Gardening

Yesterday I harvested some Crimson Giant radishes out of the garden – and some broccoli leaves.  The radishes were from the first batch that were planted in the garden.  All of them were pulled up except one; I’m hoping it will go to seed so I can save some radish seed.  I’m just about out of radish seed already, so I want to have a supply for next year.

I’ve also noticed that the celery planted between the broccoli and the peppers that are to the north of the broccoli have been stunted and are small – and this is because they are not getting enough sunlight.  So each of the seven broccoli plants were given a trimming yesterday.  That opens up the “canopy” a bit and will allow sunlight to get to the celery and peppers.

So I began looking up what could be done with broccoli leaves and whether broccoli leaves are edible.

Well, they certainly are edible – we’ll put it that way – but I don’t recommend it.

The large leaves have a huge “stalk” that connects it to the main trunk of the plant.  I thought this would be perfect because when you cut broccoli heads, the stems of those are edible.  Not for the leaf stalks!  They are very fibrous.  They do taste like broccoli, but they are more fibrous and stringy than eating celery.

Therefore, I ripped off all of the leaves from the leaf stalks and tried one of the leaves.  Well, the uncooked leaf pieces wasn’t too terribly bad – again, it tasted like broccoli.  But it was tough.

I’d read a few recipes and entries online where folks used broccoli leaves in dishes – so I was going to give it a try.  I got out some cut carrots from last year’s garden from the freezer and added a package of bacon to it.  I then put the carrots and broccoli leaves in a large pot filled with water and let it heat up on the stove.  I then cooked the bacon in another pot so I could keep the grease and drizzle it over the broccoli leaves and carrots after they were strained.

The broccoli leaves turn to a nice, dark brown color after they are cooked – exactly what the other posts I read looked like.  After everything was added together, I put in quite a bit of garlic salt and added some basil.

Now for the taste test.

Not too pleasing.  Maybe it is because I overloaded the dish with broccoli leaves.  I did have a very large pot of leaves and carrots – and of course the bacon didn’t go very far.  I had hoped the leaves would mellow out a bit and become less tough after cooking, but that was not the case.  It still had the same broccoli taste but it also had a bit of a sour twang to it.  The broccoli leaves were also still quite tough and required a lot of chewing to break down.

I didn’t even finish all of the leaves on my plate because there were so many!  I of course ate the carrots and bacon though.

Welp, I suppose that is an idea I won’t continue.  I just hated to throw the large broccoli leaves into the compost tumbler thinking that surely they would be edible – since they are part of the cabbage family.  I’ll know now that it isn’t worth the time and effort to rip the leaves off of the leaf stems nor going to any of the extent to make use of the broccoli leaves.

Here are some photos I took around the garden today.  The first one shows the marigolds and ornamental peppers coming along very well.  I have to keep after the weeds though because they love to grow in this soil!

The Flame Bunch grape vine is growing huge!  It has completely surpassed the growth rate of the Concord Seedless grape vine  which is on the other side of the grape trellis.  The Flame Bunch grape vine is now only about one foot away from the end of the trellis.  I’ve also wrapped the vines around to the width of the trellis as well since I’d rather have this full to really fill the trellis in and look nice.  Later on if the Concord Seedless vine starts growing well, I can cut back the Flame Bunch vine.  Here you can see several bunches of grapes that are coming along well at the top of the trellis.

And lastly, I picked one Dwarf Gray Sugar pea today and three Super Sugar Snap peas.  The fencing is four feet tall – twice as tall as last year – but the Dwarf Gray Sugar peas are already past the two foot mark and are beginning to put on a lot of blooms.  The Super Sugar Snap/Sugar Snap peas are growing very tall as well – with a few vines already past four feet tall – but they simply are not flowering nearly as well.  The Super Sugar Snap peas are plumper and they are very crisp and have some sweetness to them.  The Dwarf Gray Sugar peas must be picked before they get plump – otherwise they turn stringy.  They also have some sweetness to them, but are not nearly as crisp.  I think next year I may have to put up six-foot fencing or more to support these things!

The weather has been exceptionally warm over the past two weeks.  It has maintained the upper 80's almost everyday.  This is July-like weather we are having – and it isn't yet June!

Today's blog entry is showing off some of the flowers from the plants in the garden.  It seems that many things are in bloom at this time.

All of the tomato plants have yellow blooms on them and are looking good.  The photo below is from the Red Cherry tomato plant.  I chose to take a photo of it since there are so many yellow blooms on it!

Below is a bloom from a Kennebec potato.  Yesterday and the day before I worked at hilling up the potatoes – what a job that was!  I've read tha some people make a trench that is about a foot deep, put the potatoes in, and then cover with a few inches.  Then as the potatoes grow out of the trench, they back-fill the trench with dirt – this way they don't have to hill the potatoes.  I would do this if I could – but since I plant things so closely together, this won't work in my situation.

The peas are in bloom as well.  Below is the purple/white flowers from the Dwarf Gray Sugar peas.

And one from the Super Sugar Snap peas.  You can also see a small pea pod starting at the bottom right of the picture.  The Super Sugar Snap peas all have white blooms – not as colorful as the Dwarf Gray Sugar Peas.

Today I also picked more Tri-Star strawberries – 5/8 an ounce shy of having two pounds.  So far this year we've picked at least six pounds of strawberries – maybe more.  Here is a photo of one of the strawberry flowers along with a few pictures of the produce.

While the broccoli head is currently not a flower, it can be one if left to fully turn into one.  The last post a couple of days ago showed one of the broccoli heads – and it has really grown in size dramatically.

Lastly, a few pictures from the flower bed that was put alongside the road.  The ornamental peppers and marigolds are coming along very nicely – but they are not nearly ready to bloom yet.  Some of the ornamental peppers are even purple – purple foliage – so that means the peppers will be purple!  Below is some of the nice orange day lillies that just started opening up yesterday.  The other two pictures below that – I'm not too sure what they are!

It is now almost the end of May!  Therefore, it is time for another garden update with a lot of pictures.

Today we had some brief heavy showers.  I'm not sure what the water level was on the rain barrel system after I watered the garden last night, but the barrels are 2/3 full currently.  We haven't had any rain for over a week now – until today when it downpoured just for a few minutes and let up.  That was good enough to give the garden a bit of a drink.

Today was also the first picking of lettuce!  There was about 12 ounces of lettuce total.  A little over six ounces came from two Simpson Elite plants, about five ounces came from one Buttercrunch lettuce plant, and almost two ounces from a Red Salad Bowl plant.  The Red Salad bowl is a much smaller plant and the leaves are very thin.  Both the Buttercrunch and Simpson Elite lettuce have large oval-like leaves so they weigh more.  I'm still experimenting this year with the Buttercrunch and Red Salad bowl, but so far I think I may keep Buttercrunch along with Simpson Elite – but I'm not too fond of Red Salad Bowl and its low production.

The herbs are coming up well.  Most of all the seeds came up – except oregano.  In a previous post I mentioned that the oregano seed seemed to be about the size of a grain of sand.  Well, it isn't that small but it is very small!  Needless to say, I don't believe any of the oregano seed has sprouted yet.

Here is a few parsley plants:

And a few cilantro seedlings:

And lastly, the basil seedlings:

Along with my other post, I mentioned that something killed a lot of carrots off.  I had to go through and re-seed the carrots in the bare spots.  It has been eight days and there are dozens of new carrots that have come up thus far.  They are still small and can't be seen below, but you can see where all of the bare areas are at and how the original carrots are coming along:

Moving to the side garden.  The potatoes are doing very well (although they have tipped over a bit along with all the other potatoes because of the storm today).  The peas are also happily climbing the chicken wire.

The Red Cherry tomato plant is doing the best out of the three varieties thus far.  It is growing very quick!

Next in line is the Roma tomato plant.  Notice how these have blooms on them already (they did previously but I pinched them off – but I'll let these stay).

And lastly, the Best Boy tomatoes are coming along nicely as well.

 How are the potatoes in the buckets doing?  Very well.  They have been "hilled up" with mulched leaves.  I need to really think about hilling up all of the other potatoes because they are getting stalky and are falling over.  Before long they will start producing potatoes.

And for the back garden.  You can see the potatoes here leaning due to the storms.  It is hard to see below, but they are on the right-side of the boards that make up the path.  The little fellas are the Greencrop green beans.  I had to plant another 16 of them in places where they didn't come up – and it has been about 10 days since planting them thus far.

The grapes are coming along well.  The Concord Seedless must have been a slow bloomer because it just isn't growing near as fast as the Flame Bunch grape vine.

 And now for our last stop on the garden update tour – the front garden.

Everything is growing very well in the front garden.  The Copra onions really are looking fantastic.

Each of the seven Green Goliath broccoli are also putting on the head of broccoli as well.  This year I think I will keep the plants in after cutting out the main head to allow the side shoots to develop.  Last year I chopped them down right after the shoots developed to put some green beans in.

The pepper plants still seem a bit stagnant – but at least they are growing a bit.  The weather during the past week has been in the mid-to-high 80's which is perfect weather for them.

The Ventura celery is doing very well.  I still remember when they were so small I was afraid they would be smashed.  But they have done very well!  I think I'll give celery another go next year as well.

And lastly for the front garden – the corn.  The corn is doing very good as well and have perked up with these warmer temperatures.

Two more pictures to go!

Next – the cucumbers.  At the recommendation of some folks on GardenWeb, I planted some Straight Eight cucumbers along with some Burpee Pickler cucumbers.

They were planted eight days ago and within six-seven days, most of them have come up.  I planted twice as many as I need to give some to my parents since they would like some cucumbers as well.

And lastly, another harvest picture.  I planted about 30 Crimson Giant radishes over a month ago.  Three of them I planted between two pepper plants and the others I planted in a square where the one broccoli plant didn't make it.

Well – I noticed today that I saw one of the radishes planted between the peppers poking out  of the soil.  Taking a closer look, I noticed all three of them had some HUGE radishes!  These three weight five ounces all together!  Last year I had such a hard time growing radishes.  Although the radishes planted in the square where the broccoli didn't survive were planted at the exact same time, they are no where near ready to be picked.  Maybe that is the secret with radishes – only plant them in rows and give them six inches apart.  Those I planted in the square were all planted three inches apart.

I added the radish leaves in with the lettuce that was pulled.  Yes, you can eat radish leaves.  It has been said that they have a peppery flavor.  I didn't want to just throw the leaves on the compost bin when they are good to eat as well!

I'm still quite surprised at how well the garden is doing this year.  When I went to pick the lettuce today, the leaves from the Simspon Elite plant were absolutely huge – some of them were even about a foot long!  I am really beginning to be a believer in using a pressure sprayer to spray down your plants with compost tea.  I've been doing it about once a week and everything is growing exceptionally well.

Wow – three posts in three days!  There is just a lot that I've done over the past few days that I think would be beneficial for folks to know – or just sharing of what is going on around the garden.

This post is about how to make compost tea.  What is compost tea?  It is free liquid fertilizer.  It is said that some of the biggest and best producing plants are fed compost tea  – both on their leaves for immediate absorption and in the ground for root absorption.

After reading all of the benefits of compost tea, I wanted to give it a try.  Actually, I accidentally discovered it.

Last year I made a compost tumbler out of a 55 gallon drum.  This was then put in with the rain barrel system.  After several downpours, I went out to turn the compost tumbler and this brown liquid started coming out of the "door" when it was being turned.  Quickly I put some buckets underneath after I realized this was compost tea – perfect liquid fertilizer!

Then I got to thinking.  Last year I filled another 55-gallon drum with leaves from when I cleaned up the yard.

So I added a spigot at the bottom of the container.

This was the 55-gallon drum that I cut the top off.  This was originally going to be used as a stand-alone rain barrel before I thought of the system that allows all of them to be hooked in sequence.  So, after putting the spigot at the bottom, I filled the whole thing up to the top with water.

I've been using the compost tea on and off.  However, the leaves and other debris at the bottom of the barrel seems to really slow the flow of tea from the spigot; it would take about a minute to just get 1/2 a gallon out of this!  Since I'm impatient, I decided to do something about it.

This evening I bought a 32 gallon garbage can, another spigot, and a 1/2" threaded nut and made another container.

The white stuff around the spigot is Dap caulking sealant.  This was placed on the inside around the hole before the threaded nut was attached and was then also put around the hole on the outside (as seen above).

I first had to drill a 3/4-inch hole at the bottom of the container.  Then the spigot was screwed into the container.  Dap caulking was then placed around the threads of the spigot on the inside of the container.  The threaded nut was then screwd onto the spigot and squished all the caulking around the nut.  Lastly, the Dap caulking was put around the outside of the barrel around the spigot.

This container will be used to hold compost tea that is read to be used.  I'll empty the compost tea out of the main 55-gallon barrel into a five gallon bucket – which may take 30+ minutes to fill.  Once the bucket is filled, I'll dump it into this 32-gallon garbage container so the flow isn't hindered when I am ready to use it.

The water in the 55-gallon drum really needs to sit for at least two weeks to ensure all of the leaves impart their nutrients into the water.  The water in the barrel has been in there about a month now – so it is ready to be taken out.  After I take it out, I can then fill the 55-gallon drum back up with water again and make the next batch.

I'd highly recommend using compost tea if you can.  It is quite easy to do and nothing technical is required.  It is perfect fertilizer for your plants and will save you a lot of money by using this organic fertilizer – instead of going to the store and buying fertilizer.

Most people dillute the compost tea in water.  I have also been doing this at about a 1:3 basis (one part compost tea to three parts water).   So that would be like 1/2 gallon of compost tea to 1.5 gallons of water to make a total of 2 gallons.  With the new method of compost tea I'll begin using, I plan to change this to a 1:1 basis (one part compost tea to one part water).  This will allow the tea to be stronger.

Make sure that when you water your plants to get all of the leaves of your plants wet with the tea.  The leaves will absorb the nutrients directly – and the roots will also absorb.

Here is a link to my YouTube video on how to make compost tea.

This will be a long post – but mostly because the pictures.  A total of 28 pictures in all!  A little bit of narration – but will mostly be a picture blog this time.

First photo is the apples on the Granny Smith apple tree.  They've doubled in size since last week.

Here is the full grape arbor.  The grape vines are really bouncing back after the deer ate all they could before the fencing was put around the arbor.  The one in front is the Flame Bunch grape vine.  One in the back – which really can barely be seen – is the Concord Seedless grape vine.

Here is one of the forming grape clusters no the Flame Bunch grape vine.  It is still very small.  There are probably seven or eight bunches forming on this vine.  The Concord Seedless isn't doing as well and seems to only have one small bunch.

Just adjacent to the grape arbor are the strawberry pyramids.  Each pyramid has about 27 – 30 strawberry plants in them now since it is the second year – and there are some that grew in very close.  The strawberry plants are donig much better now that they are in their second year compared to last year when they were planted.  You can see a lot of red strawberries.  Over one pound was just picked yesterday and in a few days, probably another pound will be ready!

And a photo of both strawberry pyramids fully being taken over.

That takes care of the fruit in the yard.  Let's move on to the herbs now.

Today a few parsley plants poked their head out.  The parsley seedlings are still very small since they just sprouted.

The cilantro is doing very well.  I planted two seeds per hole and I got up to FOUR sprouts!  Apparently there must be two seeds in each cilantro shell for there to be four sprouts.  I've thinned all but one sprout for each of the locations they were planted.

And lastly – the basil.  The basil is doing well and when I thinned them to one per hole the other day, I was absolutely amazed that even before the basil's first true leaves appear, the small ones have an amazing smell and aroma coming from them that transferred to my fingers as I plucked up the seedlings for thinning.

Now, let's take a look at the back garden.

The potatoes on the right-hand side are doing very well.  All 26 of them sprouted.  On the opposite side of the boards, more potatoes were planted and then peas were planted against the green fencing.

The first PVC pipe to the right of the board is where the Greencrop green beans were planted.  So far about 31 of 50 have sprouted in 13 days.

All the way in the back is the lettuce.  I made room to allow for 24 total lettuce plants at six inches apart.  Here is the Simpson Elite lettuce.  This is the only lettuce we planted last year and had a very good harvest from 12 plants.  Only two Simpson Elite lettuce plants are of a decent size right now – and the other four or so are still seedlings.

Next is the Buttercrunch – which is new this year.  Only one of these plants are of good size.

Last is the Red Salad Bowl plant – also new this year.  Only one of these plants is good as well.

Moving onto the Kennebec potatoes.  Out of the ten potatoes planted in buckets, eight sprouted.  Later two didn't seem to be growing very well and flopped over and died.  So there are six potato plants left.  They are sitting behind the raised bed on the driveway which is fenced in with deer netting to keep the deer out.

Next – carrots.  I planted Burpee A#1 and Sugarsnax carrots this year.  Overall, decent germination rate.  Unfortunately, something has happened to them over the past week.  I think some of it may be cut worms – but others I'm not sure about.  The stems are flopping over right at the surface of the soil – but they are still intact; they just look like they have been pinched.  Last year we had over 17 pounds of carrots; this year I think we may be lucky to get 12 pounds with all of the carrots that have succumed to whatever has happened to them.

Next is the garden next to the house.  This garden has potatoes, Dwarf Gray Sugar peas, and the tomatoes growing.

As in the last post, I mentioned that each of the tomato plants already had blooms on them.  I had to pinch all of them off to promote growth.  Here is a picture of the Red Cherry tomato plant.

And the Roma tomato plant.

And the best looking of the five Best Boy tomato plants.

Lastly, the peas in the area.

A while back I planted each of the peas in the standard black six-pack containers to germinate them before putting them in the garden.  The Dwarf Gray Sugar pea seeds were a year old – and the germination was very good.  However, the Super Sugar Snap pea seed was purchased this year – and only about nine of 99 germinated – very disappointing.  So I gave up and threw all of the soil into a bucket.  A week or more later, I started seeing sprouts.  Now, there are a few Super Sugar Snap peas that are growing in this bucket!  I couldn't just throw them out, so I left them in the bucket and set them up next to a fence.  Maybe I'll get a few more peas out of this.

And for the last stop on the BsnTech Garden Tour – the front yard.  Below is the "front" part of the front yard garden – which is where most of the action is taking place.  I didn't take any individual pictures of the broccoli but it is seen below.  You'll also notice four black buckets – that is what the failed potatoes were grown in.  Instead of not using the buckets, I put a Sugar Dots corn plant in each.  42 of 43 Sugar Dots corn sprouted – and I only have room for 36 – so four went into buckets.  Now I need to find out what to do with the two other corn plants!

Closer look of the Copra Onion plants.  They are coming along very well.  They haven't begun to bulb out yet – but I'm sure it will begin in the next couple of months.

The Ventura celery is doing very well.  Unfortunately, one was lost as it was decapitated from the ground; maybe a cut worm got to it – I'm not really sure, but it was cut off at the ground level.  Another celery plant seems to have toppled over and is no longer standing up.  The leaves are all flat on the ground – so I think it is also a goner.

One of the California Wonder peppers.  I planted eight of these total.  I started out with 12 originally.  Two succumbed to something where the leaves turned brown and the whole plant went with it.  I gave two of the other surviving peppers to my neighbor.  The peppers are doing fine – although they are not growing much.  It has been cold lately so I'm not surprised by the slow growth.

Now for some Crimson Giant radishes.  I planted another batch of 30 radishes a few days ago where the decapitated celery vacated it's spot.  The below radishes are about 2.5 weeks old now.

Now for a couple of pictures of the corn.  The corn is spaced one foot apart in the row – and about 16 inches between the rows.  The below picture is of the Sugar Dots corn since they have filled in nicely.  The other bed off to the left side in the picture is where the Silver Queen corn was planted.

And a closer look of the corn plants.

Todays task – mulching/covering the garden area.  Last fall I filled two large garbage containers with leaves that were mulched up in the blower/vacuum.  So today (after taking the pictures above), I mulched around the potatoes in the buckets to fully fill the buckets up with leaves.  I didn't take any pictures of that – oh well.  But, I'd rather have the area where the potatoes grow loose – and leaves will do the trick.  In addition, as I water the potatoes and the garden, the water will help to break down the leaves and provide a good fertilizer that will be worked into the soil from the top up – sort of like free time-release fertilizer.

The leaves will do a good job keeping the weeds at bay as well.  So, here is the picture of the front garden with all of the leaves covering around the plants.

It sure caused some allergies when putting the leaves down with all of the dust!  My nose was running and I was sneezing up a storm while doing this.

I still have about one-half of a garbage container left of leaves – which will be used to mulch the other side of the front garden once all of the Silver Queen corn is filled in.

That takes care of the mid-month garden update with a lot of pictures!

The first produce of the year finally arrived from the garden today – Tri-Star Strawberries!  The plants are doing exceptionally well and they have loads of strawberries started on them.

I picked one pound, 1 1/4 ounces of strawberries.

In other news in the garden – all seven of the tomatoes in the garden already had blooms on them – the Best Boy, Roma, and Red Cherry tomatoes.  I'm hoping that the plants are not overly stressed and hope they continue to grow.  They have been out in the garden for about three weeks now.  We had some high temperatures at the end of March/beginning of April in the mid 80's.  Shortly after, the temperatures went to more seasonal temperatures of high 60's to lower-to-mid 70's.  There have also been two nights since that got down to about 36 degrees.

So, I pinched off the blooms so the plants put their energy in growing – not producing.

So far 29 of the 50 Greencrop green bean plants have sprouted – took about 10 – 13 days.  42 of 43 Sugar Dots corn have sprouted and only 28 of 43 Silver Queen corn sprouted.  I'm not sure if the seed from FedCo seeds is very good now that I'm seeing poor germination rates in about everything from them.  The Sugar Dots corn seed is a year old and was purchased from another place – but yet germination is almost 98% whereas Silver Queen is only at 65%.  I had to re-seed the areas where corn did not come up because I want to ensure all of the space is used.

I messed up with the lettuce this year.  The plan was to have one Simpson Elite, Buttercrunch, and Red Salad Bowl lettuce planted every week for the first 4 weeks.  Then I'd plant one of each every other week.   Right now there is a good-sized Buttercrunch, one small Red Salad Bowl, and two good sized Simpson Elite plants – but just not enough to harvest and make a salad from.  Last year I planted 12 Simpson Elite all at once and I was picking at least a pound of lettuce each week.  I might just be too pessimistic and should allow more time for the others to come up – but we would have plenty of lettuce if I planted 12 Simpson Elite!

After hours of work, the curb appeal project is mostly completed!

Over the past week, I was working at removing all of the zoysia sod from the curb along the driveway and road to make a flower bed.  It is about 60 feet of total length and the bed is two feet wide – so 120 square feet of space!

Sunday I got the aluminum flashing installed.  I purchased a 50-foot by 10-inch wide roll of aluminum flashing and then had to also purchase a 10-foot by 10-inch wide roll to finish the project off.

Putting the aluminum flashing in wasn't so bad.  Why aluminum flashing?  I guess because I wanted to find the cheapest solution as a flower bed border – and something that would be deep enough to prevent the zoysia grass from taking over the bed.  You need to dig down at least six inches into the soil to prevent the rhizomes from the grass from getting past the barrier.  So I dug between seven and eight inches down – and left about two inches above the surface so it would be an easy edge to run the lawn mower by.

It took all day Sunday to put the flashing in because I had to dig a trench along the whole length to put the flashing down far enough.

Then came filling the bed.

Just look at that nice aluminum flashing!  It cost about $37 for 60 feet of the "edging".  It is quite shiny and acts as a reflector along the road as well – but it doesn't look so bad now that it is mostly covered up.

After getting the flashing in, I needed to get the peonies fully planted.  We chose to put them at the entrance of the driveway.  it will allow the peonies to grow and not get into the road – but will overflow into our driveway a bit.  The little tree you see below is a Rose of Sharon plant and it has nice white flowers every year in the late summer.  This was planted a few years back – and another was planted in the landscaping beside the house.  To get everything planted, I had to make a trip to the compost facility for a car load.  I stopped by the owner's house (he lives right across the street) and gave him $20 for the dirt that would be needed to fill the whole area.  Still a lot cheaper than buying in bags – and this compost is a lot better than the top soil bags too!

After the wife found out that I had the dirt in, she wanted to get her plants in the ground too!  It really makes it look good with the flowers and more life in the area.  Now – just multiply this by six – which is about how much more space we still have to fill in!

Monday after work I went to get another load of dirt in the car.  What a mess.  It was sprinkling a bit when I went and about half-way through, a full-out downpour!  I had quite the dirty car after I got everything loaded.  I then waited just a bit before it was dark outside to empty the dirt into the flower bed – even though it was still raining.

Tuesday was a perfect day to complete the flower bed.  I made three more trips to the compost facility (took five trips total with about 12 5-gallon buckets).

A few hours later, it was all filled in.

You can still see a little of the aluminum flashing standing out – which is just fine so it really acts as an edge.  I am debating about getting some edging to put along the curb.  What are your thoughts on that idea?

Lastly, I finished it off by spreading hundreds (maybe even thousands) of marigold seeds over the entire area – followed up by a good amount of "ornamental pepper" seeds.  I hate to just leave this space to get weed-infested over the summer and stay as black as the soil – so my mom gave me a lot of marigolds and ornamental pepper seeds.  What a perfect time and place to use them to get some color and interest going!

I'm not fully sure what the real name for the ornamental peppers are.  They are very, very small peppers that may grow up to 1.5 inches long.  They eventually turn red after being green (just like any other pepper) and one variety she had made purple peppers with purple foiliage.  I had to squeeze all of the seeds out of the peppers that she kept from last year and by the time I was done, everything I touched turned into spicy hot sauce!  By rubbing hundreds of peppers, the oils from the peppers embedded into my fingers for a couple of days.  Even any food I ate (such as pizza) had an intense hot/spicy tingle where I was holding it.

Anyways, here is a close-up of the area.  It is hard to see the seeds, but there are some marigold seeds that can be spotted below.  I had to them try to very lightly cover all of the seeds – which didn't get all of them (of course)!

Well folks, I think that is ALL for the projects this year.  I've been doing so much between the making the rain barrels, expanding the garden, making a cinder block retaining wall, trying to keep the deer out of everything, planting/starting the seeds, and now finishing up the flower bed.  It is time to relax and enjoy the fruits of all of the labors.

The next project will be putting in all of the daffodil and tulip bulbs in the fall.  I'd like to reach out to folks who read my blog and ask what your favorite varieties of tulips and daffodils are for suggestions on what we'll plant!

Well I certainly hope I didn't get into something that will be too difficult to maintain or finish – a curb appeal project.

The zoysia grass we have is a menace when it comes to gardening.  It is also a menace when it makes your curbs and driveways look overgrown.  The zoysia grass was spilling over the side of the curb along the road and creeped at least four inches into our driveway.  I should have taken some before pictures, but I didn't.

The beginning of this week we inherited a few peony plants.  I'd been telling the wife that a fall project was going to be making a flower bed along the road and driveway.  Well, with the plants given to us, I had to quickly put them in the ground Sunday evening.

Monday I started early on the project – and started digging out the grass.  The flower bed will be two feet wide and will span the entire length of the road and driveway – about 60 feet in total.  Today I just finally finished up getting the grass all taken out.

The curb looks much better with the grass taken out – but the big black strip of ground looks horrible.

In order to keep the grass from creeping back in, I needed to come up with an idea to keep it out.  It has been said that you need to dig down at least six inches into the ground to keep the zoysia grass from  creeping in with its rhizomes.  The plan originally was to build a concrete wall.. wow would that have been a lot of work!  I needed some way – with no seams where the grass could penetrate – to hold the grass back.  Landscaping fabric and plastic simply doesn't work because the rhizomes will poke right through it over time.

Instead, I came across another idea.  This was originally what I wanted to do – the use of aluminum edging.  When I looked online for edging, all I could find was these expensive short pieces of aluminum edging that were only about four inches deep.  I needed something at least eight inches!  Alas – I found it – aluminum flashing!  So I plan to use aluminum flashing as garden edging.  This is one continuous piece of aluminum and the grass can't penetrate it.  Lowes had a 50 foot piece of flashing that was ten inches wide for $25.  That is the project for tomorrow – beginning to put the aluminum flashing in.

I'm not sure what we are going to do with the area – because the plan is to put in daffodil and tulip bulbs in the area – and then other plants that really require no maintenance.  So it may unfortunately look bare for the rest of the year.

Garden Updates

Now what s going on in the garden!

First off – the Granny Smith apple tree is doing OK.  I think that the deer still got to the bottom of the tree (somehow) even with netting around it.  But the top of the tree is doing well – and there are actually little apples starting!  Unfortunately, the branches just won't support these apples so they will have to be snipped off.

The Tri-Star strawberry plants are doing well.  Here is one with a few strawberries that are beginning to turn red.

 Last week we had a storm that brought in pea-size hail.  It did some damage to the onions, lettuce, and broccoli.  The broccoli had rips through the leaves.  They are still doing well though.  Today it is very windy – seems there are gusts around 35 – 40 mph – so below the broccol look lke they are being pushed over.

Speaking of the lettuce, here are the three varieties that were planted – Simpson Elite, Red Salad Bowl, and Buttercrunch.  They are doing well, but I'm not impressed with the Red Salad Bowl.  Depending how they turn out, I may end up reducing down to two varieties next year – Simpson Elite and Buttercrunch.  Last year we only put in Simpson Elite and loved it.

Notice the green fencing by the lettuce?  Well, originally this was used to keep the deer our of the back garden – but this year it was used to hold peas up.  I do not recommend this kind of fencing for pea support.  The peas simply cannot grasp onto the fencing very well with their tendrils.  I was really hoping I wouldn't have to buy more fencing – but it looks like I'll have to get some chicken wire next year.

Here are the other peas that have the chicken wire fencing.  The tomatoes are in front and are doing very well.

The carrots are growing well in their little driveway garden.  Not really much else to say about them.

Last Saturday the herbs were planted – basil, cilantro, oregano, and parsley.  The basil seeds were quite small – but the oregano seed was even worse!  The oregano seed was about twice the size of a grain of sand – extremely small and it made it very hard to plant.

While you can't see it here, the basil has sprouted in a matter of five days.  About 11 of the 32 seeds planted (two seeds per 16 holes) have come up so far.  Nothing else has poked its head through though.  I'm using clothes pins to mark where they were planted since I didn't have enough toothpicks!  Between the herbs (since they were planted on either side of the bed), I plan to put in some green beans after the herbs get on their way.

A quick glance of the whole garden behind the garage.  You can see the peas struggling with the fence and the potatoes coming up well.  The onions are harder to see but they are on the right side of the photo.

And lastly, the potatoes in the buckets.  Eight of the ten potatoes in the buckets sprouted – and then two died shortly after they sprouted.  Not sure what happened to them, but that is how gardening goes.

I didn't take a picture, but we also planted the Silver Queen and Sugar Dots corn in the front garden last Saturday as well.  Some of the Silver Queen corn has sprouted, but none of the Sugar Dots has yet.  The Greencrop bush green beans were also planted in the garden behind the garage – but none of them have sprouted as of yet.

Well that is all for this week's garden update.

Things have been growing very well lately in the garden.  The weather has turned off on the cool side this week and we almost had a frost Wednesday night.  Luckily it didn't get cold enough – because I don't have enough buckets to cover everything now!

A person at GardenWeb mentioned that they have problems with deer getting into their garden and asked what folks used to protect it.  I didn't have any pictures at that point, and I still don't for the whole garden area – but I do have a photo of the grape arbor and strawberry pyramids with deer netting up.  You can just barely see the deer netting in the picture.  I then have four pieces of rebar on the corners that the netting is attached to.

Around the garden in the front yard, I'll eventually put netting up around this area.  But I don't have the corn or green beans planted yet – and once they are, the net will definitely be going up.  So far they seem to be staying away from the front garden because I have a lot of onions planted – and deer do not like onions.  The deer netting comes in a 7-foot by 100-foot roll at our local garden store for about $16.  I then will use PVC pipe as posts around the front garden (about 9 total) at a cost of about $1 each.  So to put up some cheap fencing, it can be done below $25.

Speaking of the front garden, here are some pictures of how things are coming along.  I really think that by using rain water, it helps the plants and they have grown quicker.  The broccoli has been outside for about three weeks and it is at least ten times bigger than what it was in the growing pots.

As in the previous blog post, I mentioned that one of the broccoli was a runt – and had a picture of it.  I pulled it up a few days later (four days ago) and planted 30 radishes in its place.  In four days, 19 of those radishes have sprouted thus far.

The onions are going well too.  So far the onions in the back of the garage that gets 5 – 6 hours of sunlight are just as large as the onions here – which gets full sunlight daily.  However, the onions in the back were planted a few days before – but not much.

The peppers were transplanted last weekend and haven't grown at all yet.  But, it still is too cold for them to do much growing.  The peppers are the two plants at the bottom of the picture.

Also seen in the picture above is some celery.  Here is more celery below.  It hasn't grown much either – although it some of them are either stagnant or have doubled in size.  This is the first year trying celery – so hopefully I'll have good results.  Otherwise I most likely won't grow it again.

That takes care of the front garden.  Now moving onto the carrot patch.

There was pretty good germination on both the year-old carrot seed and the seed purchased this year.  However, the year-old carrot seed had better germination (about 83% versus 77% of the new seed).   They are beginning to get their first set of true leaves on them.

Moving to the garden behind the garage – lettuce and peas.  Here is the lettuce.  I started one each of Simpson Elite, Buttercrunch, and Red Salad Bowl each week starting on 3/24.  Those seen in this picture are those which were seeded on 3/24 and put into the garden a few weeks ago.  They have really grown – but I want them to grow faster!  We can't wait to get our hands on some fresh lettuce.

Now for the peas.  The Burpee Super Sugar Snap peas were a total failure.  I then had to plant regular Sugar Snap peas I received from FedCo Seeds.  They have done fairly good (70% germination) and I just back-planted 16 today in spots that didn't come up.

Now to the garden beside the house.  Here the tomatoes, a different variety of peas (Dwarf Gray Sugar), and potatoes were planted.  The tomatoes are growing fairly well – but haven't doubled in size yet.  They were transplanted last week into the garden so they are still getting over the shock.  In the very back, five Best Boy tomatoes were planted, then one Roma tomato, and finally one Red Cherry tomato (closest in the picture).

And lastly – the potato buckets.  Eight of the ten Kennebec potatoes in the buckets have sprouted – so I think the other two are duds.  The potatoes in the buckets began sprouting at least a week before any of the other potatoes that were planted in the garden.

Next week (or even this weekend) I plan to get the herbs planted.  We are going to grow cilantro, basil, oregano, and parsley.  Originally we were only going to plant cilantro and basil, but we've been using a lot of oregano lately so I picked up a packet of that.  To offset that in the garden to make it more symmetrical, I also got some parsley – although we don't use this very much (if at all).

Today, April 22, is Earth Day 2010.  This leads to the question – what have you done this year to make a little part of helping our environment?

As many other followers have seen, I have done a part for our household by saving rain water with the large rain water collection system.  How has this helped the environment?

• It has helped the environment by re-using these large 55-gallon drums instead of sending them to a landfill or them being burnt down.
• It has helped the environment by reducing run-off into sewers.
• It has helped the environment by re-hydrating the garden when needed without using tap water from the house (which means less water needs to be chemically filtered, less power consumption, etc).
• It has helped the garden becuase it provides an organic means of watering your garden – and in essence, those garden plants are taking in carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.

And lastly, it has helped the environment because I have posted how-to videos and my blog entries on how to create this sytem.  I have discovered that I have links to my site just for the rain barrel system I have created – and others are contemplating on making this system themselves.  The more people that create the system based upon my idea, the more the environment benefits from all of the points above.

After I saw some sites linking back to my system and folks saying that they are contemplating on building the system, this filled me with joy and made me a little proud – that I can help out others with collecting free rain water and that I can make a difference towards the environment.  My neighbor is also very impressed with the system as well and is trying to get one of the master gardener’s to come out and take a look as well.  From there it could potentially catch on since it has the University of Illinois behind it.

Rain Barrel Updates

We managed to finally get some much-needed rain last night!  It was reported that we had approximately 0.17 inches of rain in town.

For the first update – I have added a new method of getting rain water into the barrels.  Because the house and garage are about five feet apart – and because the garage roof is about a foot lower than the house roof, this makes it perfect to divert water from the house to the garage gutters.

There is only one downspout I could do this with.  The house has four downspouts – two are in the front yard, one is by the patio, and the other one is outside a bedroom window – that worked perfectly for diverting.  I got a 10-foot piece of plastic downspout pipe and connected it to the existing 90-degree elbow on the downspout from the house.  The plastic downspout pipe was cut to a length to just allow the pipe to make it over to the garage – where the water pours into the garage gutter.  This allows more water to be collected.

How much water?  Well, here is the information and figures.  It took just about one inch of rain from a 24 x 24 foot garage to fill six 55-gallon drums – 330 gallons of storage capacity.  I have since added on three more 55-gallon drums – making the capacity 495 gallons of water.  This represents a 50% increase in storage capacity.  Therefore, by using just the rain water collected from the garage roof, this would now require 1.5 inches of rain to fill the barrels.

Because we had the rain last night, I had the perfect time to check the data.  I’ll round up and say we got 0.20 inches of rain last night for easier figures.  With just 0.20 inches of rain, I received 100 gallons of water – from both the garage and from the new downspout connected from the house.  One inch of rain divided by 0.20 inches is five.  So, since I received 100 gallons of water from 0.20 inches of rain, now multiply that 100 gallons by five – which is 500 gallons.  This 500 gallons signifies how much water would be collected with one inch of rain.

Amazing – so with one downspout from the house collecting only 25% of the water from the garage, it supplies 33% of the total water for the barrels.  I would say that is a good payoff for just bying an $8 piece of plastic downspout pipe.

On another note – I am now having difficulty with something I knew would happen – algae build-up.  Over the weekend when I drained the barrels so I could add the three additional barrels to the system, I noticed that the bottom of the white barrel was dark – and I couldn’t see through it.  Well when I pumped the water back in once everything was hooked back up, it started moving a swaying – hair algae!  Well, needless to say, the algae became loose and got down into the 2″ PVC pipe that connects all the barrels – and the pipe also feeds it to the irrigation system.  When I turned the irrigation system on shortly after, the algae clumps got in and clogged some of those 1/16-inch holes in the PVC irrigation pipe.

I had to take all of the pipe apart and connect the hose from the house spigot and clean the pipes.  I then placed the cap back on the end of each of the PVC pipes and it then forced – with great pressure – all of the algae out of the 1/16-inch holes that were clogged.  All of this took about an hour to do.

Now I need to come up with a way to fully stop algae from growing – or at least clumping together like this.  Originally I got a large piece of black plastic and I was going to cover all of the barrels.  But, I found out that I also have to do something with the blue barrels because light also penetrates through them – along with the 2-inch PVC pipe that connects all of the barrels together.  The only reason I have the one white barrel is so I can see the level of water that I have left.  So as a temporary solution, I will cover this white barrel with the black plastic and see what results.  Eventually I will most likely paint this barrel – but leave a one-inch wide vertical line that is not painted to allow me to see the water level – then I can just cover up that little area with something – and uncover it when I want to see the water level.

Garden Updates

I don’t have too much to report on, but the Tri-Star strawberries are growing much better than they did last year.  Granted, the strawberries were just planted last year, but they seemed to be low and grow out to the sides.  This year the strawberries are growing taller and have a lot of flowers on them!  We’ll hopefully get a good crop of strawberries this year!

As I mentioned in a previous post, the deer got to the grape vines before I could cover them with netting.  Here is a photo showing the total damage the deer did to the vines.

The broccoli is doing very well.  One of the eight has some kind of growth problem and unfortunately – it doesn’t look like it will produce anything.  This one will be pulled out of the garden soon – and then I can use this space to possibly grow some radishes!

And for the runt:

It is too early to plant tomatoes in a typical year – but I already planted ours two days ago.  I didn’t want to, but I was sort of forced to do so.  The tomatoes have been growing much better as seedlings than they did last year – and I think this is becuase I was using rain water to hydrate them – instead of tap water.  The tomatoes were very root-bound and some of the roots made their way through the holes I drilled in the bottom of the cups.  It was definitely time to plant them out.  So, I planted out five Best Boy tomatoes, one Roma tomato, and one Red Cherry tomato.  I still have about 12 tomato plants left in the 16-ounce cups that I will be giving to family and to the neighbor.

So far out of the 79 Kennebec potatoes that were planted, only four of them have shown some leaves.  It is interesting – but all four of them are in the black buckets – none of them have sprouted that were directly sowed in the ground.

Carrots are doing well.  I counted yesterday and there are about 140 (out of 189 planted) Burpee A#1 carrots that have sprouted (year-old seed stored in freezer) and 177 Sugarsnax carrots (out of 231 planted) that have sprouted.  The Sugarsnax carrots seemed to germinate quicker than the Burpee A#1 carrots.

The Copra onions are doing good outside as well.  I have lost a total of five so far out of about 105 that were planted.  I planted about half in the front garden and half in the foundation blocks behind the garage.  Behind the garage only gets about 5 – 6 hours of sunlight a day whereas the onions in the front get full sun all day.  The onions in the front were planted three or four days after those that were planted in the foundation blocks, but they look fairly similar in size.

And lastly – the celery.  Luckily it seems every last one of the 16 Ventura celery plants that survived made it to the garden.  All of them appear to be growing well – although some don’t seem like they’ve grown very much since being transplanted into the garden.

The average last frost date is coming up soon!  The average last frost date for Decatur IL is approximately April 27th.  This still means – on an average basis – that there is a 50% chance of frost after this date.  However, due to the warming that has been occurring, I bet April 27th is more of a day where there is only a 25% chance of frost after this date.  I looked at the seasonal averages and the record highs/lows on the Wunderground page and it shows that the seasonal averages are now above frosting temperatures.