long day, and it's only 3pm

I think I'm gonna go take a nap.

Gardening

I planted another round of seedlings:

• bell peppers, scrounged last year from peppers we ate. No idea what these will do.
• tomatoes, three varieties. One leftover heirloom breed from last year, and two hybrids.
• squash, two varieties
• cucumbers, two varieties
• more lettuce
• corn
• I forget the rest but it's on my garden planning sheet

Following the SFG model the tall/vertical/viney stuff is furthest away from the sun with shorter stuff in front of it. Alternated species instead of planting near each other to limit disease and bugs.

Composting

Tore down one of my composting bins for delivery to the (very kind and lovely) MIL. Will throw that in the truck next time we go to see her. Chickens were Big Helpers, which is to say they stood on top of the pile and kicked it everywhere but where you wanted it. They got pretty brave working around the hoe.

Tore down an active pile and sifted the compost before restacking/wetting the remaining big stuff. The filtered/finished compost was fine and clean-smelling, though both are difficult to judge from this pic. About 20# worth.

I learned this sifting trick from composting master Rob. I might make a two-tiered autosifter like he built. Maybe chicken wire for sifting the big stuff and hardware cloth or something for the smaller stuff?

Lucid Puppy 5.2.5

Upgraded the eee netbook to puppy 5.2.5.

Grocery shopping

Trip to Aldi. Completely full basket was less than $90. Put the groceries in the back of the truck (on the cargo platform I cobbled together quickly) and it worked out great.

vertical tomatoes

I don't remember whether or not I shared this, but after a couple of years of sad garden results I finally tested the soil.  pH was neutral (very near 7), phosporous ok, potassium ok.  But nitrogen was so low as to be almost unmeasurable by the kit.  D'oh!

I have been laying on compost this summer, and will winter the chickens over the garden later this year.  Both of these should increase Nitrogen for next spring.

So I don't expect much from the garden this year.  But I did want to share my experiment with vertically growing tomatoes. Here's a bit of scribble I emailed to my father about the experiment:

I think it's a promising idea;  I got it from the Square Foot Gardening guy.  It's basically a way of increasing density in small plots.

When/if we get any fruit I'll support those vines with additional sisal.

Theoretical benefits:

• Since they are vertically planted,  other/lower plants can be planted on the sun-side.

• The majority of the plant is held up out of reach of ground-level bugs and standing birds.  I trimmed the leaves about 1' up to minimize rot/mildew from watering.

• no rot induced by fruit laying on ground 

• toms appear to enjoy growing vertically;  not bushy/hunchbacked like when I grew them in cages. They aren't hard-tied to the verticals at all;  just guided alongside the vertical with loose sisal loops.
  

deconstructing the piles

Spent the morning tearing down the compost piles I started in late January and restacking them. The advantages of wire bins are clear over my older techniques; there were no terminally wet areas, so they stacks smelled like clean dirt.

By the time I got to the third one, I realized it was faster to "pick" off the outsides with a hoe and let it fall into a bucket placed against the pile. That way I could remix/layer that drier material in as desired later while working less and not have to rescoop it. For the first two piles I broke it all down flat and shoveled/scooped it back into the wire bins. Breaking down into buckets took about 1/2 the time and effort.

The leaf-only piles were making slow progress, but the leaf+scraps pile (the four-footer) had significant areas that looked nicely broken down. Since my piles are new, I saved the stuff that looked almost finished in another bucket and layered it near the top of my restacked piles. Hopefully that will disperse the microcritters to the other piles.

Exposed worms and doodlebugs were rationed among the piles. I wonder when those wonderful little Black Soldier Flies (with pics, see 2nd reply) will return? Apparently people pay to get them into their compost but I got some for free last year. They are not a nuisance, do not bite, don't like houses, and have the most ravenous wormy babies. Yay!

seedling progress

Tomatoes and lettuce sprouting.

No signs of life from the scrounged yellow, red, and green bell pepper seeds so far.

Gardening, LF-4

At last frost - 4 weeks, I've just planted pole beans in the "vertical" section of my microgarden.

Still no signs of life from my planted lettuce, tomato and pepper seedlings.

seedlings for my street

I'm working on an idea here. Dunno how/if it will work.

I'm setting up a couple flats of peat seed starters in the greenhouse that will be ready for xplanting around last frost. The idea is to set up a card table in the driveway and give away seedlings to people that live on my street.

Right now I've got Brandywine tomatoes and lettuce in the 'house.

I can't use anywhere near the number of seeds that come in a package (due to SFG techniques) so this is a way to put them to use for minimal cost. Might meet more of my neighbors, too.