Saturday, May 19, 2012

Inch by inch, row by row...

Well, the farm has gone on, even though the blogging didn't. I'm just resting today from gardening. I took a couple days off from work to play in the dirt, but it's pretty hot out there today, so I'm slowing down a little. I hope the rain will hold off Monday (my next day off) so I can work on it during the day and do the major finishing.

I bought almost all the plants I want: tomatoes, peppers, onion sets, squash, and tons of herbs. I also have seeds to go in, but the sun got the best of me today. Maybe Monday! Peas, carrots, beets, lettuce and Swiss chard. I'm also thinking of planting some potatoes, but haven't come across seed potatoes yet, and there are only 2 sprouting potatoes in my veggie bin!


I'm following some guidelines from small space gardening and container gardening books, as well as the square foot techniques. Last year, the garden did better than the first - I'm sure it was the alpaca manure I mixed into the 4'x4' square foot boxes. My pots didn't do as well - this year I got some self-watering pots and planters to see if the thirsty plants like peppers, eggplants and tomatoes will do better. Tho, last year my tomatoes did pretty well, so I don't need a whole lot of improvement on those. The squash are in the 4x4 boxes this year, and I bought material to make a pvc pipe frame to tie the trellis netting to so they can grow upwards, along with the peas and beans. The clamps I got to hold the piping to the side of the boxes aren't the right size, so that little building project is on hold until I feel like cleaning myself up enough to go to the store.

The herbs are all in hanging pots this year - the books say that letting them get dry challenges them and makes them taste better. Among all of them, I got 4 types of mint and 4 types of basil, which I will dry if I can get my act together! It would be cool to give dried herbs as stocking stuffers this year. Last year I dug up herbs and put them in pots to bring them inside, but life interrupted didn't allow for enough watering, so maybe this year will be better.
These are the pots I fixed up yesterday. I did more today, and moved most of them to the garden side of the house. The five pots on the left, tomatoes and rosemary, will stay on the driveway side and get sun til mid-day.