We are finally getting some much-needed rain after a long, hot start to July. Of the plants that we just put in, we lost two tomato plants and two or three swiss chard. Only two of the dozen or so green been plants I put out there have come up at this point; I’m hoping the rest come up soon.
I put up two tarps to block out some of the early-morning and late-evening sun, and just pulled those down today since it is looking like we’re going into an overcast stint.
Due to my field education placement and a general busyness over the summer, the garden did not get in on time. But we picked up some tomato plants and swiss chard at the farmer’s market yesterday and got them into the garden then. It felt good to get that stuff in and clean up the mess of weeds and dead plants that was the garden plot.
When we bought the swiss chard, I was a bit concerned it wouldn’t stand up to the heat. The afternoon after planting (today), they looked a bit droopy but generally OK. We went to the Love Wins picnic, and when we came back, the swiss chard was flat to the ground and the tomatoes looked like they were dying. We dumped a bunch of soil conditioner and water on them, and they’re starting to come back. Mostly. (We may have some swiss chard plots that will become mustard plots in late August.)
Until the heat dies off and the plants recover, we’ve set up tarps over the fencing to act as shade for the swiss chard. Not great for the tomatoes, but hopefully it’s just temporary.
In addition, I’ve planted some beans—almost all empress beans, although a few Dragon’s Tongue beans. So here’s to a start of the belated 2010 growing season!
(PS: I’m considering doing a 12-month garden, with greens and cole in the winter. Because North Carolina is weird and hot year around like that.)
I botched the germination by neglecting the seedlings, so that’s pretty much toast. I’ve also failed to get the garden ready to go. However, at the barber shop this morning I picked up a planting guide from Stone Brothers and Byrd, the local independent garden shop, and discovered there’s all kinds of stuff that can get planted between now and July 15th. There’s even some varieties of tomatoes and bush green beans that can still go in, and those are what I miss the most out of my garden.
Of course, there’s also the fall-planted stuff (mostly greens), but I need to hold off on those until September.
The garden begins again! Just put the seeds into some peat pellets. If you’re looking to be inspired for your garden this year, check out the “Photos” category: just be sure to click on the headings on that page to actually see the photos. 
Decisions this year: no corn, no root vegetables. Not going to fence around the other garden this year, but maybe we’ll put some watermelon and some herb bushes out there anyway. Also: we only need one zucchini plant, and probably going to use the small plot beside our garage for it.
Biggest winner: 16 tomato plans: 12 Black from Tula, 4 Potato Leaf. Also going to grow a bunch of green beans, but they get planted directly into the soil.
The chintzy plastic bases of the “home greenhouse” kit all broke/were lost, so instead we’re using a plastic storage tub to hold the peat pellets. We’ll see how that plays out.
Also, I put tarps over the remaining sections of the two larger gardens — although half of the larger gardens and the smallest garden have been covered (thereby killing off anything that might think about germinating), there were some big open spaces and they started to grow some stuff, so that all has to die. Hopefully the next few weeks are long enough to kill off most of those weeds. If not, hopefully the wood chips and newsprint gets whatever is left!
If you’re in the Durham/Hillsborough/Chapel Hill area and are interested in learning about organic gardening, check out the Frog Pond Farm workshops.
Since the last post, we’ve picked more beans, tons of zucchini, a couple peppers and about three tomatoes not fully ripe but still yummy. Robert will probably post exact amounts later. Last night I made tons of zucchini muffins and soup and only used about 5.5 of the 7+lbs of zucchini. Below are some pretty photos of everything. I will try to remember to post the recipes and photos of the end result another time.
zucchini
another zucchini
tomater
basil
peppers
mini bell
one 13 oz zucchini
5oz hot peppers
5 radishes
2lbs green beans
one 10.5 oz tomato
Just a quick production note to say that we’ve eaten two more pounds of beans over the course of the last week.
(We’re tracking production closely so we can see what our costs vs. savings are.)
One thing I love about gardening is that the default mode of things is to work. Which is refreshing after working on web development all day.
</snark>
I just created a compost bin following the directions at DIY Compost Bin (The Happy Housewife). I lack the kids who can be duped into pushing it around the yard, but I figure I’ll do that on Sundays after adding my grass clippings. I also don’t have the power drill (my old one is long dead), but I did have a 1″ boring bit, and pushing through the plastic of the Rubbermaid Roughneck bin was pretty simple.
I went with the 30 gal bin instead of the 45 gal, since the 45 gal bin was about twice as expensive and square instead of round. I did splurge on the one with wheels, though. Once we fill up the 30 gal bin, I’ll pick up a second 30 gal bin and let the first one finish doing its thing.
Total cost: $15 and about an hour of meditative bore-turning.
BTW, if you’re an urbanite without space for a 30 gal garbage bin or two or if you live in an area where it’s too cold for composting outdoors, seriously look into Worm Composting with Red Wigglers. It’s an extremely simple way to save some landfill space and create free soil conditioner for container gardening, etc. And if you’re in Durham, let me know if you do that—I’ll take your compost!
Just did our first bean–picking of the year!
Beans, Dragon Tongue: 11.2 oz (pods are HUGE)
Beans, Empress: 7 oz
Beans, Total: 1 lbs, 2.2 oz
Also picked 4 more radishes. Some of them were comically large—guess we should have picked them earlier!
The carrots just don’t seem to be working. We pulled two to thin them out, but they don’t look like carrots: just slightly thick roots. Another victim of planting too close together, maybe?
The potted peppers really aren’t looking good: they look extremely dry. The containers might be allowing too much heat to get into the dirt and not holding enough moisture in. We’re going to have to get more aggressive about watering (2x/day), I guess.
Photos from today:
