It’s time for my annual attempt at this garden blog. This weekend, Sunday, March 3rd to be precise, I dug out the seed starting tray from the basement and went to the hardware store to get a new bag of seed starting mix. After a little bit of work, the all the cells were filled with soil and populated with seeds.
Time to dust off the seed starting tray and get the 2024 season underway!
I didn’t mean to do this
Not sure what I clicked, but I didn’t intend to put my caption on top of the above image. Maybe I should just stick to gardening and officially retire the garden blog. 🙂
Same tomatoes this year as last year
I really haven’t found a better cherry tomato and am happy to stick with Cherry Baby Hybrid again this year. Maybe next year I’ll go back to experimenting with some other varieties.
Full seed tray line up
Here is the full line up of seeds being started indoors this year. I always tend to get mixed results from the non-tomato seeds but I do like the idea of getting a little head start on some lettuce and kale. Spinach is almost always a bust, but <shrug> here I go again thinking this year might be different.
Once again, the blog updates are coming far less frequently than I would like. Between work and kids, there isn’t enough time to really even make it to the garden, much less find time for a garden update.
While getting a forced break, I figure I’d try and sneak in a post. I’m currently sitting at LAX waiting on a flight back home. My wife and I are heading back home after helping our oldest get settled in for a summer internship. With this trip almost off the plate, maybe there will be a bit more time for the garden and blog updates… eh, probably not.
The started tomato seeds grew quite well this year. I’ll assume that the heating mat made a difference and will reserve full judgement until after another year or two.
By April 17th, the plants had very much outgrown their seed starting tray and needed to be transplanted into larger pots.
April 17th progressMakeshift potting benchUnfortunately, it wasn’t warm enough to move them out to the greenhouse so they had to hang out inside for two daysAfter the near freezing nights, the plants made it outside
While the tomato plants grew some more in the greenhouse and the weather continued to warm, it was time to do some garden repairs. The last of the second generation beds finally gave up the ghost and needed to be replaced. After this repair, all beds are again in good shape.
I miss the minivan for some choresOld boards were very rotten New bed in placeAll smoothed out and ready for planting.
Fast forward to May. The tomato plants no longer fit in the greenhouse and I haven’t had time to get them planted. Finally, on May 8th I carved out enough time to get them in the ground.
Well past time to get these in the ground
I planted two of each variety making it a total of six plants. The rest have been given out to family and coworkers.
One final update in this post and I’ll be current. Before the trip to LA, and I mean literally the hour before we needed to head to the airport, I quickly planted some seeds. In this session I planted peas, cucumbers, one hill each of zucchini and yellow squash.
I plan to do a second planting where I put in a second hill of zucchini and squash as well as green beans, carrots, lettuces and some flowers. Due to spending more time at work, I’m planning to tone down the garden to what I hope is a more manageable level.
First post of the new year and it is time to get some seeds started. In terms of seeds being started, not much different this year. Still have a primary focus on tomatoes with the remaining cells filled with kale, spinach, and lettuce.
One new change for this year is the addition of a heating mat to keep the seeds warmer in the basement.
Heating matHeating mat in position
Here are the tomatoes being started this year. Brandy Boy is once again in the line up and has been a good variety for many years now. After missing last year, I was determined to get some Cherry Baby seeds this year. Rounding out the three varieties is a new one this year. Making its debut in the garden is Bodacious Hybrid. It is supposed to be a good disease resistant tomato.
Tomato seeds
Some Kale, spinach and lettuce was added to the remaining cells.
Kale, spinach and lettuce seedsAll tucked in and warm
Germination was pretty quick for the tomatoes and Kale. Here is how they looked on Saturday March 26th. This is 6 days after being planted.
Tomato and kale seedlings. Tomato are left three rows and kale in on the right.
A quick check in on the seedlings on March 31 and the tomatoes are doing quite well. This is day 11 after being planted.
Tomato and Kale seedlingsNo spinach but a little bit of lettuce.
Here is the progress from today, Sunday April 3rd. The tomatoes are doing very well and I will need to thin them out to one plant per cell today. Kale is still looking good but the lettuce and spinach, not so much.
Progress as of April 3rd. Two weeks after planting.
I’ve been wanting to do this upgrade for a while and finally this spring it was time. For the past 15 or so years, anytime I needed to water the garden I would either use a watering can if I just needed a little or more likely I would drag a garden hose from the house out to the garden. The hose would always get kinked on the way out and never quite reached as far back into the beds as I would have liked. In the end, I ended up watering the garden far less than it actually needed, especially later in the summer when it both needed it the most and when I started caring about it the least.
The hope of the last few years was to find a way to make my life easier and the garden plants happier. I figured getting water out to the garden shouldn’t be too hard and I only need it during the summer months so I won’t need to worry about getting it below the frost line. What I needed was something like what was used for lawn irrigation. Something I can use during the summer and then disconnect and blow out the remaining water for the winter.
I tried to find someone on the internet that had already done something like this and had trouble finding anything quite like what I was expecting. I found a guy who just buried a garden hose but that seemed like it might be a little too temporary. Finally I came across a blog post by An Oregon Cottage. This post here showed how they not only ran a water line to the garden but also configured it so that there was a water fixture at each bed where a soaker hose could be attached. Now that I had some inspiration, it was time to design out how I wanted to implement this for my garden.
My plan is to just provide a few of the highlights on this posting and provide a more detailed static page on the blog (similar to the garden bed construction) for the rest of the details.
To start, I needed to plan a route to the garden from the outside faucet at the house. Of course it can’t be a nice straight shot but needed to go around the air conditioner and a tree and flower garden. Fortunately, though, once past those obstacles it was a nice long straight away to the corner of the garden.
Mapping the path of the pipe out to the gardenPlan for where the pipe will go to the houseIt was a lot of digging so I had to hire some extra muscleEvening picture of the completed trench
It turned into a fair amount of work to dig the trench by hand. Not insurmountable, but still a few sessions of a handful of hours over a couple days. The goal was to get the water line deep enough under the surface to avoid any impacts from lawn aerators or other activities that might break the line. I tried to get the trench a foot deep but in some places it was probably only about 8 inches.
Trench with pipe going under the fence and to the first garden bedWhy not add a place for a hose while we are at it
I added a way to hook up a hose in the back of the garden as well. Sometimes, particular when first planting, I don’t need to water all the beds or even a single bed but I’d like to just spot water from a hose. This especially came in handy when I was planting the garden before having finished purchasing and setting up the soaker hoses.
Final run of the water line to the last three garden beds. Ignore the misshapen feet in the picture
The water line entered the garden at the far corner of the above picture then went around to all six beds around the outside perimeter of the garden.
Final installation showing three of the beds
All in all it has worked out well so far. Of course, as soon as I got it all installed and setup we went on vacation for a week and a half. Since getting back I have used it only twice because it has been raining fairly regularly for about the last month. I’m sure once we get to August, the rain will stop and I’ll have a lot more chances to use the new garden irrigation system.
I’ve been away from the blog too long and there has been so much happening in the garden. This post will be short and I hope to be back soon with the bigger posts.
Today however is just a short good versus evil story. This story features the humble squash as the protagonist. During a quick check on the garden after dinner, I found this little golden egg squash ready for harvest.
And then just a few seconds later the evil antagonist entered the story…
This moth flew in and landed on one of the squash leaves. This little moth will result in the premature death of all my squash and zucchini plants. This is a Squash Vine Borer moth. If you care to read a bit more about this scourge of the squash word, you can start here.
Here is a catch up post about the peas this year. The peas were planted on April 7th, a little later than I normally would have but I was trying to time the harvest around busy times in June. We’ll see if this works out.
Planted a double ring of peasFull view of pea tower
Eleven days later (April 18), we have plants! Looks like a decent germination rate.
Tiny green peas emerging from the soilMore peas emerging on the other side
Today, April 25th, and the plants have continued to grow. We had some cold weather and even a sizable amount (4-ish inches) of snow on Wednesday of last week. Now, with temperatures forecast to be in the low 80s at least once this coming week I think they peas will start to stretch their legs.
Another year, another bed repair. Actually, in this case it was more of a replacement. With the weather almost warm today and the planting season rapidly approaching, it was time to get the beds in suitable shape for the year.
One of the older beds was in pretty rough shape. The back two beds are now the oldest in the garden. They were built as part of the Garden Expansion back in 2012. The back right one was in bad shape the last two years but there was no time to repair it. I just flipped the rotting boards around and braced the walls to get through the year. No excuses this year, so it was time to buy some wood and get the job done.
Excavating around the outside walls and removing the rotten boardsDecided to replace three sides firstNew boards, but re-using the old brackets. They are holding up very well.Three new wallsFour new wallsAll done
The big surprise of this project was the dramatic increase in cost of wood. I used 2x6x8 cedar and they were $34 each. I don’t remember exactly but I seem to recall that they were closer to $20 each last time I had to buy them.
Add one more example of “You can’t believe everything you read or see on the internet.“ My previous post regarding the progress of the seedlings was all wrong and you should probably be suspect of all my posts, both past, present and future.
I remember thinking to myself, “That is an odd looking tomato” but was busy and figured it would turn more tomatoey as it grew. No, that just is never going to happen. You see, no matter low long you let Buttercrunch lettuce grow, it will never look like a Brandy Boy tomato.
So, what the heck happened? Apparently I had put the two 4×4 cell seed starting trays into the larger tray backwards. The tomatoes and Brussels Sprout cells are on the right four rows and the kale and lettuce on on the left four rows. I haven’t checked on the seedlings all week as work and been kicking my rear (Anyone an expert in Bluetooth LE Advertisement messages and why connections from another device don’t always successfully establish a connection, I’d love to chat) and just really looked at them today. It was very obvious now that I was wrong.
Let’s see if I can get this status update post properly labeled. First up TOMATOES! (They actually look like tomatoes this time). Below we have from left to right, SuperTasty Hybrid, Super Sweet 100, and Brandy Boy Hybrid. Turns out the older SuperTasty seeds from a few seasons go are still germinating well. For all three varieties, I have at least once plant per cell which is the desired state.
Finishing out the 4×4 cell tray along with the tomatoes is the Brussels Sprouts. They seem to be doing okay with the plan in the second cell from the front laying down on the job. I’d like at least three plants to survive to the garden.
Now for the kale and lettuce. The Prizm Hybrid on the left is the one struggling with germination with just two of the cells producing a single plant each. The Dwarf Blue kale as well as Buttercrunch and Burbee Bibb lettuce are all doing well.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a previous post to update with a lot of strikeout font.
UPDATE: Just ignore anything in this post that refers to the pictures. It is just all wrong. See the next post Well that was wrong for a more detailed explanation.
Look at me!!! Two posts so far this year!
First off, let’s start with an update on the seeds being started. After about three days, some of the tomatoes had sprouted. The middle row is the Super Sweet 100 and the row on the right are the Brandy Boy Hybrid. Both of these seeds are freshly purchased this year. The row on the left is the Super Tasty Hybrid and those seeds are from the 2019 growing season and are having a more difficult time germinating.
On the right side of the seed starting tray, the only activity was from the Burpee Bibb lettuce.
Below is another shot of the Brandy Boy Hybrid seedlings.
Seven days after planting
After a full week, all rows have at least some plants germinated and sprouted.
On the tomato side of the tray, we see that the original early starters have continued to grow and produce larger leaves. In the left most row, the Super Tasty Hybrid have at least two seedlings that have decided to join the party. However, I think it may be time to toss the remaining seeds. With at least two seeds per cell, there should have been 8 plants started but only had two make it.
On the right side of the tray, things have improved significantly. The four rows are from left to right, Prizm Hybrid Kale, Dwarf Blue Curled Kale, Buttercrunch Lettuce and Burpee Bibb. On the far left of the picture is the row of Brussels Sprouts which have been the slowest to get started.
What has been happening outside?
Now, how about the outside. Well, this early in the season the answer to that is usually nothing good and this year is no exception. As mentioned last year, one of the two oldest beds was showing its age. I didn’t have time to do a full repair last year but just did a quick fix and a patch to get through the year. This spring the sides of the bed will need to be replaced.
Finally, while the weather was very nice yesterday (3/27), I collected the support structures for the Peas, Pole Beans and Cucumbers and moved them from the garage to the garden. I was tempted to plant the peas but decided to wait a couple weeks to try and get a better timing for them to be ready for harvest when we are around to eat them. I did however plant some lettuce and radish in a small corner of a garden bed. Sorry, no pictures of that as it would have just looked like a smoothed section of dirt. 🙂
Well, it isn’t January 1st but it is the first post of the garden blog. It is time to revive this sleeping blog after a long winter (and fall and summer ) and see if I can post a bit more this year. To kick off the 2021 garden season, I’ll begin with seed starting.
On Friday, I dug out the seed starting tray and other necessary supplies. I sorted through my seeds and selected the ones which will get the head start.
Seed starting tray filled with soil and awaiting the seeds.
The primary reason for starting seeds indoors is tomatoes. Last year I used up the last of some varieties of tomato seeds so a couple months ago I replenished my stock. Unfortunately, my new favorite cherry tomatoes were sold out. In their place I went back to Super Sweet 100s. I’m also starting seeds for Super Tasty and Brandy Boy Hybrid.
The rest of the tray is being used for kale and lettuce. Also making an appearance after a long absence from the garden is Brussels Sprouts. The kale started by seed indoors last year grew wonderfully and was still producing until it was too cold to walk out to the garden. Four of the plants were still in the garden all they way till this spring. I’m not sure if they would have started growing again or not but they were pulled to make a clean start to the spring.
Once all the seeds were planted, I moved the tray under the light and filled up the tray with warm water which should keep them soil nice and moist.
Hopefully soon I’ll have a posting reporting that the seeds have sprouted.
) and see if I can post a bit more this year. To kick off the 2021 garden season, I’ll begin with seed starting.
Matt's Garden Blog 