I have lots of garden pictures for you to go “Oooooh, pretty!” over, but not much time to talk about them.  Everything is growing well, I have lots more green tomatoes, and we have a new perennial bed in the front.  Here’s the pics:

New beds:

Various flowers from new bed:

My funky potato plants actually had some cool flowers and some of it actually fruited.  Don’t eat the potato fruit, it’s poisonous just like any other green part of the potato plant.  Here’s some pictures:

A few visitors:

Toms and other stuff:

Stupice:

I LOVE the flower clusters on the Blondkopfchen ( Little Blond Girl):

More mutant sunflowers.  The cages are 6 feet tall.

Cukes:

Peppers:

Peas:

Pole bean plants (no flowers yet):

Lot’s to do, but lots of fun!  I really need to take a few hours and weed everything thoroughly.  I’m going to nip the growing buds off of the beans soon, since they’ve reached the top of their cages.  The garlic is probably a week or two away from harvest, and the potatoes aren’t far behind.  I’m thinking about planting a fall crop of lettuce, spinach, and radishes when those beds are cleared out.  Since I’m doing the organic thing, I’m also thinking about a winter crop of clover and rye as a “green” manure to enrich the soil.  More on that later.

Mike

Hi! Errr, long time no post. I keep meaning to do more updates, but it usually breaks down that I either have time to blog about gardening, or actually DO gardening. And we all know which one wins that competition.

So, a quick update since we last talked. May was cold. We had a frost warning on Memorial Day, for goodness sake. I lost most of the first batch of tomato seedlings I started. I don’t know what it was, maybe bad starting soil. So I re-started around the end of April. It turned out to be a good thing, since with such a cold May I had to wait until May 31st to plant. I did lose a few more seedlings, but since I started with about twice as many as I needed there wasn’t a problem. I did give 7 seedlings to my Mom, 6 to my cousin, 5 to the nice lady who provides us with perennial plants for free, and 5 to some lady Vicki knits with. No shortages here.

I planted 42 tomato plant in the garden, 2 in pots, and one under the bird feeder. They’ve been in for almost 3 weeks now and are mostly 2-3 feet tall and getting bushy. I have flowers all over the place, and a few tiny green tomatoes on my Stupice. I also went with my plan of making huge tomato cages. They’re a bit cost restrictive so I only made 20, but I think they’ll stop the Tomato Jungle like I had last year. Here’s a few pics:

You can see the cages. They took some doing, since I had to cut them out of a big roll of fence and bend little hooks so I could attach the two ends together. I also cut small windows so I could reach in and weed, pet my plants, and hopefully have somewhere to pull the ripe fruit out of. The garlic in the foreground is doing okay, but not great. Since the sun doesn’t hit that area until the end of April due to the shadown of neighbor’s house they got a late start. The main garlic garden is doing much better (pic below). Also the potatoes are growing like crazy! (upper left) They’ve just started to flower, which means they have about a month to go before they die back. But I can start stealing a few potatoes pretty soon.

Oh, and what’s that behind the tomato cages on the right? Yup, more mutant huge sunflowers, already taller than the tomatoes. The cages should keep those pushed back so I don’t have to worry about them crushing my toms this year.

Here’s another view of that garden:

Yes, that’s tomatoes all the way down to the end, with another patch past the potato patch. And there’s 4 sweet pepper plants down by the rain gutter between tomato patches. I also have 2 of my cages down on the end to act as pole bean supports. I started two kinds of beans this year, my Granny’s green beans and a white runner bean I got from Victory Seeds. Here’s a close-up of the beans:

They’re just starting to send out runners to climb. I love the pole beans since they take up little space and you get tons of beans. And they actually add nitrogen to the soil, so they’re good for the garden.

Here’s a picture of the OTHER garden:

That’s the main garlic haul. They’ve started sending up scapes, which are the seed pods that curl up from the plant. I cut them off and eat them, since I don’t want the plant expending energy to flower when they could send that sugar back down into the bulbs. Besides, they’re delicious in a stir-fry. That also means that the garlic has a month or so to go before harvest.

In the middle of the picture are the brussel sprout plants that Vicki requested. I think I might have started them a bit early, since you don’t harvest anything until after the first frost (mid to late October here). I wonder how big they’ll get with all that time to grown. Yikes. Towards the back are little plots of lettuce, spinach, onions, and peas. It got really shady back there when the lilac bush got going (upper right) so I don’t know how much I’ll get. I’ve already harvested some green onions, spinach, and lettuce, so it’s not a complete waste of time. I have to harvest the rest of the spinach and lettuce before it gets too hot and they bolt (send up seed pods) and get bitter.

I also planted some melons and squash on the extreme left side of the picture. The idea was that they’d get going right about the time the garlic would be dug out, so they’d have all that area to vine across towards the sun. I have a few little seedlings, but they haven’t been growing much. It might just be too cool here. Those big viners like really hot weather and it’s still cool here when the wind is over Lake Michigan to the east.

What else, you ask? Well, I have some more of the Japanese Climbing Cucumbers which we grew last year. They’re in a pot with another of my towers around it.

Still pretty small. They like the hot weather, too. The pot helps with that a bit, since it gets hotter than the ground soil. Gotta watch out that it doesn’t get too dry, though.

Speaking of pot, I mentioned about that I put the last few tomato plants in some pots since I’d run out of garden space. Here’s Abraham Lincoln, next to a pot of catnip.

Lastly, here it is! Drumroll, please!

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My First Tomato of 2008!

Mike

So I’ve decided to try going completely organic this year. It’s not too big of a step since I’ve never used pesticides or herbicides. But I have used chemical fertilizers in the past to give my plants a boost, as my soil is 90% sand and doesn’t have much nutrients (they tend to get washed out of the soil). So I just need to replace the chemical fertilizer with organic and remember that the organic needs time to break down in the soil before the plant can use it, so I need to get it out there earlier. And, although it tends to cost 2-3 times as much, the organic fertilizers have really cool names like Blood Meal, Kelp Juice, Bat Guano, and Ground Bone Meal. And then there’s the manure.

I’ve been putting vast quantities of composted manure into my garden for the last three years. Before that I would plant things that would just not grow. At all. Then I did some reading and did a soil analysis that told me I was dealing with a 90% sand garden. Not surprising in retrospect since we live so close to Lake Michigan and there’s a lot of sand dune parks all up and down the shore. Anyway, once I started adding the manure, things started taking off. Not only does it enrich the soil with nutrients it holds onto water for the plants to use. Also it provides lots of beneficial bacteria that break down organic material into a form that the plants can use.

And that’s really the essence of organic gardening. Feed the soil and the soil will feed your plants. Work with the natural systems of breakdown and renewal instead of trying to force a plant to grow with synthetics. I’ve been almost there for the last few years with my worm compost and manure, but I’ve always waffled when the plants went into the ground and told myself that the chemical fertilizer was “insurance”. Really it’s Twinkies. It makes the plant grow like crazy, but it’s really not good for it or the soil. Or the ground water. Or anything else. Also, it’s made from crude oil. Triple hippy hex!

So this year I’m going cold turkey. I’ve already purchased my Bone Meal and Blood Meal and about 1200 pounds of manure. I’m thinking I’ll need around a ton, total. That’s a whole lot of crap. Fortunately it’s pretty cheap, around $1 for a 40 pound bag. Note: this is composted manure, which has been allowed to sit for a while and cook down. It’s not fresh or “green” manure, which can burn your crops if it’s not allowed to sit. And I get my exercise in by hauling those bags all over my yard.

Well see how this “organic” thing works out. It’s definitely more work, both in the hauling, but also because you have to plan things out more in advance and know what you’re doing. But it just makes more sense to me to have a sustainable system. I blame Vicki. She’s been feeding me all these books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Suddenly I feel the need to wear tie-dye and stick it to the Man.

Mike

I have an area in my basement where I start my seeds under florescent light. I set it up last year because I wanted to heirloom tomatoes and most of the varieties are only available by seed. No problem. I put hung the two lights I had from chains, so they could be easily raised and lowered. I put a table underneath them. I purchased some seed-starting mix, a few pots, some seeds, and then away we go. Oh, I needed a timer to keep the lights on for 18 hours each day. And I got a heating mat to help germinate the seeds. I started 45 tomato plants and they all made it to the garden.

Of course, this year I just had to do more. Vicki requested some prairie flowers, so I started them. I’d wanted some more lights, so when they went on sale I just had to get a few more. I’d picked up some pepper seeds from Seed Savers, and Vicki requested Brussel Sprouts, so I started those too. And just last week I started my main tomato crop. 2 each of 36 different types, mostly heirlooms. Here’s a picture of the little toms:

What does this all have to do with the police, you asked? Well, apparently one way that the police can tell if you have an indoor marijuana-growing operation is to monitor your electricity usage so see if you have lots of florescent lights in use. And I do. There was a story from last year of some college kids who had a police forced-entry come through their door because of some tomatoes they were growing in a closet. I expect one of those to come through my front door one of these days. If I’m not shot at that point, I expect to point at my tomato seedlings and mock them.

Mike

So most of the garlic I planted last fall is coming up and looks pretty good. Here’s a picture from a few days ago.

Looks like I am indeed going to rolling in garlic in a few months. Fortunately it keeps well if you dry it out correctly. Unfortunately the extra garlic that I had to plant in the side garden got kinda trampled by the painters.

Oh, have I mentioned that we’re getting our house painted right now? We’ve been talking about it for years, as the siding got more and more bare, and after getting paint chips all over the yard whenever it rained. But we finally got the resources and they gumption to get it done this year. It’s all part of our master plan to get the house fixed up this year, sell it next year, and buy a new house will more space for….. you guessed it, more gardens! We know what we like.

Anyway, it couldn’t be helped that the side garden got a bit trampled since it’s right next to the house. The only thing in there was a small patch of garlic and a somewhat bigger patch of potatoes that I planted a few weeks ago. The local meme is to plant potatoes by Good Friday. Unfortunately we got a blizzard on Good Friday this year, so I had to wait a few more weeks. I got three kinds of potatoes from Seed Savers: Caribe, All Blue, and French Fingerlings. Caribe is a workhorse, All Blue is all blue, and French Fingerlings are supposed to be delicious. Anyway they haven’t even come up yet, so I don’t think they were too damaged by getting trampled. And potatoes are pretty darn tough. They grow them in Idaho, for Pete’s sake. I’ll have to wait and see. Oh, more pictures of what I’m talking about, but sans trampling.

Garlic on the front left, potatoes behind it. And Mike’s half-assed compost pile on the right. I’m not a good composter. I like letting other creatures do the work, like worms. But the bins were getting too much food last fall (and getting smelly as a result), so I started putting it outside in an open spot in the garden. 6 months later when the snow melted, there was my perfectly preserved compost pile, not composted at all. Composting is kind of an art. You need the right ratio of carbon to nitrogen with water and air. And time. Everything will compost eventually. Anyway, I’ve been just taking the un-composted stuff from my pile and bury it in the garden where it’ll break down eventually. And where I don’t have to look at it.

Oh, and the other new stuff. That’s it, behind the two rows of garlic:

I finally finished digging up the big triangle in our backyard. by turning over that last strip by the hedges. After dumping about 300 pounds of composted manure (from the store) there, I planted onions, peas, spinach, and lettuce there a few weeks ago. That’s all early crops that can survive a frost or freeze or even the errant snowstorm which we may still get. Everything is just starting to peek out of the ground and is blissfully separated from the house and so won’t get trampled. And since most of it will grow like crazy and be done by June, I can plant some later crop there then. Beans probably.

Told you another post was coming soon.

Mike

I love Seed Savers (http://www.seedsavers.org). But I hate tomato politics. First the love:

Seed Savers is an organization whose mission is to save the genetic diversity of plants. They do this by collecting seeds of different plants, but more importantly, they encourage people to grow the plants. Seeds locked in a vault somewhere will eventually go bad. They need to be planted and have their seeds collected to remain viable. Seed Savers does have a nice glossy catalog where you can purchase some interesting stuff directly from them, which I did this year and last year. But their power really is the exchange catalog. Every fall they query their membership about what they can offer. And every spring they publish the Exchange catalog with the listings. I’d heard that the catalog was pretty big, but I had no idea. Thousands of tomatoes! Hundreds of listers. Some with just a few types of seed and some with hundreds of kinds. 1500 pages of pure text listings. The tomato section was the largest at 300-400 pages. Here’s some picture:

Yep, that section I’m pinching is just the tomatoes. I was blown away. I couldn’t make a decision, so I bought most of my seeds from the regular catalogs. I did finally buy 5 mostly mainstream varieties from a local exchanger who had around 600 different tomato types listed. He threw in some bonus seeds for me, too. Next year I’m going to offer some seeds, not just because you get better prices if you offer them. I have some family bean seeds that my great-granny brought over from the old country that I’m going to offer for exchange. I have no idea if they are the same as what’s already offered, but it doesn’t really matter. I get to name them after my granny. That’s cool.

Now the hate:

One of the founders of Seed Savers was forced out last year. He didn’t go gracefully and didn’t accept their take-this-money-and-shut-up package. Instead he sent a letter to all the members pleading his case. And the post about it on gardenweb broke down into pro= and anti- sides in no time. I have no idea of the details of any of this. But I’d like them all to just shut up and get back to finding cool seeds for me to grow.

Also, I’ve been looking for a website to keep track of my seedlings and be in more of a gardening community, like Vicki does with ravelry.com. I posted in gardenweb.com asking people what their favorite other gardening websites are. I got two quick replies and then my post was deleted. Apparently gardenweb.com does not acknowledge the existence of other gardening sites and stomps on any mention of them. What the hell?

The two replies I received referenced some other politics where some people got ejected from some other posting forums and created their own and now don’t like some other people from the original board. Can’t we just all get together and talk about which tomato is the tastiest and which will grown the best in sandy soil? I guess the Internet is the Internet whether it’s talking about tomatoes or elections or some silly television show.

On the upside, I made a HUGE batch of beefy tomato soup this weekend. After 3-4 gallons of frozen tomato parts from last year, a huge pile of veggies, 2 bulbs of garlic, and a few cubed sirloin steaks, I got about 4 gallons of soup. Than God for our huge basement freezer. And I still have about 3 gallon bags of tomatoes from last season. Any recipe sugestions? I’d trade soup for them!

Mike

P.S. More garden updates coming soon!

So I was going to wait a few more weeks before re-potting my basement tomatoes, maybe up to 4 inch pots, and then after a few more weeks pot them up to the 6 inch pots that would be their final residence. Today I went down and spotted something that made me pot them all in 6 inch pots right away. Flower buds! Lots of tiny flower buds starting to form. What that means is that the tomato plants are starting to mature. At that point they change their priority from growing to making babies, err, fruit. They’ll still keep growing, but they’ll sacrifice the growth for reproduction. So they told me to stop messing around with any kinds of re-potting and to just put them into their final pot so they can get busy with making me tasty toms. I took a bunch of pictures of the process. Notice the roots on the plant after I get it out of the cup. That’s another BIG sign that they need to be re-potted immediately.

Here’s some pictures:

Notice the tiny flower buds right off of the stem. Let’s get busy!

Root-bound. Put me in a bigger pot immediately!

Movin’ on up! Check out the new digs.

Space! Precious space, I missed you so much.

I did the usual re-potting technique of removing some of the lower branches and putting them a bit deeper into the new soil to allow new roots to grow out of the buried stem. I potted them in mostly potting soil, with a bit more worm poo at the bottom of the pot. It was also nice to level them to around the same height since they were getting so uneven that I was tilting the light and putting the taller plants towards the higher side of the light.

At some point I’d like to get them out from under the florescent light in the basement and introduce them to a sunny upstairs window. This involves the process of hardening-off where you gradually move the plants into the new environment, extending the time there every day until the plant is used to it. I don’t think the transition will be too bad since I’m not putting them outside but only giving them sunlight instead of lightbulb light. That’s the next step.

Mike

Here’s some pictures of my toms taken yesterday on March 1st. That’s their 1 month birthday since they were planted. Hmmm, but would that be their conception day and their actual birthday be when they were born (emerged) from the soil? When does tomato life begin? I don’t know if I want to get into this again. Anyway, here’s the pictures:

All Five

The Big One

Close Up

As you can see, I transplanted them into some 16 oz cups at about two weeks. Or when the first set of real leaves are bigger than those original seed leaves shown in the last post. I had these cups from last year. They have some drainage holes about an inch from the base to provide drainage and they are red and for some reason tomatoes like the color red and grow better when there’s red around. I’ve talked with Vicki about re-painting the house red, but it’s still in discussion. Oh, and I used a 50/50 mix of worm poo and standard potting soil in these cups. They really took off after being re-potted. I also just removed the seed leaves a few days ago and filled the cups up to the rim with soil. Tomatoes can develop roots right from the stems so when you’re starting them out you’re always burying them a bit deeper in the soil so they can develop a better root structure. And since they are basically weeds, you can remove some of the leaves, especially the ones lower down that aren’t getting very much light, and they’ll just keep marching on.

The next step is to just let them grow for a while. When they get 6-8 inches tall I’m going to move them to 4-inch pots. That will be in about another month. Then I might re-pot them one last time into 6-inch pots depending on how big they get. This is the first time I’m growing dwarf plants so I really don’t know. I’d like to move some where they can get actual sunlight at some point, too. And I don’t really expect any tomatoes off of them to be particularly tasty, since I’m growing them in my basement for the most part. But it’s still fun to grow them.

Mike

Hey, check out my new look! It was designed by my beautiful, intelligent, and creative wife. [kiss] She normally charges big money for something this shiny, so I guess I’ll pay her off in tomatoes this summer. It’s red and green! And check out the huge honking tomato! And has a photo feed from Flickr! Excellent! Bet you wish you had a blog this nice! Well, except for those of you that already have blogs designed by Vicki.

FYI, “love apples” is an old name for tomatoes. Not something naughty, you sick minds.

More tomato/gardening posts coming soon. For now, check out the Flickr photos of my seedlings. Sigh, they grow up so fast. Before you know it I’ll be dining on their babies.

Mike

Proof here:

This is what my backyard looks like after the 16 inches of snow we got on Wednesday. The winds blew that into a 4-ft high drift across the back sidewalk. My back still hurts from digging through it. I felt like a WW I trencher and considered putting in some machine guns and barbed wire.

My response to all this is to annoy Mother Nature. Ha! You can block the sun and freeze my parts off and bury me in snow, but I can get around you! I have electricity and lights and heat mats and my own compost-producing worm army!

So I started some tomatoes in my basement.

Here they are at 4 days:

At 6 days:

And at 7 days (yesterday):

Stop looking at me like that. I KNOW it’s still winter. I know that it’s another 2-3 months before I should start my seedlings for the garden. But these are Tiny Tim Tomatoes. They are a dwarf variety that only grow to 12-18 inches and can survive in a 6-inch pot. And they are bred to grown with less light and cooler temps than most tomatoes need. Worst case I can keep them in the basement under the grow lights. But May is usually pretty nice so I can put them outside and only bring them in if there’s going to be a frost. Besides, look at how cute they are!

Mike