The steel jungle is back again this year.  It worked so well last year, we brought it back again in almost the exact same form and location.

Read the rest of this entry »

I love my Dodge Ram.  It drivers better with 1500 pounds of moo doo fertilizer in the back than it does empty.  I picked up my rototiller from a friend who was borrowing it on the way back from picking up the moo doo.  With a 20 foot flatbed trailer and the fertilizer, the truck doesn’t feel any different (though turns do require a bit more planning).

Once I got back to the house, I used the 3 foot ledge on the property to run the tiller straight off the back of the trailer which had to be the easiest way to get it off of all the different times onto and off of the trailer.  I pulled the truck around to ditch the trailer and then went into make dinner.

Once dinner was done, there wasn’t enough time to deal with the fertilizer so I left it in the truck overnight.  I couldn’t even tell it was back there driving to and from work today including on the hills.  Yeah diesel:)

I unloaded it when i got home tonight.  Taking advantage of the truck again with the clearance to drive it around strange bends in the property to end up 10 feet from the entrance to the garden.  It made for a quick unloading which left me enough time to roto till everything into the garden tonight.

It also put the truck right next to the greenhouse to remind me to open the greenhouse up in the morning.

Wow, today it hit 101 in the greenhouse with the windows mostly open and one part of each door unzipped.  It’s incredible how how it can get in there.  I had no idea but am glad I had a thermometer in there to be able to tell.  Once I opened up the doors, it fell down to the mid 90′s.

Out of curiosity I put a thermometer into one of the 55 gallon barrels and was shocked to see it register 80 degree water.  No wonder it warms up so quickly, the water is now keeping it warm overnight instead of cooler in the day.  It’s to far on the spectrum…

All joking aside, it’s clear that now is the time to be opening the greenhouse on every day to keep it cold (what a strange concept) so that the tomatoes can stay at a good growth temperature.  I need to figure out a good way to get the largest ones into the ground quickly so that they don’t burn out from having so much mass above ground with less than adequate roots.

If you’ve got a bur style coffee grinder, have I got news for you, it probably needs cleaning.  I’m not talking about running some rice through the machine and calling it clean, I mean open up the burs and clean them and the feed area out with a brush.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s come to this, I’ve given up on my peppers.  Most of them at least.  I have three jalapeno peppers and three habanero peppers that might and I mean might grow enough in the next month to be decent plants.  The rest are little tiny sprouts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago, I trimmed back the first vines on the hop plants as far as I comfortably could.  I was concerned that I cut to far, but clearly that isn’t the case.  Instead, I was rewarded with great vines already on most plants which is wonderful to see.  I already had several that were nearing 18 inches long. Read the rest of this entry »

I just started the last set of seeds.  Half were squashes and the other half were gourds and strange pumpkin looking seeds that we’ve collected from past fall decorations after our annual party.  The later ones are going to be very interesting to see since they potentially are cross pollinated between different varieties and won’t be what we had purchased two or three years ago when we harvested those seeds.

I won’t try and start any more seeds in pots at this point.  I may toss a few into the ground to see how they do.  I picked up a packet of small tags at the co-op last weekend for this.  Much easier than trying to keep a sheet of paper with descriptions.

This year, my mission in the garden is to have a number of items grow from seeds.  I’ve been back and forth on if I was behind with my plantings or ahead.  The seeds are started and coming along but slowly.  The greenhouse is doing a great job of being comfortably warm in the day and it has seemed to stay warmer overnight when I’ve been in it early in the morning.

The first batch of seeds I started back in early March are looking like good four inch pots.  They would blend in if you saw them at the garden store.  That rocks for me.  The rest, well, lets hope they keep going so that I can get some of them to make it to the ground.  We won’t plant until June 1st or so, but the master gardeners expo is two weeks away and my wife will want to buy good plants there if mine aren’t all up to speed.  I know some of the last ones probably won’t make the cut but hopefully the middle plantings will.

I’m not feeling so bad though, one of my friends had her starts out tonight and they are barely started.  If they feel like they can wait this long to start, then just perhaps mine will be looking great in two weeks and most will get used.

Adding to the Yearly garden plan for Feb 15th, Plant Tomato Seedlings.  With caution towards a frost, the green house seems to have done a very good job at helping them grow.  Having 125 gallons of water is a big help also.

Imagine my surprise when I walked out of my greenhouse to find the ground covered in an inch of snow.  I had my mp3 player with me and with a bit of music, I hadn’t heard everything going on.  You can see the one of two 55 gallon blue drums on the right side of the green house picture.  It was just dropping the temperature as I was getting ready to leave.

I transplanted all my cold weather plants (lots of kale, swiss chard, and some cabbage) and put them into 4 inch pots.  I left those in the green house since the cold (hopefully) won’t be as big a deal with them.  If it is, I’ll adjust and restart them loosing two weeks.

Long before the snow came, Ciro joined me in the green house, it was quite cute as he looked out at something