1st tomato blossom
Spinach and Lettuce
Head Lettuce
Spinach
I’ll try to get out in the next few days and get the weeds under control and the wilted/dead parts pruned, but things are looking good so far.
I think the severe weather is JUST supposed to be wind and rain tomorrow. One can hope.
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
I found some really nice “Super Girl” tomato plants yesterday. I planted them yesterday afternoon. There are six plants in this brick planter.
Here’s a closer look at some of these.
There are 4 plants in this planter. I’m going to try to keep an eye on these and keep them as tied up as possible. They tend to be calm for awhile and then they ‘spurt’ in growth, seemingly all of a sudden spreading out over everything with the limbs too large to move without breaking them, yet really needing more support. I’ll try to do a better job of getting outside each day or so and giving them as much support as I can this year.
We also got the irrigation system controller installed on the faucet that goes to the garden. It’s set to start at 3pm today. I have a timer set so I can get out there and make sure the sprinklers are working and that the flow of water is good for watering my sweet plants well in the 10 minutes I have the controller set to now.
Later on, we’ll set the irrigation system for the yard. For now, I’ll just water the tomatoes with a hand held hose.
I’ll try to check next week to see what other plants I can add to the main garden.
We’ve started!
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
We’ve now gone from getting almost 12 inches of rain in the past week to a heat index of 100 degrees F. today and 110+ tomorrow. Seat belts aren’t enough.
We DO have a driveway left, even though we did get some damage along one side. I’m really amazed that ALL of the crusher dust the nice man spread for us, allowing us to finally get down our driveway – and back UP again – didn’t end up in the road that runs along in front of our property. We’re just pleased that Mother Nature seems to have calmed down, or at least moved to the east now. Hopefully she won’t bring problems to others.
I plan to get outside in several sessions today, mainly this morning and late this afternoon, to try to catch up.
I need to check my tomato plants first. I need to prune them and may need to add more support. I’m hoping that tomato worms haven’t descended. I’ll spray everything heavily with Eight, looking carefully for signs we’re infested.
I need to get out to the garden. I’ll pull my lettuce plants – which are probably trying to touch the sky now – and see what else needs to be done. I’m hoping I’ll have some little bitty zucchini. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to prune and stake them, as the pic above shows I’m supposed to.
With the heat index this high, I’ll need to keep my sessions really short, resting a lot in-between and drinking lots and lots of water. I would like to have things under reasonable control by the end of the weekend. I’ll plan on sharing pics with you.
There was a lot of flooding in Greenwood yesterday. I’m hoping things are getting back to normal today and that there wasn’t a lot of damage.
Have a nice, safe Saturday.
This puppy is a genius – eating AND getting in exercise at the same time! I’m not sure what that yoga position is called, but I’m impressed :0) I’m going to make beef stew for our dinner tonight. Less stew beef, many more veggies. I’ll freeze the leftovers into individual serving containers and put them in the freezer.
I finished cleaning out and weeding the square foot garden yesterday. It took a total of three sessions and about 4 hours to get things cleaned out the way they should be, but I feel good that it looks like someone cares again. I’ll research summer crops and then see what is available locally. The tomatoes are doing fine so far, too.
If you look really carefully, above the lowermost leaves on the bottom left of the plant, you can see a small green tomato!
And finally, this has nothing whatsoever with my ‘garden,’ but I’m delighted to see that all three elephant ear plants are now coming up. You have to look carefully at the center of the planter, but you can see the first sprout of a leaf breaking through now.
Today’s project will be attacking things with my loppers. I’ll be clearing up areas that are giving my husband trouble on the riding mower, and then trying to cut down weed trees around our burn barrel between the house and the shop. It’s supposed to get to the 90s today (50s two days ago) with strong sun, so I’ll have to be careful.
Have a wonderful Sunday!
After a week or so of not being able to work in the garden, things are pretty out of hand. My tomato plants are looking healthy, but I’ll need to get serious about pruning this week. I’ll concentrate on trying to be outside early in the morning, or before dark in the evening, or both, until I get things under control. I’ll try to carefully prune, then anchor the plants to the supports.
The veggie garden has exploded. The onion stalks are now over a foot tall. The zucchini plants are huge and blossoming. The record heat has almost done-in the broccoli before it really had a chance to get started. It’s starting to bolt, so I’ll harvest what I can today. Weeds are rampant. The lettuce leaves are huge.
I’ll be doing a lot of careful harvesting this weekend, one thing at a time, between rain storms. You would THINK with all this rain the temperature would be cooler, rather than like a sauna…
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
In my travels around the yard, I went out to check my early spring raised-bed square foot garden. So far, the plants seem very happy.
“It was such a pleasure to sink one’s hands into the warm earth, to feel at one’s fingertips the possibilities of the new season.” ~ Kate Morton
I’m thankful for a warm, dry home this morning. I really got chilled on my walk, but my spirits are definitely lifted now.
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
All the rain is causing havoc in my garden. :0(
Today I have harvested these two cabbages, a head of lettuce that was trying to spoil, and the yellow crookneck squash here. I have lettuce leaves in the sink awaiting processing.
The rain has caused a LOT of my lettuce to bolt, making the plants shoot up tall and taste bitter. I filled my veggie basket, and will go out and see what else should be harvested. I’m going to have to pull the bolted lettuce out. I also have little bitty worms all of a sudden. I’ll need to use some Eight on them. I’m so glad I found a spray that is safe for plants, people, and animals, but kills the bugs.
I will make several trips out to the garden today, salvaging what I can. I’ll share some pictures when things are as much under control as possible.
I hope that you are having a good day.
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
The forecast is for thunderstorms EVERY DAY between the 17th and the 27th. I’m going to try to get a nice harvest in, either today or tomorrow, before all the rain starts.
I lucked out and the storm last night did not clobber my veggies.
2nd tomato planter
I’ve been covering my veggie plants and tomato planters with sheets for 4 nights now, and so far, things seem to have come through the freezes all right. The Zucchini has had the most reaction. I’ve had to cut off several leaves from the plants. They blackened with the frosts and freezes. There is enough left of the plants that still looks good I think they will make it.
According to the weather website we are now past the freezes. This is really unusual here. Usually, our last frosts are April 5th, and that is even pretty late since I have been trying to grow things. We are supposed to get rain tonight and all day tomorrow.
I have the sheets spread out on the fencing around the garden, trying to dry it out during the day today so I can bag them up and put them away.
I HOPING that things will get back to normal for gardening soon.
Although the veggies seem to be doing all right, my elephant ear bulbs did not make it over wintered in the garage. I have finally given up on them and ordered more bulbs. I am hoping those will arrive soon so that I can get them into the ground.
I gathered my first harvest of the year recently, and we enjoyed a main meal salad last night, featuring our own spinach and lettuce! It’s been quite awhile since we were able to do that. I loved it!
Reader’s Digest
We have several errands this morning, and more this afternoon, so I might not get ANYTHING else done today.
In about an hour, we’ll leave 4 leaf bags of trash at the bottom of our driveway for pickup. (I made my goal of finding 2 extra bags of things that SHOULD have been thrown away a long time ago. I’m hoping to continue this each week.) We will also get our mail.
We have been experiencing serial failures of our fluorescent light fixtures this year. We have changed out the ballast transformers on many of them. Now we are replacing the switches that control them. We will pick up those at Yeagers. We will stop at our co-op to see if they have lettuce plants. (I’m hoping to pull out the spent tomato plants in the long brick planter by the house and put in lettuce plants.) Then we will stop and check the new Real Food store on the way home, hoping to find some frozen meals to buy and try.) Later, we’ll go back for my husband’s hair cut and a quick trip to the clinic for a shot for him.
I got lazy yesterday and didn’t do anything outside. This afternoon I’m planning to mix up EIGHT bug killer and will hose down my raised bed, square foot garden planters before I even THINK about trying to harvest the rest of our onions. I am finally healed up from the attack of the fire ants that I discovered living among my onions, so I’m ready to wage war. If I’m successful on getting the lettuce plants, I’ll take some pics for you.
I finally got an email from Amazon Handmade, confirming that I have been accepted to list my work there, and giving me some directions on how to get to a place I can register. When I have a calm space of time, I’ll try to follow them. Fingers crossed!
I hope you had an enjoyable Labor Day and that you make today a great day, too.
I just came in from taking a quick look at the garden, and then to the other end of our house to the tomato planters. This is today’s harvest, but it’s obvious that the super-hot weather lately has brought a halt to most of the harvests now.
We have had a wonderful time this year. We had a LOT of lettuce, radishes, and tomatoes, and were able to share some of each of these with our friends. The zucchini made big plants, and we harvested several zucchini, but I’ll read about how we can do better on these next year. I also want to plant yellow crookneck squash next time.
The cantaloupe was fun, but all we have are either green or yellowish small ones, all hard as a rock with vines spreading everywhere. I have no clue if they’ll actually continue to grow and ripen or not. Another subject for a lot of reading. The red onions are still looking good. As soon as the weather gets a bit cooler, I’ll start looking to see if any are ready to come out of the ground.
Beautiful World
Of course when I was the farthest away from the house, the rain started. I toweled off when I came in, but it’s a very good thing I’m not water-soluble. :0)
Filed under Gardening, Mother Nature, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
We have two planters of tomato plants. We converted the planters from being regular planters – filled with regular and potting soil – to square-foot planters, filled with Mel’s Mix (peat moss, vermiculite, and compost.) The planter above is 8 feet long by about 2 feet wide. Last year I planted six plants in this planter and they soon grew to be a dense ‘jungle.’ This year I’m planting 4, trying to give them more space. I also read that I should prune them more to encourage fruit production, rather than greenery. I have to admit that this scares me a bit, but I’m going to try it, limiting their vertical growth in particular and trying to prune any large sideways branches. We LOVE sliced fresh tomatoes, and could eat our weight in them daily, so I’m HOPING that this experiment is successful…
This is the second tomato planter. It is in a ‘nook’ formed by the back of the house and our back porch. It is shielded from the elements more than the other planter, and sometimes results in the only plants that do well. These actually have some yellow blossoms!
And THIS – is a really nice weed, or SPINACH!
I am finding several like this, right in the middle of squares of Mel’s Mix in the garden planters – as I harvest and weed around them. I was unable to get the seeds to sprout in the greenhouse for some reason, and I was unable to find ANY spinach plants being sold locally, so in desperation I finally just planted some seeds in the middle of several squares in the garden and kept all of my appendages crossed. As you can see here, I put a popsicle stick in the soil showing ‘spinach.’ Appendages – including my eyes – are still crossed, because I’ve never seen spinach at this early stage, so it looks different from the plants I have purchased.
Since it is not raining right now, I’m planning to get out and tackle the last of the six 4’x4′ wooden box planters in my raised bed, square foot garden today. It’s so full I can’t tell what is there. I’ll report back, and then plan to see what exciting things the locals may have for me to plant to take the place of the things I’ve harvested. I’ll try to get pics of what’s out there now. I’m still stunned that so much needed harvesting already!
I plan to call friends and share the veggie wealth this weekend. :0)
I hope YOUR weekend is fun and productive!
Yesterday I harvested a bunch of radishes, two heads of lettuce, and some broccoli. Today I harvested MORE radishes
And FIVE heads of lettuce!
I’m going to call some good friends to see if I can spread the wealth over the weekend.
My husband fixed our new-to-us riding lawn mower this afternoon and got the lawn mowed while I worked in the garden. I just listened to the weather and it sounds like we may have just finished in time for the heavy rains to start. They’re supposed to last all evening into tomorrow morning, so it was good we could take advantage of a break to get some things done outside.
I hope you’ve had a wonderful day, too.
I now have enough of OUR fresh grown broccoli to make some soup!
And this is the lettuce I harvested. I could have brought in lots more. We eat salad each night, but I’m not sure we can keep up with all we’re growing this time.
This photo shows many of our lettuce plants, plus you can see the onions in the rear of the picture.
This is the second row of planters. You can see the broccoli plants and some of the radish sprouts.
I planted several squares of radishes. I eat some raw every day at lunch, along with carrots, cherry tomatoes, and celery.
I have all appendages crossed that this is one of several sprouts of ‘something’ I HOPE is SPINACH! Time will tell.
Close up of one of the lettuce plants. This is ONE plant taking up a whole square. It’s HUGE.
This isn’t a garden plant, but I’m so pleased with it this year. It’s a perennial ‘something, and it has had only weak blooms each spring until now. I just love it!
More work tomorrow, but it’s that time of year! :0)
We had some really hard rain off and on yesterday, with more this morning, so I was a bit worried about what I might find in our raised bed square foot garden.
We built 6 ‘boxes’ that are each 4 feet by 4 feet, installing them on metal supports about my chest high. This enables me to enjoy adding soil, planting, weeding, and harvesting without having to get down on my hands and knees, or bend over double. You can see 5 of the 6 boxes in the photo above.
I planted one whole box with sweet red onion sets. I’ll leave these alone until harvest, other than weeding and maybe thinning out as the bulbs grow.
This is a combination of broccoli plants and radishes that have just sprouted. No sprouts from the spinach yet. :0(
Here is some of the lettuce plants and more radishes. I’ll start harvesting some lettuce leaves tomorrow.
This is what I call the NOOK planter, since it is cradled by the back of the house and the end of the back porch. The tomato plants are quite sheltered from the wind here, plus get more shade.
And this is the second tomato planter. It is more exposed than the other. It seems to depend on the year whether the tomatoes produce better in the sun and wind or relative protection and shade.
Planet Natural
The past couple of days I’ve spent a lot of time outside.
The radishes are finally sprouting. I have several squares of them, in this and other planter boxes.
The broccoli seems to be doing well so far.
I’ll probably start harvesting (and EATING!) some lettuce leaves next week.
The sweet red onions are looking good.
No spinach sprouts yet, but I’m still hopeful…
Today I’m trying to get some flower planters ready to plant. It used to be that I was the one who loved the flowers, but now we both enjoy them. We’re going to start with wave petunias, periwinkles, purslane, and impatiens. If we can get them planted, we’ll see if we need more.
My husband says that deep purple iris have become his favorite flower. They’re blooming in several places in the yard right now.
I really love this time of year!
The weather is absolutely GLORIOUS in Greenwood, Arkansas today! Sunny, no wind, and currently in the low 50’s F. Perfect weather to be working outside, especially since I can be comfortable in a sweatshirt and no jacket. :0)
I used the opportunity to check on the seeds I planted yesterday in my greenhouse. The wind was blowing so HARD yesterday I was a bit worried we would have damage to the greenhouse, but it was fine.
I planted seeds in three seed starters yesterday. There are places for 72 plants in each starter. I put Mel’s Mix in the starter containers (Mel’s Mix is Vermiculite, peat moss, and as many different kinds of compost as you can find or make.) This flat has Iceberg Lettuce seeds.
I did another starter of Spinach seeds.
And a third starter of Simpson Lettuce.
I sprayed them with water/fertilizer mix yesterday, so I sprayed them down well again and this time added the starter covers to help keep moisture in.
While I was out there, I did some cleaning up of the greenhouse. Although, I have to tell you, I have found that if it’s really NEAT and CLEAN, no one is trying to grow anything in there. (Same thing for my art room. The only time it looks really good is when nothing is happening. :0) )
We have tables on three sides with storage underneath. This picture is of the end of the greenhouse opposite the door. The exhaust fan up high comes on automatically when the temperature exceeds 80 degrees (when the electricity is hooked up).
This is the right side of the greenhouse as you come in the door. As you see, there are lots of supplies.
I try to keep the tables on the left side of the greenhouse for plants and prepping. I have a trash can in the corner filled with Mel’s Mix and bottles of water stored underneath.
While it was so nice out, I went out to my raised bed, square foot garden. They are selling onion sets in town and I’m planning to get some tomorrow.
Unfortunately, the weeds love Mel’s Mix, too, so all six of the raised planters looked like this when I went out.
I don’t have to make ‘squares’ with string in order to plant onions, so this is ready to plant now.
Hopefully I’ll have a successful year for growing veggies!
It’s the 6th of November and I gathered the first harvest of lettuce from my fall plantings. We’ll enjoy some of it in our salad for dinner tonight! This is Iceberg Head Lettuce. Left in the garden in the early spring, it eventually forms a head in the center of the plant, but I love eating the loose outer leaves until the head forms. I have no idea if these plants will form a head in the greenhouse or not.
Here’s another view of the harvest for today.
Since we’re having wave after wave of cold fronts moving through, with rain and significantly cooler weather each time, I coiled up the long extension cord that runs from the back of the house out to the greenhouse to power the exhaust fan that is on automatic to turn on when the temperature reaches 80 inside the greenhouse, and the second fan I usually keep running. We can also run lights out there, but usually don’t. The cord is now inside the greenhouse until early spring.
Besides the lettuce, I still have some celery that isn’t making stalks yet, but is still looking good (more on the window sill that will either come out to the greenhouse or stay in the house, depending on whether it’s starting to freeze on a regular basis or not, plus tomato suckers I planted. I still have several that are alive. I’m hoping to bring the healthiest looking ones inside for the winter.
I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m having a blast with this experiment. :0)
Filed under Gardening, greenhouse, Starting - Growing in a Greenhouse
This is my greenhouse. I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you that I haven’t done much with it until recently. We run electricity out there with two super-long extension cords so that we can run the exhaust fan and a secondary fan, plus a light, if needed, but we don’t have cooling or heat, due to the expense.
I’ve been trying to get it set up all summer long, but we actually lost a regular, bulb-type thermometer out there due to excess heat, even with both fans on and the door open. The thing simply blew its top – spewing the red stuff all over the place, as if someone with super colorful blood had died out there. The thermometer stopped at 120 degrees F., so I assume it was hotter than that. Needless to say, the heat in there was not conducive to me spending time out there, or even thinking about trying to grow anything.
Now that our temperatures have cooled off, I’m having so much fun trying to see what I can do! I have iceberg head lettuce growing (one set of plants bought when they were very small, and the other set bought when they were really leggy – almost too much to get planted.) I was very lucky to get those, so I’m doing what I can with them.
The three large pots hold the leggy lettuce plants. The 4 smaller pots have celery I started indoors.
The two pots on the right at the top of the picture are what remains of the small lettuce plants. The rest are tomato suckers I gathered and planted.
These are also tomato sucker plants. I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m having a blast.
I could go ahead and start cutting the outer lettuce leaves for our dinner salads, but the plants are looking so pretty I want to give them more time before I start harvesting. I’m thinking about starting some radish seeds, too.
I had a lot of fun working in the greenhouse this morning. I’m reading a book, Greenhouse Gardening – A Beginner’s Guide by Jason Johns to try to figure out what I’m doing. :0)
It FINALLY quit raining today, so I’ve been out there and back again several times. It was 90 degrees in there this morning, so I’ve propped open the door, hooked up the electricity so the exhaust fan turns on automatically, and turned on the 2nd fan.
On the left side of this picture, are new tomato suckers I planted today. A couple of them were large, so they’re in the larger pots. To the right you can see the two smaller lettuce plants I planted a couple of weeks ago. They’re not thriving, but they are still alive. In front of them are more tomato suckers I started today.
I moved the six leggy lettuce plants into much larger pots to give them room to spread out. They’re looking really healthy. I’ll start cutting outer leaves from each of the plants for dinner salads soon. In front of the two big pots on the left, You can see the celery plants I started in the house from cuttings from celery I bought at the store. In front of the pot on the right are more tomato sucker plants.
I just read about tomato plants in my greenhouse book. He suggests they need a LOT of air circulation around each plant, so I think I’ll go back out and move them from the 4 and six-pack planters to each in a 3-4″ pot to give them the best chance possible.
I’m like a kid at Christmas with the lettuce plants. I can’t wait to be able to bring leaves in and bite them!
I found these suckers on a tomato plant and replanted them in the greenhouse. I’ll be trying to get lots of others started, as it’s too cool outside now for the tomato plants to create ripe tomatoes. I’m HOPING that I can either have tomato plants ready to replant in the planters in the spring, or even have a ripe tomato or two to enjoy! So far, these seem to be doing well.
Yesterday I turned off the second fan and closed the greenhouse door. The exhaust fan is still hooked up and will turn on if the temp gets over 80 degrees in there.
These are the really small lettuce plants I planted about a week ago. They’re still alive, but aren’t having an explosive growth.
I took TWO shots of the ‘leggy lettuce’ I planted several days after the small ones. Here you can see how large they are compared to the smaller one on the right.
If they continue to do this well, I’ll start carefully cutting larger leaves to include in our dinner salads!
I also have several celery plants I’ll bring out to see how they do. :0)
I took Amber out to the garden this morning. I tried to harvest while she ‘helped me’ by trying to move two large plastic pots from the corner of the garden, take them under one of the raised bed planters and chew on them. I discouraged that, so she found some of the black weed barrier under some of the wood chip mulch and managed to pull some up. At this point, I thanked her for her help and put her on the other side of the fence to roam around until I got to a stopping point.
I harvested some of the largest leaves of the Bibb lettuce and Simpson lettuce.
I pulled up all the radishes. I’ll plant more later today, plus two celery plants and one head lettuce plant I started in the kitchen.
The lone spinach plant is doing very well, giving me 4 nice leaves today. I’ll take some spinach seeds out and plant them, as well today.
Also on my schedule is to re-plant several of the Iris rhizomes I dug up and separated this week. I’ll just plan on getting the one planter done today, taking my time on finding good spots to relocate the other iris around the yard.
30seconds.com
This is the view as you walk toward my square foot garden. You’d think I was specializing in marigolds! I planted them in several squares in each box, hoping they would help keep the insects down. I don’t see that they helped much, but they made the garden look happy. When the spring crops finished, the marigolds were still going strong, so I just left them. Now they’re overflowing.
The parts of the boxes not overflowing with marigolds look like this. My strings that we strung to demarcate the squares in each box were killed by the combination of water and sun. I’ll use a different kind in the spring. I just went out and sprinkled seeds for the fall garden and hoped for the best.
I also started a seed starter tray with peat pellets in the house. They sprouted, but were looking anemic, while the seeds in the garden were looking better. I decided to try putting the tray out on the deck where the seedlings could get more sun and maybe some rain. That turned out to be a mistake. The seedlings croaked, so I cleaned out the planter tray and put it back in the greenhouse.
The greenhouse, by the way, is still showing 120 degrees inside today, so it’ll be awhile before I try starting anything in there.
The raised bed square foot garden box above shows one single spinach plant, radishes, and two types of lettuce.
Only one plant resulted from the spinach seeds, but it looks good. I’ll try to plant some more around it, just to see if they’ll come up and produce, now that the weather people are saying we’re due for cooler weather next week.
This is a closeup of the Simpson Lettuce.
Radishes
New celery plants
Celery plants that grew more celery after I chopped the whole top off out in the garden!
Carrots
Bibb Lettuce
The only other veggies I have going for the fall garden thus far are two tomato plants offered several weeks ago. They still seem to be doing fine.
Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Greenwood, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
Delightful Children’s Books
I’m very happy that our garden is alive at all right now. Our weather has roller-coastered between hard freezes and a high of 90 today. We also had a timer malfunction on the garden irrigation system, so the plants were really badly overwatered at one point before we figured out the problem and replaced the timer.
Now I THINK we’re finished with the hard freezes. Our temperatures are still roller-coaster-y, though. 90 today. 60 tomorrow. 80 the following day….
I need to take some sharp scissors to clean up the plants. Some have bad leaves. I did get out a few arrogant weeds today, though. :0)
Here you see red lettuce leaves and spinach.
As you can see in this, and the next, pictures, some of the celery is doing well. Some has croaked.
This is the south side of the garden. I’m growing Georgia Sweet Onions in the back, red lettuce and spinach in the middle, and broccoli, cauliflower, and celery in the box closest to you.
Romaine lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, and red lettuce in the planters in the north row.
Spinach sprouts on the window sill.
One celery plant and two spaghetti squash sprouts here.
Hopefully, things will settle down now and my plants can grow in peace.
Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Greenwood, Mother Nature, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
I just spent an hour in our raised bed, square foot garden, weeding, pruning, and harvesting lettuce and some small bits of broccoli.
These pics were taken before I started pruning. You can see some of the leaves that needed to be cut.
This is mainly broccoli and cauliflower.
This is a good pic to show the whole fall garden. I can’t tell you how much I love being able to take care of things without having to bend over double or get up and down on my hands and knees over and over. I got the three planters covered with sheets before I left because it’s supposed to freeze tonight.
I never thought I would describe cauliflower as “cute,” but I have the sweetest, teeny, tiny heads of cauliflower I’m trying to protect. The largest one is about 2-1/2 inches across.
The lettuce is still producing, though I’m having to prune more and more leaves off, due to the incredible changes in temperature. (Example – 70 degrees this afternoon, and 32 degrees tomorrow morning…) If you look carefully, you can see a salad blend plant in this pic – toward the upper left hand corner – it’s burgundy.
Here’s a difference kind of lettuce. It’s still looking pretty good.
This is the ‘celery that could’ (like the little engine that could in the children’s story.) I planted it weeks ago. It’s still little bitty, but – as you can see – very healthy and green. I’m cheering it on, trying to protect it as much as possible. SWEET little celery plant…
Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
For two nights this week I’ve had to spread sheets over our fall raised bed, square foot garden, trying to bring the plants through the freezes. Last night it wasn’t supposed to freeze, so I held my breath and didn’t cover the plants. I went out to check on things this morning and all our plants were still alive! I have several different types of lettuce that I’m HOPING I can continue to harvest into January. Time will tell. The above is head lettuce.
I’m not sure what this is called, but the leaves are frilly and curly.
This is kind of ruffle-y.
This is one of the two raised bed planters that are almost entirely devoted to broccoli and cauliflower, although you can see two lettuce plants on the left.
This planter is almost entirely lettuces. If you look carefully, there’s a ‘salad blend’ brownish lettuce in the center. The weather was so warm I almost lost the lettuce plants due to them trying to bolt. That’s why the plants are so tall. I have no clue what will happen, but I’m harvesting every two or three days for as long as they’ll allow.
This is the treasure I found this morning – a teeny, tiny head of cauliflower! Isn’t it cute? :0)
I tried to grow celery this year, planting three ‘bottoms’ of celery I had gotten at the store. Two immediately croaked when I transferred them to the planter, but one is still alive, quite green, but only has small leaves and doesn’t seem to be growing. I’m just glad I tried, kept one alive, and will keep trying.
I finally folded up the king sized sheets I used to cover the planters. We MIGHT get much-needed rain tomorrow and I don’t want the sheets to get wet.
So far, so good!
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
This picture shows you the north side of our square foot garden. We finally got the last vertical pole out, so we can now start installing the three raised bed garden boxes and the irrigation system that will go with it. We’re not going to plant in these until next spring, so we’re not in a hurry. I’m emptying out each 4 foot x 4 foot square into trash cans, saving as much of the Mel’s Mix as possible. Then we fill the planter box and then move to the next one.
This is the first of the three raised bed planters we’re using for our fall garden. The plants have at least doubled in size now. We have a broccoli plant, some celery, and two different kinds of lettuce planted in this one: salad blend and head lettuce.
This is the second raised bed planter. We have head lettuce (the light green plants close to you) and the rest is broccoli and cauliflower plants. I have no clue whether I’m just going to get a lot of green, or actually get broccoli and cauliflower. Fingers are crossed.
This is the third raised bed planter, filled with broccoli and cauliflower. I really love the way I can walk around each raised bed, can reach all the squares easily for planting, weeding, and harvesting.
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
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