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.
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.
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