April 2009 Archives

Today I planted the tomatoes and peppers. And the zucchini and the squash.  And the beans.  Oh, and the nasturtiums.  I think that's it.   I'm going out of town this weekend, and so I wanted to go ahead and get those guys started on the path to their little fates.  Hopefully it will rain on them while I'm gone. 

Here's what the garden looked like before we put up the bean teepees:

I'll take pictures of the bean teepees on another day.  When we finished, it was too dark for photography!  The beans and their bamboo teepees are now in the empty bed in the foreground.

The All Blue potato seedlings are really growing fast!  The Rose Gold sprouts are finally making an appearance.  There will probably be unfurled leaves above ground tomorrow.

The seedlings in their new home.  It's not an invisible tomato, it's just really small.


Oh!  I think that the shungiku might have sprouted, after all.  It's another one of those things (like the chard) that I'll have to watch for a while before I'm sure that it's not a weed.  There are only a few that may be sungiku so far, but maybe more will sprout.  The carrots are definitely still sprouting. 

Nearly all of the little All Blue potatoes have poked through the crusted-over garden soil. It's really amazing - they were not up when I left for work this morning, because I checked!   I guess watering them every night is helping.  There's still no sign of the Rose Gold potatoes.

Meanwhile, my tomatoes look positively depressing.  I'm honestly not sure that they're going to make it.  It's really frustrating.  Stupid bugs! 

Tonight I finished re-weeding the part of the garden that the tomatoes and peppers will live in.  I guess I'll go ahead and plant them tomorrow and see what happens.

While out on a walk, I noticed for the first time this year that the honeysuckle is blooming!  Yay!  One of my favorite things in the world is to sit outside at twilight while the scent of honeysuckle wafts by in the breeze. 

I know that honeysuckle is invasive and all that, so I won't be planting any.  I'll just enjoy it when I encounter it. 

I took pictures of my little plants when I got home today.  I need to take pictures under full light conditions because my camera and I cannot get our stuff together to take pictures in shadow. But I won't be seeing my garden in full light until the weekend after next.  (It's shaded when I leave for work, and shaded when I get home.  And I'll be out of town this weekend.) 

Here are the very sad Lollipop tomato seedlings. Sad, sad!

The "volunteer" shiso seedlings and the garlic are much happier. This is not all of the shiso sprouts - there are a lot more in other pots nearby.

Today's plant news is much happier than yesterday's!

I don't know if I didn't recognize them yesterday (most likely) or if they just exploded out of the ground overnight (possible, but not likely), but the chard has sprouted!  I planted the "Rainbow (Five Color Silverbeet)" variety.  They're only about an inch high, but the stems are already brightly colored. 

My dad was right about the potatoes.  He suggested that if the ground had crusted over, they might have some trouble pushing through it. My mom said that if the ground was dry, I should water them.  So I dumped some water on them yesterday.  Today I got on my knees and studied the area where I planted the All Blue potatoes.  I saw a few pieces of crusty dirt clods poking up, so I carefully brushed them out of the way.  There were purpley potato leaves pushing through the dirt!  I managed to locate two of the All Blue potatoes this way, but I couldn't find a single one of the Rose Gold ones.  Maybe tomorrow.

The tomatoes and peppers are still hanging on.  I watered them, then sprayed them down with the soap and olive oil solution again.  The nights are mild this week, so I left them outside last night and they're staying out again tonight. 

This evening after dinner I started weeding the bed where I'll plant the peppers and tomatoes.  I got about halfway through it before I decided I'd had enough for the day.  Weeding is hard, but I'm looking forward to my rock-hard gardening arms. :P

After the sun set tonight, I sprayed my poor seedlings with a mixture of soap and olive oil in water.  I used an old Body Shop Vitamin E sprayer - it does a great job of projecting a fine, heavy mist.  It's a 3.2 oz bottle that I rinsed thoroughly.  I squirted a drop of Method soap onto the end of a chopstick.  Since it's such a small amount of water, I didn't want to over-soap it, so I got a look at how much I was putting in by seeing it on the end of the chopstick first. I glopped the soap into the spray bottle, then I repeated the process with the olive oil.  Then I shook the bottle and sprayed the plants with it.

I hope that works!

The parsley, cilantro, and leeks are pretty much all dead. :(  I think the combination of the white flies and the sun did them in.  Next year I've got to segregate the sun lovers (the tomatoes and peppers) from the more delicate seedlings, apparently. 

I still haven't figured out if I have carrot seedlings in the garden, or just weeds that conveniently look like carrots.

No sign of the potatoes yet.  I dumped some water on them tonight since it hasn't rained lately.

The mustards are happily growing along.   The ones I didn't move are a lot bigger than the ones I did.  I guess messing up their little roots set them back a bit.  But, all of the ones I moved are still alive.  :)

Today I learned that despite being planted at the same time and "growing up together," some seedlings have different sun tolerances than others.  I put the Batch 1 seedlings out on the deck from 9:00am-1:45pm, which seemed to cause the leeks to finally give up the ghost. *sigh*

The cilantro and parsley is also looking pretty puny.  Something's going on with them.  I suspect that it's an invasion of white fly larva.  I found white specks around a pepper that I overwintered next to the window that the seedlings are in.  The cilantro, parsley, and even a few of the peppers have pale spots on their leaves.  Apparently white fly larva drains the sap from plants, which causes discoloration, and then the leaves will wither away.  Seedlings don't have many leaves to lose!  My mom recommended spraying them with a dilute mixture of dishwashing detergent and olive oil in water.  I also bought some fly paper to trap the adults wherever they are (I haven't seen any) and keep them from laying more eggs. 

The peppers and tomatoes seem fairly happy overall, but even a few of them have the pale spots on the leaves.  Argh!

I had nearly given up on growing shiso this year.  I've already planted two batches of seeds.  One was left to germinate in the dark with the veggies, the other was exposed to light with the flowers. Nope. No luck. 

Some quick online research informed me that shiso seeds don't really keep well.  My particular batch was the among the first seeds I bought when I began my great gardening adventure last year.  I bought those seeds even before I bought the yard to garden in!  I also wasn't very particular about where I stored the packet of seeds.  I figured that my shiso seeds were past their expiration date, and ordered another batch. 

Today I was out on the back deck, checking on the garlic.  I miscalculated all sorts of things about the garlic I planted last fall, the most bothersome one being that I planted it right in the middle of the garden where I needed to plant the mustard in the spring.  I dug up the garlic and replanted it in a series of pots that sat undisturbed on the deck after the annuals that lived in them last year succumbed to winter.  The transplanted garlic seems to be doing OK, amazingly enough.  But what really amazed me was the shiso seedlings that are growing wild in the flowerpots. 

I managed to get one shiso plant to grow from seed and live to planthood last year.  It shared a pot that's about a foot and a half in diameter with some lamb's ears.  (The lamb's ears are still there.)  It grew to be a very healthy two foot tall plant.  I didn't know that usually people pinch the flowers off of basils (I also neglected to do this to last year's tulsi), so the shiso went through its whole lifecycle with very little interference from me.  Today, that paid off.  There are around 20 little shiso seedlings peeking out of the pots that were clustered around last year's big pot. Yay!

I wandered through the veggie garden today to check on the mustard and the potatoes.  The mustard still seems pretty happy.  There's no sign of the potatoes yet after four days.  I also noticed that the carrots are finally sprouting!  I think.  I know I planted carrots there, and some of the things sprouting look kinda carrot-y.  I'm having a similar identification problem with the chard and chrysanthemum greens (aka crown daisy, shungiku) rows - stuff is sprouting in the rows, but I can't tell what yet.  I know that time will tell, but it does make weeding a lot more difficult.