Green beans like to be crowded.

Well, that's what I ready anyway. My green bean plants are over a foot tall and were becoming problematic in my little greenhouse. I'd accidentally bent the stalks and moving them just a little to water them put them in danger of breaking - a true heartache when they've come along so well.

Last night, I took the green bean plants and put them all in the same container maybe 14 inches across and 5 inches deep. Then I wrapped all of the stems around each other to a little support to keep them all upright. They have that little bit of fuzz on them that makes them stick together anyway and with their leaf pairs sticking out, they clung to each other anyway.

They aren't in the greenhouse anymore. They're by the window. Today, like magic, a couple of the stems threw out 4-6 inches of vine and there are at least 4 new leaf pairs going. Cool beans.

On PBS tonight, Nature had a program about how plants communicate. They can attract polinators, shoo away polinators that are too aggressive, fight for root space with "stranger" plants while playing nice with plants that came from the same parent plant. Non-native plants can grow like crazy and take up a lot of space while poisoning the native plants around them, but some native plants create a barrier around their own roots to hold off the aggressive plants and will integrate in groupings of the weaker native plants protecting them from the aggressive non-native plants too allowing both native plants to grow healthy while holding off the "bad guys." Fungus and fir tree roots give each other a boost and connect thousands of trees in the same forest to keep everyone happy.

It's interesting to think about. I'm even more impressed with the scientists who've come up with experiments to test theories. One scientist exposed the leaves of a tree to radio active carbon gas (think carbon dioxide in, oxygen out). They came back the next day with a Geiger counter and found the other plants that got the carbon from the tree that "breathed" the radioactive gas.

Another scientist blocked parts of plants from themselves so the plant couldn't tell that it had been pollinated. He said he made the plant kind of crazy by making it "blind" to the things going on around it and it's own self. The plant's floral smell became stronger, more energy went to the flowers and other bits to attract sexy bugs even though it had already been pollinated for days.

Plants are smart. Smarter than we realize. How do we recognize communication between organisms without nervous systems? If other plants, fungus, and bugs can understand what plants are saying, can we ever understand it so we can listen too? Can we talk back other than the clumsy bumping around and manipulating the environment and genes of plants in the process? Sure. We'll just have to wait for it.

Folks who grow things know a little bit about this. There are guides for companion planting - putting plants that support each other together and you can make a fruit sweeter. Include red and orange flowers and you'll get hummingbirds. Put marigolds on the border and it will keep some creatures away. It's much more sophisticated than that, but I take my list of do's and don'ts for companion plantings handy when I draw up a garden plan - and I DO have to plan to give each plant the space, sun and water that works best.  That's complicated enough. The green beans in my window will remind me.

Frozen muck

We had warm weather on Friday and again yesterday, so I decided to look in on the garden.

My plot is on the southern end of the garden. It's in the shadow of our building until late morning, then I have full sun until sundown. 

The ground for the whole garden slopes with the high point in the northeast and the lowest west and southwest. The eastern border for the entire garden is dry, and the plots are dry all the way west, except mine. It's got an inch of ice or more on the low end.

Some of the chicken wire I used last year wasn't rolled up nicely and it blew around in the wind over winter. I tidied up what I could, but some of it is still embedded in ice and won't come free without a lot of working. I've left it for the sun.

I was frustrated with the brussels sprouts I grew last year. I used about 20% of the garden plot to grow them, but none got more than 2 feet tall and the buds didn't get larger than marbles. I left them standing to freeze over and it looks like I made a lot of wildlife friends. All of the leaves and buds were gnawed to the stalk and the top of the stalk was chewed off too. My plot is covered in little poops - maybe bunny. As things were melting, the dung smell was getting strong. It's all good for the garden, I say.

I left some onions and herbs in the ground, covered them in hay, chicken wire, and laid stakes over top to hold things in place over winter. I've never done this before, so it's all guessing. I removed the chicken wire and stakes. Parts of the hay were still blocked in ice. If I did it right, onions should sprout in a few weeks. I put in 300 sets last year and had a really bad show. I'm not sure how much is left in the ground, but any harvest is an improvement.

Parks of the ground are hard and easy to navigate, but I sunk in ankle deep in spots. I didn't fall, thank goodness. Some of the elderly neighbors were watching me. They already think I'm crazy. Crazy and covered in mud is more than I want to give them right now.

I broke up the icy chunks of straw and spread them around a bit. We'll have below freezing days this week. I won't be outside to work for a while. The action is indoors.

In the apartment...

I decided to add the top shelf to the green house. The green beans are over a foot tall and  were running out of space fast. I repotted them and moved them to the top shelf. The squashes are growing fast too, so I put those in bigger pots.

I tried out some marigold seeds I bought at the dollar store. I put marigolds on the three external sides of my garden plot for pest control. I think the border is about 80 feet long. If I succeed with the marigold seeds, I'll save myself a lot of money. They sprouted quickly and look good.

Friday, I decided to try garlic, chives, and ginger root. I planted around 50 cloves and just one nub of ginger. Like the onions, my garlic and shallots didn't do well last year. I'm doing something wrong. 

I love the plants I get from the Pflaum family, but I want to do my own this year. Well, as much as I can. They generally sell 3" pots of seedlings 3 for $5 and there are 3 seedlings per pot. They've been really helpful these past few years and I visit them every weekend at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market when things warm. By early June, they are nearly out of everything and their plants are well mature. Since I started my seeds mid-March, I hope that my seedlings are ready to plant in very late May too.

The annual kick-off at the MplsFM is 27 April and I'll surely be there the first weekend it's a sign of the season for me. I'm not sure I'll buy from anyone that weekend, but I have to go.

I've noticed the starter beans on the green bean plants have withered and started to turn brown. The little energy bombs are nearly depleted.  They're still adding at least an inch per day and they were looking dry this morning. Many of the fast seedlings were looking droopy. I watered everything and closed up the greenhouse. Last week's mold made me really sick and I worried about it hurting the plants (making me sick later) so I left the door unzipped to dry things and move the air.

The trays under the plugs and pots have been refilled, everything is zipped up again, and the lights are on. I added 2 more incandescent bulbs last week for a total of 3 and there are 2 compact florescent bulbs. It gets warm in there fast, so I've had to be mindful of seedling placement. I'm afraid I overheated the lettuce I started. It's made very little progress this week. I put the pots in my refrigerator for a few hours and now they live on the lowest shelf. The leaves are showing more signs of being ruffles. Onward!

It's condensing in there again. It's a dim day, so I've got the lights on, but I'll turn them off after an hour more so it doesn't get too steamy. I hope the little boost of light will perk up the droopy plants and the warm lovers will perk up too.

I am not a confident gardener. I have killed off a lot of seedlings at this stage in past years. If I could get to really nice true leaves, I'll be so happy.

I need to stop messing with the plants for now. Water. Light. Leave it be. If you've got some spare kind thoughts, I could use them.

And 72 more...

I've just washed my hands from planting my second 72-cell starter.

This set is acorn, butternut, and luffa squash, Asian cucumber, rosemary, sweet basil, leeks, green onions, sage, spearmint, green beans, and yellow pear tomatoes, and peas-in-a-pot.

The greenhouse is working great. Now that I've got the lights inside the plastic covering and everything is all zipped up, the humidity is up and it's warmer in there than the room. I have one incandescent bulb with clear glass (it's really bright) and two compact florescent. There's nothing special about that combination, it's just what I had around the house. They're all part of a single pole lamp, but instead of having to turn on each light individually, I have all of them "on" and I've used an extension cord with a tap foot switch to turn it off and on without opening the cover.

The lettuce has been following the light all day. I love to watch it.

I spent some time clearing out the edge lawn-edge of my garden plot. When I was digging out the weeds and clumps of grass, I dug up Japanese beetles and some kind of larvae I've only seen on websites and pesticide packages.

I've tried to be "brave" about squishing up the posts that will ruin my plants, but doing it with my hands is so hard. I have to be wearing gloves, and it helps if I can pick up the creature with soil so I don't have to look at the guts or feel the crunch.

The wind has been blowing around the green mesh fencing I have on the outside edge of my plot. It's an east-west fence and it billows in the northern and southern wind. The posts are holding up well, but the bottom edge isn't secure. When I cleaned it up, I pinned down the edges with garden staples. I probably bought twice as many as I needed, but I'm covered to be sure and I have extra just in case.

I cloched a few of the greens I bought at the farmer's market on Saturday. It really worked well with the spinach and lettuce. In just a couple of days they look really great.

Some of the baby tomato plants I started and transferred to the garden have completely disappeared. Not even a wilted, flattened stem. I hope that they might just be sleeping from the shock and they'll perk up in a few days. It's happened before with other plants, but I've never started tomatoes before. I still have some that haven't been moved, so I will let them grow more before I put them in the ground. I'm very happy to say that not all of the tomatoes I've already planted have died. I'm very excited to see what happens.

I didn't get to the garden today, but I plan on going out tomorrow when it's not very, very hot. I churned up the dirt a bit. With the rain and watering, the silt washed away leaving a shiny shellac of silica on top. The water just runs off to the low spots. So far I'm not able to churn up all of the garden because in areas I've seeded, the plants aren't big enough to see clearly. When the water washes over the top the baby plants are deep enough that their stems are locked into the silica and they aren't washed away.

I'll take more pictures tomorrow. I've also got to install the strings for the beans and other climbers (they're doing great).

This bit of weather coming up is really warm for Minnesota in May. We've had a really warm spring (and winter, and fall), but there is always a chance that something strange can happen with the weather. I think we'll skip the tornadoes this week since it's already been warmish.

Pictures! Tomorrow! Yay!

Weekend planting

We have had a definite break in the rain. Friday we had grey skies and got a trace of rain. Yesterday was lovely. Today and this week are supposed to be great.

I decided to get some herbs from the Pflaum Family at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market. They have been so helpful with my gardening these last few years. They've answered my questions, and best, most happiest of all, the seedlings they sell are totally reliable and only $2 or 3/$5 for pots that are about 2"x2" with several seedlings in each clump. I've made mistakes in the past, killed something I liked, and was able to go back and get some more.

Yesterday, I grabbed a flat and started shopping. I decided to get 3 different varieties of slicing tomatoes, rosemary, basil, lemon basil, lemon thyme, catnip, Italian parsley, spinach, salad mix, pole beans, sweet peas and probably something I'm missing.

I planted everything I bought plus tomatoes, peppers, and some squash. The garden is really filling out. The seedlings help me visualize how the garden will look over time. I can't quite tell if things are too close together. I'm planting double wide rows of peppers and they seem a bit dense. I've staggered the tomatoes into two rows  with some closer and some further from the arbor. I plan on putting twine woven on the arbor uprights to  support the tomatoes.

I bought pole beans. I really like fresh green beans and I really like to watch them grow. They climb so fast. They are next to cucumbers and zucchini. I've set them on the east side of the arbor about a foot from the base. I'm going to run twine from the plants to the top of the arbor.

I'm going to move the last of the seedlings to the greenhouse or maybe outside because the greenhouse is getting really hot during the day. When I was moving things around yesterday, I noticed the spinach seedlings in my apartment were bolting. They're only 2" tall! I'm going to take them outside and shade all of the spinach with a tight weave nylon window screen so they are mostly shaded. I should have put them in sooner. I didn't get any spinach last year - it bolted right away. My book says this is caused by days that are too sunny too long. Wish me luck.

I'm going to try to spend all day outside reading and planting the last of the seedlings and a few more seeds. Everything should be done. All I'll need to do after is water, weed, and maybe thin. Oh, and eat too. The peas should be producing pretty quick.

My garden plan today

2011 Recap

Last summer I decided to plant Russian Mammoth Sunflowers. I'd read up on them and was excited to see if I could get close to the 10 foot goal. When the stalks were about 5 feet tall, they started to bloom (very early) and accelerated seed production. When trees do this, it means they are under stress and they're going to try to drop seeds before they die. These sunflowers were on the back border of my garden plot. When I checked them, I saw that all of the leaves on one side of the stalk had been cut off. Long story short, my garden neighbor, Alexi, cut them off without telling me. When I discovered it, Valentina (Alexi's wife) was in the garden and I was really mad and asked her what happened. When I saw Alexi, we went through several stages: he was mad that I upset his wife and got up in my face about it, he would never apologize (Jesus died to forgive all of his sins), and he mocked me. The idea that I was upset with him because of what he did versus the value of the damaged plants didn't seem to sink in.

When my sunflowers continued to die off because and there was so much anamosity going on with Alexi, the garden wasn't a pleasure. The blog was put together so my sister's kids could watch the plants grow since they didn't have a garden at home. The special focus was to be the line of sunflowers at the back of the garden, and when they withered and died, I lost heart.

My peppers never grew taller than about 14 inches, but by the end of the summer, I had full sized peppers that touched the ground. Most of my neighbors didn't get any fruit from their peppers.

My tomatoes got to be six to seven feet tall/long. Cherry, grape, and pear tomatoes did great. I was giving them away. Full size tomatoes in our part of the country were really bad. They took a long time to grow and were full size by September, but never turned red. In our community garden with just shy of 1000 tomato plants, folks were pretty devastated.
My sweet peas barely produced. The Asian long beans only produced 4 beans. Brussels sprouts were strange. One plant developed a stalk that was 6 inches across and didn't get very tall. The other got about 3 feet tall, but since the season had such a slow start, it didn't have a chance to produce like it could have. Edamame was very successful. I'd never grown them before and planted them too close to each other. Then ended up flattening out the plants on the sides so all could get sun. My butternut squash did great again. My herbs (lavender, mint, cat mint, sage, rosemary, chives) did really well. Flowers were a bust until late in the season.
It was such a strange year weather-wise that overall, I think the garden was successful, but not all at the same time.

April 29

MOSTLY chartreuse green peppers, but I've also started some green beans and more squash.

Brussel Sprouts

Teeny tiny brussel sprout. It's not looking good. This is the best of the three. They've all laid down.

CP1

Only 1 decent sized tomato left. The rest of the plants are peppers.

CP2

 Soda Bottles

Mixed Tray

Soy Beans

I don't quite know why these look so weird, but they are getting more leaf sprouts, so I hope they will outgrow the awkward phase.

Squash

Seven seeds. One sprout. These are seeds I kept from the squash I grew last year, so I'm not sure how much success to expect.