Seed Catalogs

Best all around cucumber: Delikatesse from rareseeds.com (aka “Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds”) http://rareseeds.com/vegetablesa-c/cucumber/delikatesse-cucumber.html

Other Seed Catalogs:

Main street Seed and Supply

http://companionplants.com/

http://www.southernexposure.com/

http://www.sheffields.com/

http://seedrack.com/ (aka Whatcom Seed Company)

Fall Crop Ideas

Here is a reminder of what to plant next fall.

Semi-Hardy Vegetables	Hardy Vegetables
(tolerates light frost)	(tolerates hard frost)
Beets	Broccoli
Carrot	Brussels Sprouts
Cauliflower	Cabbage
Celery	Collards
Chard	Kale
Chinese Cabbage	Kohlrabi
Endive	Mustard Greens
Lettuce	Onion
Parsnip	Parsley
Potato	Peas
Salsify	Radish
	Spinach
	Turnip

Amaranthus Spinosus

I think I have a positive ID on one of the most productive weeds in the garden: Amaranthus Spinosus. It matures to have a red stalk, has sharp thorns, and produces an abundance of seeds. Some people at the gardens call it "pigweed." All I know is that it is hard to kill.

Cover Crop

We have planted a cover crop of Medium Red Clover ( 3 lbs at $3.72 per lb from Main Street Seed and Supply). Put seeds in the ground in 10/16/2010. We also planted 2 packages each ($1.95) of Dwarf Siberian Kale, Harris Early Parsnips and 2 packages of Sevin Top Turnips (also $1.95). October 16 was a little late, but we got in two weeks of good watering before the 11/1 deadline of our community gardens. Only one other person has put in a cover crop, and they are growing a grass type (Rye or winter wheat).

Decided on Medium Red Clover after reading about it in "Managing Cover Crops Profitably."

Weather Summary - May

Using Wolfram Alpha, Query "rainfall last month Germantown"

Update - May 31

Here is the first harvest. A couple of days later we had twice this much.

We had to take one tomato plant out. It seemed to have some type of wilt.

I moved all of the Sumpter cucumbers to one side of one tent. I have planted more Sumpter seeds in hopes that they will do better in the warmer weather. Also, I will plant them closer in towards the plastic where the ground stays a little more moist.

Here is the first watermelon beginning to form. It is a Sugar Baby.

This is the sugar baby bed.


These are Ambrosia cantaloupe. The ones in the box are doing better than the climbing vines.


Here are the climbing Ambrosia cantaloupe.


Still haven't figured out how to grow any type of bean. We are trying the brute force method in another row, planting seeds by the hundred.


The weeds were out of control in the boxes where we planted seeds. We cleaned up the butternut (Waltham) squash bed and added mulch from the Compostumbler.



Sweet potatoes (Beauregard). We also replanted one of the beds with these.


These are Jelly Bean grape tomatoes. I needed to do a better job of tying these up.


Squash, zucchini, eggplant and peppers. The squash and zucchini are really producing well.


Tomatoes are looking good.

Morning Weeding

I stopped by the garden on the way to work to hoe a few weeds today. The weather was really nice. I am still battling the potato beetles on the eggplant, A couple of raised beds where I planted the carrots, beets, and radishes are weedy. Most everything else looks good, though.

Pepper plants finally started looking better. The zucchini and crookneck squash are producing, almost ready to start harvesting them.

Almost all of the tomatoes (84 days) are looking good. I need to add mulch to some of them. Several have golf ball sized fruit on them.

I staked the cherry tomato plants last night.

The sweet potatoes are looking fine. Some are starting to spread.

Cantaloupe.

Cross country hybrid cukes are starting to climb. I am not having much luck with "sumpter."

Jubilee watermelons are starting to spread.

77 Days - First Tomato

I spotted the first tomato forming today. The cross country hybrid cucumbers also have fruit forming on them. The composted leaf mulch is doing a great job keeping the weeds down. I spotted some Colorado potato beetle larvae today. Gave the eggplant, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, and cucumbers another shot of Sevin spray.

Added Composted Leaf Mulch

The dirt in the tomato buckets had settled a little bit, so we added a mixture of peat moss, dirt and milorganite to top off the buckets. On top of this we added some composted leaves. We also added mulch to most of the squash and pepper plants.




These are the cherry tomatoes...


We also mulched the sweet potatoes...

Mulch on the pepper plants and the squash

We also added black plastic under the "tents"...

... and between the melon boxes.

Pests - Striped Cucumber Beetle

Here is one more pest I have found in the garden -- the striped cucumber beetle. I think the sevin has worked on these guys, the ones I found today were dead or seemed slow moving. I read today that I need to check for eggs under the base of the leaves. I will be doing that next time out.

Also today I found more Colorado potato beetle eggs on the eggplant and on the bell pepper plants. I did not see any more beetles.

(image: Wikipedia.org)

Tennessee Flooding

Tennessee has had a lot of rain over the past weekend. Near our garden the Wolf River has risen out of its banks. Some of the plots at our community garden are completely underwater. Hopefully it will start receding soon.

At least we didn't get it as bad as Nashville:

Compost Tube

Here is another composting idea, brought to you by the community garden at the University of Memphis (the TIGUrS Garden). They are using plastic corrugated pipe with baffles bolted inside it as a medium-scale composter. A few months ago I was checking prices on this pipe, and it is actually VERY expensive. I like the idea of continuous composting, though.



Here is some of the above compost in action (with a generous amount of cotton burr compost mixed in).



Here is their cucumber trellis. Since I work nearby, I sometimes walk over and check on the progress. It is nice to get into a garden in the middle of the work day.

Weather Summary - April

If you haven't found Wolfram Alpha (wolframalpha.com), you might be missing out on the greatest thing since the calculator. I use it a lot for the weather report - just type "your city weather" and you will get a lot of info. I also use the query "rainfall last month Germantown" to get precipitation history.

Pests - Spotted Cucumber Beetle

wikipedia.org
Here is another unwelcome visitor to the garden -- the spotted cucumber beetle. It looks a lot like an elongated yellow lady bug with black spots. Hopefully I am starting early enough with the sevin to prevent a lot of damage.

Pests - Colorado Potato Beetle

One of these pretty little fellows (and his dozens of friends) have set up housekeeping among my eggplants. I killed as many as I could find. I also removed the leaves where they had laid their eggs (yellowish-orange). You have to look under the leaves to find them. I also found a few on my tomato plants. I used sevin spray on the eggplants and sevin dust on the rest of the plants.

Onion Sets 12 Days from Planting

The onions are coming along better this year. At 12 days they are looking great.

Sexy Compost Container

The wife has been complaining about my "freestyle" compost heap taking up too much space in the backyard, so I decided to do something about it today. It is 4' in diameter and 3' tall (about 30 bushels or 1.4 cubic yards). I use it to hold the "brown" matter to add with my lawn clippings. The grass needs to be mixed with leaves to break down properly, I keep the leaves from the fall and add them to the grass throughout the summer.

This design uses 6' cedar fence boards (9 of them) 6" wide. I cut them exactly in half.



I laid them out and stapled them together with 3/4 galvanized staples, using plumber's tape (pipe hanging tape).


It's a little unweildy at first, but when it begins to fill up, it takes shape better.

There, that's better.

She's gonna love it...

Planting Day 2010 - April 22

April 22 was the first day we actually got plants into the ground. We planted 117 plants, all of the eggplant, bell peppers, banana peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, and cantaloupe.

We use April 15 as the last frost date, and the community garden did not open until April 19.

Galvanized Fence Tents

Here is an especially handy way to make a series of general purpose trellises. I used 2 pieces of 1/2 x 10' EMT Conduit (I paid $1.56 at Lowes), cut them exactly in half, flattened the ends and punched a 5/16 hole in the flattened end (it can be drilled). These sections were bolted together, and I used zip ties (wire ties) to attach 2 x 4 fencing (5' tall) to the surface. The nice thing is that the dimensions work out perfectly. I also use these as greenhouses/cold frames in the time before the last frost date. It may be nice to have larger openings to be able to reach inside, but the 2 x 4 fencing is really affordable ( I paid $41.00 for a 50 foot roll at Lowes on 2-27-2010). 50 ft. is enough to do 10 frames (5 tents). I did 9 tents and am using the leftover fencing to make my "cup holders."



I will be putting black plastic underneath the tents before the weeds get too active.



I am currently growing green beans, lima beans, cucumbers, and cantaloupe on my four tents.