weekend.

There are 15 of 16 pellets that have plants growing from them.  Given there are various types of tomaotes here, I am pretty sure all will be showing growth within the next day or so.  Now, I have to put these under light in order to allow them the necessary light to grow.  I will wait another day or so then transfer the set of these to the lights.  They will need lots of light - approximately 12-14 hours a day.
I started another set of 18 paste tomatoes and another set of 6 mixed variety tomaotes last night. They can be seen in the backround of the picture above.  My plan is to also begin pepper plants once the tomatoes are moved under light so I can use the warmer for them.  One thing at a time.
It may seem that 40 tomatoes are a lot and I have to admit, it is.  Last year I had 3 paste tomato plants and the they gave an uneven harvest so I am hoping the 18 will give us enough to put up in the fall.  I have never done that before so hopefully we will get the harvest we need and we can learn how to put them up for winter use.
On another note, I went out to check on the state of my little salad garden I have had over the winter. Much to my surprise, they came through the snow and cold temps with great result.  As can been below, all the plants are still healthy at this point.  Even the mesclun lettuce in the lower right corner looked ok and is showing sings of producing a second set of lettuce.

We have had several salads from this bed over the last few weeks.  I'll continue to water and see if we can get pehaps another salad or two before I dig it up for the sping.  I was able to get water from my now three filled 55 gallon water barrels.

The water was cold but it was clean.  And, it's free!  I usually dont have my barrels up and running this early but last year, we had tons of rain until the end of May then pratically nothing.  So, I decided to set them up and we have had several long rainy days so now, they are full.
Another item of interest for me and hopefully you is that my winter rye has taken off quite well this Spring.  As you will notice, it has grown a lot since the last time I looked at it.

It's a lot thicker and taller than my last visit which means I will have more green manure than I anticipated I would have had at this point.  Credit the unusually warm weather and a lack of aprreciable sonwfall.  Not really sure I should be happy about that given the beneficial effects cold weather and snow have on the pest populations around here.  But, I will take what God gives.
That's all I have at this time.  The new season is getting underway and that makes a gardening nut like myself very happy.  Until next time, Happy Gardening everyone.

Winter - finally?

Tuesday, we received our first appreciable snowfall of winter.  It appears Mother Nature was a little late this year.  There were countless appocalytic forecasts that preceded it's arrival.  The area where I live was supposed to get 6-12 inches and areas north and west were supposed to get up to 24.  This led to the usual run at the grocery stores for the necessary toilet paper, milk and bread.  I bought in given the overwhelming agreement from the various forecast outlets.  I prepped for it by getting my snow blower set up, buying gasoline to be sure I had enough and finally, getting all my snow jackets and such together. I believed that this truly would be a big storm for Maryland and the New England states for this time of the year.

As can be seen from the photos above, upon waking up on Tuesday, I looked outside and saw that this much anticipated storm had indeed been a dud.  Needless to say, the storm did not match the hype here in the state of Maryland.  The storm may have left a couple inches at best.  But, those couple of inches plus the the frigidly cold temperatures may have been enough to kill off insect larvae and soil bacteria that had begun to grow due to our 70 degree weather the previous week.  I truly believe you need snow and cold weather lest you are overrun by pests and unseen bacteria during the summer. 

So, I am grateful we at least got this which may have helped in that regard.  It did cover the yards very evenly as seen below.  And, it was a icy snow which may stay around for a couple of days.  All good things in the eye of the beholder.  

Even though it was an icy mix for part of the day, the winter rye (below) stood up to the inclement weather rather well.  Rye is generally a pretty rugged grass so I am hoping to find the rye still alive when the snow has melted.

And best of all, my winter garden cover also survived untouched from this late storm.  I haven't looked inside yet as I am waiting for the weather to improve.  The temperatures inside have been at or near freezing so they may be okay. 

Given I have picked three salads worth of lettuce and spinach already, I have hopes of getting a second or third cutting of them before I have to convert the space to Spring and Summer crops.  
Until the weather turns this weekend, I will have to turn my attention to getting my Tomato and Pepper plants off to a good start.  So, until next time, Happy Gardening everyone.