Lil sprout

First, I'm sorry I haven't posted sooner. There just hasn't been anything to report and things haven't progressed much to be worthy of pictures.

We had a strange storm this week that gave us almost constant thunder and rain for several hours, but not a lot of lightning. I checked the forecast after that, and it said we were supposed to have storms every day until next Wednesday. That hasn't been right, but we've had really high humidity.

The sweet peas that I put in were duds. I bought another packet and sat on my butt clearing soil of weeds and planting the new seeds. My neighbor from the next plot over waved hello and after a few gestures, she came over and confirmed I was planting seeds.

Through more gestures, she told me I should soak the seeds in water and wait until the sprouts were of certain size before I planted them.

I put the seeds back in the packet and continued to clean up the edges where I came upon dozens of pea seeds from my last planting that never sprouted. I collected those too. And I found some beans too.

A couple of nights ago, I took all of the gathered seeds plus unplanted seeds from my seed stash and started soaking them.

I remembered a total cheat I could use. Not because I'm too lazy to do it myself, but because I'm too impatient - I went to my favorite natural food co-ops and bought a bag of conventional sprouted bean mix. It's full of beans, peas, and lentils that are already sprouted for use in salads.

I also stopped by the Farmer's Market. After more clean up and hanging the last 18' of fence, I realized how much space was going unused. Pflaum's weren't there, so I bought from a guy who owns a nursery in the area. It looks like he's kept his plants on the cart because the tomatoes were going sideways to get the sun, and anything with tendrils was wrapped around anything else with tendrils. Everything was $1. I bought a bunch of peppers to replace the ones I started and planted, that disappeared. I bought a few tomatoes and herbs.

I decided to get some petunias to replace the ones I killed off by not watering them enough. I found some draping plants and some climbers.

When I got home, I went straight to the garden to plant everything I'd bought. I planted the climbers along the fence line that goes around the brasicas that won't be very fussy about a little sideways shade. Each plant had at least 5 tendrils so I unwound them from each other, and laced them through the fence. Even though I thought it was going to rain last night, I watered in all of the new stuff.

Oh, one of my neighbors who is from Vietnam, but also speaks Chinese (his father is Chinese) and English  asked if he could use some of my garden space for his plant. I showed him the spot and it's all settled in. He's going to make me pork wonton soup in thanks. He owned a noodle cart in Saigon before his wife died and he came to the US. The leaves of the plant are an ingredient.

Neighbors do a garden stroll to see how each plot is going. Since I have so many plants people don't recognize, I get a lot of visitors. When I point out the flowers, I get different reactions along the line that I'm wasting space with flowers that I could have planted with tomatoes. 

Perfect Weather

Look at that forecast! Ten days of my favorite kind of summer weather!

I've been kind of quiet because, well, there isn't much to say. It rained a lot. We had at least 7 inches of rain in a 10 day period. It was too mucky to be in the garden and it didn't need to be watered.

When I put straw on the garden, it didn't go the way I'd hoped it would, but it's a lesson learned. I took the straw off of everything and I lost a few peppers.

I broke down and bought chicken wire to replace the floppy plastic fencing I was using. I thought I bought a roll 5 feet tall and 150 feet long. I took down all of the fence I had and hung overlapping sections of chicken wire. My plot is 60'x11'. After hanging all of the fence, I can barely tell I've taken any off of the roll. It's still to heavy to lift and carry. At least one neighbor is going to buy some from me. I told her I would sell her 15' for $1. She's got a long, outside plot like I do. I think others might be interested and I can get rid of most of what's left  and make back some of my money.

The brussel sprouts that I broadcast are doing well. Yesterday, I weeded the bed and spaced the plants more evenly.  Today, they are standing straight and it seems like they've grown a bit overnight. I'm really happy with them.

The rhubarb has kicked off. The carrots have begun to show themselves and I have planted two more rows. I have seeds enough to plant again later this sumer. The peas are finally coming up, and now they'll have a sturdy fence to grow on instead of being tugged on by the plastic fence in the wind. The tomatoes I bought are growing from their original awesome condition, and the tomatoes I started from seeds are really, truly growing!! I haven't killed them! And there are lots of them! If they all grow the 7 feet tall as the others have in the last few years, my tomato-house-arbor-thingy will really serve good purpose.

4 O'Clocks from Burpee

Now that I have so much more and sturdier fence space, I decided to take advantage of it. I've planted more peas. I've planted a whole packet of long beans. 4-O'Clocks are the evening version of Morning Glories - the open in the evening and stay open until daylight. They are trumpet-shaped flowers and should draw hummingbirds and  honeybees. Instead of a climbing vine, they are bushy and may grow to 30" tall. I've put them along the fence line on the southeast corner and I plan on adding more sunflowers in that corner. The flowers will do well in the sun, and the brussel sprouts and other cooler-loving veg might be better off because of the shade.

The lettuce I planted from seed survived the rain. I bought some more greens to put in the bed with them. I accidentally bought swiss chard - two kinds. I put all of it in last night. The 3" pots that I bought had 12+ seedlings in them, so I'm going to have a nice carpet of greens. I have more lettuce and greens seeds that I hope to cycle through for the rest of the summer. I don't know if that actually works in the hotter weather, but I'm going to try.

I do have some pretty big spaces that are un-planted and covered with straw. It will keep the straw there for now and keep out the weeds. I want to keep some ground-space aside for the butternut squash I've got going. Having enough room for them has been a big problem for the last 2 years.

I had to move the bird feeder. It hung over the work space I made for myself under the tomato-house-arbor-thingy and earlier this week, I stepped inside to a soft, bouncy carpet of sunflower sprouts. The mass of them was solid and about 6" deep. It's easy enough to kill off the sunflowers there, but the seeds have continued to spread all over my garden and the one next to me. The bird seed I bought this year is the problem, and I bought 35 pounds of it! I've filled the two big feeders with the trouble seeds and hung them on the tree near my plot. I bought some of the same seed that I bought last year and put that in a smaller feeder last night. It was nearly empty today. I will move it into the tomato-house-thingy tomorrow so all of the "good" seeds are in the garden and the big feeders can empty or spill without messing up the garden.

I can say I am really satisfied and pleased with the garden right now. It looks like it's going to be very successful, and I think it's going to be pretty too. It still hasn't been worth it to take pictures - everything is still small and they don't show well in pictures, but with this week's weather, things should be aces by next Sunday.

My hands and feet are covered with little cuts and scratches from the chicken wire, I have my first bug bite on my face, the mani/pedi I got last week is doing wonders for keeping my nails from looking gnarly and stained from all of the digging, and my hands have been swollen and sore for the last few nights because they haven't done any real hard work in years.