Gardening

Boy I have been very busy lately!  So busy I've taken several pictures throughout the week that I am just getting a chance to post now.

Why so busy?  Well, the weekend was fully consumed with – building onto the rain barrel system.  I think at this point, I have gone from crazy to fully insane.  As if six 55-gallon drums that hold 330 gallons of water wasn't enough, I'm going to expand it to DOUBLE this.

After I put up six, I was fully content and thought I was done.  Well, we have had almost drought-like conditions.  We haven't had any rain for about two weeks now.  It is forecast that we will FINALLY get some rain (20% chance) on Wednesday or (60% chance) on Friday.

I have used up almost all of the water in my current barrels.  They were completely full – and now I have less than 50 gallons of water left.  I have been starting to use the water sparingly.  When watering the front garden, I've only let it run for about three minutes total – which isn't bad since the front garden is only about 50% full.  For the back gardens, I've only let it run about five minutes.

Friday evening I went to get the lumber and equipment needed to make the platform.  This consisted of two 2×6 boards that were 12 feet in length, six 4×4 posts that were eight feet in length, and a total of 12 1/2-inch by six inches long of lag screws to hold everything together.  I made a video on YouTube going over the construction of the platform if you'd like to try it yourself.

After getting home Friday evening, I got four of the six holes dug for the posts.  Saturday morning I woke up early and got the other two holes dug – then took off to the place to get the barrels.

Unfortunately, after I got there, they told me that they will not be getting any more barrels in – until winter!  They said the windshield wiper fluid that comes in the 55 gallon drums is only used during the winter time.  But, they had three barrels – so I hade two trips to pick them up.

Well, three is better than none – it will add 33% more capacity to my system by adding 160 gallons of additional capacity (total of 490 gallons now).

I then started putting up the platform the rest of the day – and it took me all day to do it.  When putting up the platform, I dug the holes for the posts at least two feet deep to get below the frost line.  I then put the posts in the holes and drilled a couple of holes in the 2×6 board.  After doing this, I had to hold up the 2×6 board to one of the posts to get the height right to match the current barrel system I had.  I then marked where to drill a hole in the post, drilled the hole, and then put in one screw to hold it in place.

After doing that, I then went to the post on the end and held up the 2×6 across that post.  I had the level on the 2×6 and ensured the board was level – and marked the spot on the post where the level mark was.  I also marked a couple of spots on the 2×6 for making two more holes for the screws to go in.  Drilled the holes and then drilled one hole in that post, put a screw in, and the 2×6 was fully level and horizontal.

After doing this, I filled those two post holes in with dirt (trying to go as inexpensive as I can – concrete would add another $30 – $40 to the project).  Then I went to the middle post, filled it in with dirt, and then drilled the holes in the 2×6 and the post.  So, one side of the platform was done – and then I repeated the whole procedure for putting up the second side of the platform.

Would you look at that – you can see the new construction above (where the barrels are not on top).  It now spans the entire 24-foot garage – and will allow me to have capacity for 12 barrels that will hold 660 gallons of water.  Another positive of building it out completely along the garage is now I can make use of the other downspout on the side.  Right now I just tried to seal the downspout in the gutter with duct tape – but I don't suspect that is going to hold for much longer.

Sunday morning it was time to work on the three new rain barrels and get them put together.  I also highlighted how I do this process through another YouTube video that you can watch as well .

While I don't have any pictures of the construction of those barrels, it is fairly straight-forward.  At the top of the barrels, there are two plastic screw holes.  One of the screw holes has very course threads and the other has very fine threads.  You will ensure that the coarse-threaded hole is very tight (you don't want water to get out through this hole since it will be at the bottom).  The fine-threaded hole should have the cap removed.  With the barrels I get, there is a rubber O-ring in this cap – which I remove.  I then use a 2" male-threaded PVC adapter, put the O-ring over this adapter, and screw it into the hole – again, very tight so water cannot escape.

Then cut a very small piece of 2" PVC pipe (probably 2 – 2.25 inches).  This will slip into that 2" male-threaded adapter.  You then either have a 2" PVC 90-degree elbow (two barrels need to have a 90-degree elbow) or a 2" PVC T-connector (all barrels between the two end barrels need a T-connector).  Use some PVC cement and glue the small piece of PVC pipe you cut into the male-threaded adapter, and then cement on the T-connector (or 90-degree angle) right on top.  Make sure that it is a very good fit and turn the pieces while putting them together to make a better adherence.

After this, you then need to cut another 2" PVC pipe to connect the barrels together.  I would highly recommend getting a PVC slip union – which is a place where a male-threaded and a female-threaded piece come together with a rubber O-ring.  This will allow you to disconnect the barrels individually.  Use the PVC cement again and glue all of these items together.

Lastly, you need to turn the barrel over (basically the bottom of the barrel) and drill a hole.  This hole needs to be drilled out so as the water comes in from the bottom (location where you just glued all the PVC stuff together), the air can escape through the top.  Use a fine mesh and some silicone adhesive over the hole to keep the mosquitoes out.

Thats how to do it.  Here's a few more pictures of the setup completed.

In other news, I've been doing more work around the garden – on top of everything else.

I was very disappointed with the germination rate of the brand new Burpee Super Sugar Snap peas.  Only nine of them came up out of 99 that were planted.  The Dwarf Gray Sugar peas – which are a year old – faired much better.  However, I sun-scorched them and only about 20 of the 62 went into the garden.  I then direct-sowed the rest of the Dwarf Gray Sugar the rest of the way in the garden alongside the house.

I then used the Sugarsnap peas I got from FedCo Seeds to seed behind the garage.  I really hope those sprout because I'm counting on them.  It is a different variety and from a different seed company – so hopefully that will make the difference.

Over the weekend, I also planted the Ventura Celery out into the front garden.  The front garden is starting to fill up!  The peppers, corn and pole beans are all that is left to be planted in the front garden.  The broccoli is doing very well – although I have one runt that hasn't grown at all since being put in the front.  It was like this as a seedling and I should have thrown it out, but I had exactly eight broccoli – which is what I needed for the garden.

The tomatoes are growing very well!  I don't know if it is the rain water that I'm using to water them, or if it is the compost tea solution that I've also just began using.  The tomatoes were pretty good sized with just using rain water – but I think the compost tea has helped a little bit.

Lastly, I took a picture of the grape vines in the front yard – and a good thing I did.  I woke up Sunday morning and saw that one of the vines was completely stripped.  The deer got to it before I could put the netting around the grape arbor.  I was sorely disappointed after seeing the deer got to them because there were several grape clusters on the new growth.  Then Monday morning, I woke up and found the other grape vine stripped as well.  At least they didn't get the growth on top of the arbor – which is what I'm more concerned about.

So today I just got in from putting the netting up around the arbor to hopefully save any new growth the grapes put on.

The signs of Spring are definitely here this week.  However, we did dip below freezing Thursday night and had a little frost.  I had to bring all of the little seedlings in overnight.

All of the onions have now been planted outside.  They are frost-resistant and they did fine outside.  Today I planted the Green Goliath broccoli into the front garden – spaced 18 inches apart.

After doing this, I then moved all of the California Wonder peppers from the four-packs to 16-ounce cups.  I moved the Ventura Celery from the six-packs to 16-ounce cups as well.  While the peppers didn't have roots wrapped around, the celery did.  Hopefully the celery will start growing again because they are still fairly small.

I've had six more tomato plants sprout in the past couple of days!  Two of them were Roma tomatoes, three were Best Boy tomatoes, and the other one was a Red Cherry Tomato.  So those were moved into their own 16-ounce cup as well.  I now have a total of 18 tomato plants – and I only need six!  The wife mentioned that she really liked the flavor of the canned tomatoes – so I am thinking of maybe planting eight or nine tomatoes instead of six.  Right now the plan is to plant four Best Boy tomatoes and one each of Roma and Red Cherry.  I found that the Best Boy tomatoes seem to be just as meaty as the Roma tomatoes – which is preferable for the salsas and canning that we do.

The neighbor mentioned he saw a squirrel plaing in the little patch I have the seedlings – so I just walked from taking pictures and putting the netting to keep the critters out.

The carrots were planted out on Wednesday.  I've had the clear plastic cover over the area for a week or more now.  Last year I didn't plant the carrots until around April 15th.  So I am a week early in planting them this year.  I just couldn't help myself with how warm and nice it has been lately!

I planted 189 Burpee A#1 carrots.  This seed is a year old, so this will be a good check to see how well carrot seed can stay good in a freezer.  I then planted new seed from FedCo seeds – the Sugarsnax.  I planted 231 of those.  Folks over at the GardenWeb forums recommended Sugarsnax or Scarlet Nantes – so I am trying Sugarsnax this year.  Planting carrot seed is very tedious and took a very long time to do.

The grape vines are growing as well.  The buds have pushed out and are beginning to show some leaves.  The first picture below is from the Concord Seedless grape vine and the one below that is from the Flame Bunch grape vine.

I am impressed with the Tri-Star strawberries!  They are already growing large and several of them have white flowers on them.  The white flowers are where the strawberries themselves come from!

The Granny Smith apple tree has made a come back as well.  The deer really ate into the tree last year – biting off all of the ends and all of the leaves as they grew.  This year I have put some deer netting around the tree – which is held up by some rebar stakes.  I hope this keeps them away.  But, the tree is flowering.  It has very nice flowers during after they open up.

Now for an update on the landscaping project between the house and garage.  It is finally done!  All of the patio blocks are down.  I then had to move the scalloped edgers on the left side to be right next to the blocks.  There was about a five-to-six inch area between the edgers and the patio blocks.  Sand has been put between all of them and after a few rain storms, the sand has packed in and they are snug and not moving now.  This is a huge upgrade from what it used to look like.  This was nothing but a mud bath after a good heavy storm.

Been a few days since my last post.

Starting last Friday, I began taking the onions outside to get some fresh air and some sunlight!  I kept them out from about 7:30 am until about noon – when the wife brought them back in.  This is the idea of "hardening off" – slowly acclimating seedlings to outside conditions because of them growing inside with artificial fluorescent lighting and no breeze.

Saturday I took all of the seedlings outsidte – onions, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, and celery.  I actually left them out all day because the temperature was a little cooler outside than what it was in the house, and it was cloudy most of the day.

Saturday evening they were all brought back in – except for the onions.  It is about time to plant onions – although there still is a chance of frost.

Sunday they were all brought back outside again.  Sunday was about 65 degrees and mostly cloudy; the sun did peek through several times to get some direct sun to the seedlings.  Again, all the seedlings were brought back inside that night.

Monday they again were all put back outside – but tonight they will all remain outside.

Today (Monday) I also began planting peas.  I planted about 72 Dwarf Gray Sugar peas.  These pease need to be picked before the actual peas get large – otherwise the pod gets fibrous and tough.  Dwarf Gray Sugar peas have both an edible pod and an edible pea – which is why I chose it last year.

However, over the winter, I read up more about peas because I would like to have plumper peas.  So I discovered that if you plant sugar snap peas, you can wait to let the peas plumpen a bit – and still eat the pod!  So I got some Burpee Super Sugar Snap peas and planted about 99 of those today.

The Dwarf Gray Sugar peas will go beside the house and the Super Sugar Snaps behind the garage – behind the garage has about ten feet of extra growing length.

One thing I noticed this year is that the Super Sugar Snap peas were only 0.75 ounces for the package at $1.99.  Last year, when I purchased the Dwarf Gray Sugar peas, the packet was 1 ounce and $1.79.   So, clearly from this, you can see that the cost of seeds are going up – not only do you get 25% less seeds, you also are paying more for them.

Sunday afternoon I planted about 25 onions in the new retaining wall behind the garage made out of foundation blocks.  Foundation blocks have two squares cut out of them – what a perfect place for onions!  Monday after getting home from work, I then planted the rest of them to fill the squares all up.  I still have about half of the onions to plant – and they will be planted in the front garden.  It was already dark when I took the below picture, but you can get an idea of how they are planted.

The weather lately has been unseasonably warm – the weather man last night said that the temperatures are five to eight degrees warmer than normal.  This is why I haven't put anything else in the ground except for the onions – it is possible we can still get a freeze.  The average last frost date is April 27th – which is still 22 days away!  Probably in about two weeks I will plant the broccoli outside.

Moving on, here are all of the seedlings outside.

The Dwarf Gray Sugar peas are up on the ledge and the Super Sugar Snap peas are in the front.  These were just seeded tonight – so nothing coming out of them yet!  I just hope they will transplant well from these six-packs.

Above are the Green Goliath Broccoli seedlings – I have eight total.  They are doing quite well for only being two weeks old.

Above are the Ventura celery seedlings.  I lost another one this week due to damping off disease – so I only have 16 left – which is exactly what I need to plant outside.  I can't afford to lose anymore of these!  I think the breeze is doing these some good because the stems are still very fragile and need toughened up a bit.

Here are the California Wonder peppers – and they are doing quite well.  As odd as it seems, the peppers in the bottom part of the picture are those that I saved from the pepper plants last year.  The other two four-packs are seed that is two years old from Burpee.  It seems that the seed I saved is doing better and growing faster than the Burpee seed!

And lastly for the tomato seedlings.  The one at the bottom left is a Roma tomato seedling and it is doing very well.  I don't know which is which from the picture (I have the cups labeled though), but the others are either a Red Cherry Tomato seedling or a Best Boy Tomato seedling.

I wasn't very happy with the germination on the tomatoes.  I originally planted five Roma, five Cherry, and 12 Best Boy.  After a couple of weeks, I had two Roma, one cherry, and five Best Boy tomatoes that came up.  The Roma and Red Cherry tomato seed is probably two or three years old now, but the Best Boy tomato seed is only a year old.  Last year every Best Boy tomato sprouted, and this year it was 5 out of 12!  I then re-planted two more Best Boy seedlings and one came up.  Then after putting them outside the past few days, two more Best Boy tomatoes sprouted after 23 days!  I guess they needed it to be just a little warmer than what the basement was.

Well that is all for the seedlings.  Moving on to the next project – putting pavers down between the house and the garage.  There is about a three-foot wide area between the garden bed and the landscaping and when it would rain, it turned the area into a muddy mess.  Since Menards had those pavers on sale through Saturday, I purchased the rest of the pavers I needed Saturday.  It took a total of 50 pavers to finish the project – but not bad for about $40 for the project (including the sand too!).  it isn't perfect and the pavers do have varying heights, but it definitely is a lot better than what it was before!

I still need to put some sand in-between some of the pavers so I'm not done yet.  I also have to move the scalloped edgers that hold the rock back to be up against the pavers since there is about four inches of space left on that side.

Wow, that almost reads like a headline in a newspaper – "Early Heatwave Allows Garden Preparation".

Anyways, that is definitely the case!  This week has been exceptionally warm.  Yesterday it was almost 80 degrees.  Today was about 82  degrees and tomorrow is supposed to be very warm as well!

We had some rain on Sunday but the rest of this week has been bone dry.  It will rain again tomorrow evening from what the weather people say.

We did have a frost Monday night – but since then it has been very warm.  I sure hope that doesn't mean we are in for another year like last – where it was over 90 degrees in June!

Last Sunday I wrote about the rain barrel and PVC irrigation integration.  Here are a few pictures from that day.

We'll start off with a picture of the grape arbor and strawberry pyramids.  The wife cleared out all of the dead leaves from the strawberries a a few days before.  It looks like there were about four or five strawberries that didn't survive the winter out of almost 50 plants – so not bad.  The grapes have been pruned and the buds are really beginning to push out on them!

Here is a picture of the front garden.  Here you can see most of the PVC up.  The horizontal PVC going across the garden area are the supports that hold the six 20-foot irrigation lines.  This leveled the lines out so they are flat – since the front yard slopes.  This was needed so that when the water starts flowing, it flows evenly amongst all holes in the line.

Here is a side view where you can see the level of the ground.  It really seems like the pipes are going uphill, but they are really flat!

Today (Thursday), I have mostly finished up all of the garden prep.  I've tilled the area beside the house, behind the garage, the potato area, and the newest 4 x 20 garden area up front.  I used a claw-like tool for the carrot bed and the bed by the patio – where the herbs and green beans will be this year.

I worked from the moment I got home from work until sun-down the past four days getting everything done.  The fencing for the peas has been erected and the new fencing around the retaining wall.  The mesh for the fencing that goes around the  retaining wall allows more sunlight through.  Last year I used the green snow fencing – but that wouldn't allow much light through.  So the green fencing is now used for the peas.

You can also see the wood that I put down in the area.  This will be the walkway for us to pick the peas, cucumbers, and green beans.

The chicken wire fencing is two feet tall, but I setup two rows to make it four feet tall.  Last year I used the two-foot tall chicken wire fencing in this area and behind the garage (where the green fence was in the previous picture).  I discovered that even with the Dwarf Gray Sugar peas, they wanted to still climb!  So this year I doubled the height and both are now four feet tall to allow the peas to climb higher instead of falling over.  The chicken wire fencing above is against the house for the peas.  The potato area is in the bottom half of the picture where the green fencing is partially covering.

Above is the carrot area.  It was clawed up and covered with plastic to keep some of the moisture in.  I'll be planting carrots around the 15th of April.  The area to the left was the old potato bin – that turned out to be a failure last year.  So I'll plant potatoes here again, but will not make a bin out of it.

Above is where the herbs and some green beans will be.  One of our cats, Tom, is on his perch in the background enjoying the warm weather.  The PVC pipe in the front is long because I'll have to put deer netting around the bed to keep them out.  This area was also all clawed up and loosened yesterday.

On Monday and Tuesday, I put in the patio blocks and some rock.  The path is two feet wide in most areas, but other areas it was an inch short.  The plan was to put blocks like I did above, and then lay another block vertical to them on the left.  Since the area wasn't the same throughout, I just put down the patio blocks down the middle and rock on both sides.  It took quite a while to smoothen the area out with some sand and then plastic was put over the top of the sand to keep out the weeds.  The patio blocks and rock were then put on top.

I got a great deal on the patio blocks – which is why I chose to use them.  Originally Menards sells the 8 x 16 patio blocks for 99 cents each, but this week they are 50% off and are only 50 cents each.  I bought 36 of them thinking I would use all of them here, but since I only used 24, I have 12 left.  I intend to go back to purchase more and use these same blocks in the walkway between the house and garage where it gets very muddy after it rains (you can see that four pictures above).

Lastly, in the picture above and below, you can see the nice black soil.  This is the new part of the bed that was all tilled up today.  The other side was made last year and I just plan to go over it with a rake.  Since worms and other good stuff is growing in there, I don't want to interrupt their habitat.

Also above you see three pieces of irrigation pipe.  I had a problem with them wanting to be pushed around by the wind, so I used a drill to make a hole on either side of the pipe that the irrigation lines are running on top of.  I then put a screw in each of these so they are spaced evenly apart.  You can almost see some of the screws in the picture above, although they are hard to see.  This will keep the pipe in place and the wind won't be able to blow it around.

That is all for this week so far.  The seedlings are doing well and I planted another three seeds of Simpson Elite, Buttercrunch, and Red Salad Bowl Lettuce yesterday.  I had one seed of each sprout a few days ago for those that I planted last Wednesday.  I'm only planting three of each every week (and will thin to only one each if more than one grow) so we'll have a rolling supply of lettuce all year.

Today I worked outside from 9 am until about 6 pm.  Very busy day – and it all was getting the PVC irrigation system tied into the rain barrels and checking everything.  Well, I also had to make the PVC fence structure so the deer stay out of the front garden.

It takes a lot of PVC pipe, let me tell ya.  But, when it was all done, I was extremely impressed at how well it works!  My neighbor is a plumber and was telling me that I wouldn't have enough pressure to run the system, but it turned out to be just perfect.

The trouble with the front garden beds is that the front yard slopes downards toward the road.  Within the 20 foot length, the drop was about two feet.

So I needed to find a way to level this out – otherwise if I just put the PVC irrigation pipe right on top, the pressure through the 1/16-inch holes in the pipe would be more at the lowest point – starving the holes at the highest point of the pipe of anything.  I ran into this last year – and the watering was not very consistent amongst the gardening area.

I started at the top of the "hill" and used a level – and made vertical PVC pieces down the beds.  After doing this, I got some more PVC pipe and some T-connectors and connected the pipe together on either side of the bed – then I put the actual irrigation pipe right over the top.  Worked perfect – and the tests were successful.

There are a total of 120 holes in the pipes – there is 120 feet of PVC pipe with a hole every foot (because corn will be planted a foot apart).  After I turned on the automatic water timer, it took about a minute but every single hole was allowing water out.  Very pleased with the result!

I did have to make a minor adjustment to the main pipe.  From the rain barrels, I decided to make one main PVC line that went from the barrels all the way to the front yard.  This length was a total of 110 feet.  I also put in a T-connector in the main line to hook the automatic water timer in for the garden beside the house and the garden behind the garage.  Because this was such a long distance, I used 3/4-inch PVC pipe.  This way there is less restriction in the main line.  Originally I used 1/2-inch PVC pipe and the pressure up front was horrible.  After the change, it seemed like the pressure at least doubled!

The below video was made after everything was done.  It goes over the rain barrel system, the PVC irrigation system, and gives a few glances at the strawberry pyramid and grape arbor.  It also shows three of the gardening areas I just spoke about – the one behind the garage, the one next to the house, and the one in the front yard.

I took the day off on the 25th to get the new bed filled in.  We finally got all of the Zoysia grass removed from the location where the new 4 x 20 garden bed was to go in – and then made the structure.

I used some clear plastic around the perimeter of the bed and dug down an additional 4-6 inches.  This is a barrier to hopefully prevent the Zoysia grass from moving into the bed like it did last year.

You can see some of the plastic in the bottom of the picture.  I left some extra because I plan to also dig a trench by the wood of the old bed and do the same.  The space between the two beds is two feet wide and this will allow us to walk between and harvest both beds.  I'm not sure how to fill this area yet; I thought about pea gravel – but that is more expense and will then make this more permanent – which I'm wanting to prevent since this is in the front yard!  Overall, it doesn't look too bad in the front yard – but it most likely will when this is filled with corn, peppers, broccoli, celery, and onions!

The wife and I made two trips to the compost facility with our buckets and large containers that would fit in the cars.  The guy at the compost place said that they now charge $20 a square yard!  Well, this is because there are two compost facilities right next to each other.  The main compost facility receives all of the yard waste from the city and residents – this is where we got the compost for free last year.

Now, this facility trucks all of the half-composted material just 100 feet down to the next compost facility.  This compost facility has large screening equipment and screens all the compost when it is done.  They then sell the screened compost.

The screened compost is nice since it doesn't have any big pieces of wood or other stuff in it – but $20 a square yard!

After the two trips, we were already wore out since we're out of shape.  Filling buckets, taking home and unloading, and coming back for more was tedious and took about 30 minutes per trip.  However, the owner of the compost place said that he delivers for $30.  So, he gave us a bit of a break and only charged us $60 for delivering two square-yards of compost right onto our driveway.  After this, we were able to fill both areas in about two hours!  Much less time than it would have taken if we went back and forth.

It was a perfect day for working outside; it was partly cloudy and about 62 degrees.  It is now raining today so that is why I took the day off work to get this done.

Getting The Irrigation System Ready

Since the rain barrels will be the primary method of delivering water to the beds, this year I had to run PVC pipe from the front yard all the way behind the garage.  Overall, this was about 120 feet and took 12 10-foot sections of 1/2-inch PVC pipe.  I didn't want this just lying out in the front yard, so I dug a trench in our landscaping rock and buried the pipe.  Here you can see the long run (partially covered) and while it is very hard to see, there are two outlets on the bricks.  One of them has a ball valve and a 3/4-inch male adapter so we can hook a hose to it and turn the ball valve on.  This will help with watering the tree and the strawberries – or any other manual watering we need to do in the front yard using the rain barrels. Further off in the distance is another outlet that just has a 3/4-inch male threaded adapter on the end.  This is where we'll hook one of the automatic timers to water the bed.  This oneyou can't really see at all in the photo below as it blends in with the rock.

The PVC pipe then turns at a 90-degree angle (as seen just at the bottom of the picture).  Unfortunately, this part has to be in the grass and I just hope I don't run over it with the mower!  This piece goes straight back to the rain barrels which is about 60 feet from this point.

New Water Timer

I had been complaining to a work buddy about how I was a little fed up with water timers.  With one of my previous posts, I went over the gallons per minute that the two water timers I have – and how the flow was restricted by quite a bit.  I was telling him that someone just needs to invent a timer that has a straight-through pipe with a ball valve – and then a motor that would turn the ball valve open and closed when it was time.

Welp, Gilmour has made such a device!  When I went to Menards to pick up the treated lumber to make the new bed in the front yard, they had this timer for $25 – and they also had the Nelson water timer that I already have for $30.  So based on price alone, I chose the Gilmour timer.  I hope it lasts quite a long time as I've read reviews about leaking problems.  The Gilmour timer takes 4 AA batteries – unlike the Nelson timer that only takes 2 AA batteries.  The Nelson timer has had the same two batteries in it for two years now – and is going on its third year!  I wonder how the Gilmour timer will do on batteries.

Since this has a ball valve (as seen above) with the pipe going straight through, this means that the flow is not restricted.  Since it is raining today, I plan to test this thing out and see what the flow rate is per minute on this one!  I guess you can consider this a low pressure automatic water timer – which is what I've been searching for.

 Seedling Update

It is now seven weeks until our last frost date of May 11th for zone 5.  Well, the average last frost date is April 27th, but the date that only has a 10% chance of frost for our area is May 11th – so I base our date off this.

I planted some Black Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, and Red Salad Bowl lettuce yesterday – three seeds per square.  Each week for the next four weeks I'll be planting three seeds per square and then thinning to one of each.  This way I'll have one plant of each of the three varieties over four weeks; this will give us 12 total salad plants.  After the four weeks, I'll then begin to space them out to sowing three seeds of each every two weeks.  This will give us (hopefully) a summer-long supply of lettuce.  Last year the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce turned bitter after supplying us for about two months.  Because home-grown lettuce is outstanding, we want to have lettuce throughout the season!  The lettuce is being put in a location this year where it will begin to receive sunlight after about 1 pm until 8 pm – so it will be shaded for the first part of the day.  Hopefully this will help keep the lettuce from turning bad.

In other seedling notes, the Green Goliath broccoli is doing well.  I store all the seeds in a ziplock bag in the freezer.  I planted two seeds of broccoli in eight 16-ounce cups.  Of those 16 planted total, 12 of them have come up!  I only need eight broccoli plants, so maybe I can find a home for the other four.

The tomatoes are a different story.  I planted two seeds of Best Boy tomatoes in six 16-ounce cups.  Only five of those 12 planted came up.  The seed is a year old and last year every single seed sprouted.  So I just had to plant two more seeds yesterday.  I only need four plants so I have enough, but would like to have a few to give away.

The Roma tomato and Cherry Tomatoes – I planted five seeds each in a 16-ounce container.  I've had two Roma tomatoes come up and only one Cherry Tomato.  Last year I had about half the Cherry Tomatoes come up and only about 25% of the Romas.

The peppers are doing fantastic!  I planted two seeds in each of three four-packs – so a total of 12 squares and a total of 24 seeds.  One four-pack I planted with seed saved from the pepper plants last year.  Five of eight of those have sprouted.  The other 16 were from year-old seed in a packet.  Out of those 16, 12 have sprouted.  So that just shows that saving seed and storing it properly works well!  I only need eight pepper plants and since I have two peppers growing in many of the squares, I'll have to pull one of them.  But, since there is at least one pepper growing in each square, I'll have four pepper plants to give away.

The onions are doing alright.  I condensed all of them a few days ago.  I used black 9-packs for growing these, and some of the squares didn't have an onion grow.  So I dumped out the soil in those squares and replaced them with an onion from another 9-pack to fully fill them in.  When it was all done, I had three 9-packs I fully emptied – which allowed me space under the growing area for the lettuce!  Last I counted, I had about 110 onions that were still living.

The Ventura celery is doing well.  There were a lot of new seeds coming up from the previous experiment – but I had to dump most of those as well.  I have 18 celery plants – and I only need 16, but want to keep two extra for insurance.

Lots of work going outside – taking advantage of the nice weather.

In preparation for the new 4 x 20 foot box in the front yard, I have been removing sod from the front yard.  I'm removing a row one foot wide by 20 feet long everyday – and I started Monday.  So I just completed my fourth row today.  The goal is to have two feet between the two boxes and then the new box of four feet wide – so this is why it is six feet wide total.

The rain barrels have some water in them – and there are no leaks!  So the rain barrel project is done.  Soon I'll need to start laying the PVC pipe through the garden to get this prepared.

The grape vines are budding very nicely – along with the Granny Smith apple tree.  Last week I put some deer netting around the tree to keep the deer away.  But, I need to prune some of the grape vines and remove some canes that will not be used.

As I was walking in the house today after removing sod, I looked down at the bed beside the house – and oh my – weeds are growing all over!  It looks like this will be another thing to add on my list – de-weeding!

Some kind of animal is on the carrot bed that sits on the back driveway.  There are all kinds of tracks all over it.

So there are quite a few things to do.  I will have the two more rows of sod removed on Saturday and hopefully get the box built on Saturday.  The weather on Saturday is to plummet down into the 40's and temperatures overnight will return to being under freezing. 

After the box is made, I'll then have to decide what to put down for the walkway between the two boxes.  Pea gravel would be nice, but since it is in the front yard, this would be very hard to remove if the house is sold and new owners don't want it.

I'll then need to start hauling dirt from the local compost facility to fill the box – and also fill the area behind the garage where the new retaining wall is!

As an update for the seedlings – I have nine out of 16 broccoli that have sprouted so far – and I only need eight so I'm in good shape.  None of the tomatoes or peppers have come up as of yet.  The peppers are on a heat mat but the tomatoes are just under the fluorescent lights.

About 15 of the 26 onions I planted have also germinated from this patch batch.  Unfortunately, I am continuing to lose onions on a weekly basis.  I attribute this to damping off disease; the top of the squares has a lot of white coloring and several places have fuzz growing.  I guess this is a very good reason NOT to use garden soil to plant seedlings.  Last year I used garden soil and didn't have any problems.  This year it is a different story.

The past week has been quite rainy.  Since the night temperatures have only been getting down to 36 degrees or higher, I decided to hook the rain barrel system up.

I went to work on Thursday and it started raining mid-day.  By the time I got home, I checked on the barrels and they were already completely full!  That was approximately 220 gallons of water already stored and ready for use.  The funny thing is – we only had about a quarter of an inch of rain during that time period – and I managed to get 220 gallons from that off of a 24 x 24 garage roof (about 576 square feet).

Friday I went out to harvest some of that rain water to fill up some gallon jugs.  I've been using rain water to water the seedlings inside instead of using tap water from the house.  When I went out there, I decided to test the water timers to see how well they do in a low pressure situation.  While I don't know how much water pressure I have, there is a decent amount since the barrels are all hooked up with 2" PVC pipe about five feet in the air.

Without the water timers hooked up, I was able to fill a gallon milk jug in about 10 seconds or less – pretty amazing.  That is coming out of a 1/2-inch PVC pipe.

Then I hooked each of the timers up.  I don't have statistics right now for how quickly they would fill up a gallon jug, but I will do that at another time.

The first one I bought is a timer that does everything for you.  You set the time and then there are several options.  It is a Nelson automatic water timer.  You can set it to water everyday for 15, 30, or 60 minutes.  You can also set it to water every other day for 15, 30, or 60 minutes.  Lastly, it then allows you to twice every day for 15, 30, or 60 minutes.  I've always used the every other day for 15 minute setting.

I hooked the timer to the male threaded PVC adapter (where I can hook a hose too) and turned this thing to the On position.  Within a few seconds, water started trickling out – not very good.  This timer requires a decent amount of pressure to get water through.  I estimate that the throughput on the timer was about 1/4 what the throughput was without the timer hooked up.

The next water timer is a manual water timer – a Gilmour timer.  You have to set this one yourself whenever you want to water – but it will just automatically turn off when the time is up.  You can set it anywhere from just a few minutes to 120 minutes.

I hooked this one to the PVC adapter and turned this one to the Manual On position.  Same thing as the Nelson timer.  The flow was maybe 1/4 of the flow that the 1/2-inch PVC pipe would push out without obstructions.

So, I'm not sure what to do yet about the watering situation with the garden.  I have heard of low pressure water timers, but I'm reluctant to buy one online and find out that it has the same problem.

What I don't understand about these timers is this – why can't someone just invent a timer that turns a ball valve to open the flow of water?  It seems all of these timers have obstructions or something that cause them to seriously slow down the water flow – but why not make a timer that allows a full-flow of water to go through?  Standard PVC ball valves work just fine – which is what I use on the spigot connection to turn on and off the water flow.

Anyways – moving on.

So today I got some motivation and decided that it was time to upgrade the water system since it fills quickly.  I figured that when I first made the system I would upgrade in the future.  I want to ensure that I have enough water stored if we have a few weeks without much rain.

I made a trip to the place where I get the barrels and picked two up.  I got home and drilled a hole in the bottom (well, it really will be the top of the barrel – but the opposite side of where the two bung holes are).  I then put some patio screening over it and used some super glue to put it in place.  This will allow air pressure to leave the barrels as they fill up – and the screening will keep the mosquitoes out.

I then had to go and get two 2" PVC unions, two 2" PVC T connectors, two 2" PVC male threaded connectors, and another section of 5-feet of 2" PVC pipe.  The PVC unions were about $7.68 each, the T connectors $2.09 each, and the male threaded connectors $1.02 each.  The 5-feet of PVC pipe was then $3.17 for it.  So, everything I needed to make two more rain barrels for $24.75.  Not bad – basically $12.38 per rain barrel.  However, I had another dilemma – since these are in the air, I needed building material.  Woops – there was another $20.  I had to get two 12-foot length 2×6 treated boards and two 8-foot 2×4 treated boards.  The 2×4 were the posts and the 12-foot length of 2×6 was used so all the rain barrels will sit on them.  Previously I had a 8-foot length 2×8 – but a 2×8 was a bit overengineered for this.  Each barrel takes up about two feet of space – so plan accordingly.  I then have the vertical posts placed four feet away from each other.

Just my luck – it started raining during the process.  I got the two holes dug for the posts and started drilling the holes in the 2×6 boards to put the lug screws through.  It got muddy quickly since this is build on a hill beside the garage.  But, I managed to get it all done.

So, now it is an approximately 330 gallon rain barrel system – up from the 220 gallon rain barrel system.  I think I'm satisfied with this and I'm done building it.

While there is the advantage of additional storage capacity, I also tweaked the downspout a bit.  Previously, I had a 90-degree gutter elbow and then a straight piece of downspout attached to it that was about six inches long.  Well, where the elbow and the straight piece come together, there was a leak and it made ruts in the ground.  So, I moved the whole rain barrel system over closer to the downspout by about eight inches – so I no longer needed the straight piece; the 90-degree elbow attaches directly to the hole in the gutters and diverts it right into the barrel now. 

In the picture below, you can see on the upper left side of the white rain barrel, there is a 90-degree elbow that was cut down to size connected to the gutters.

Below is the under side of all the barrels.  Again, they are all hooked in series using 2" PVC pipe with a PVC union between them so I can disconnect the barrels individually.

And lastly, you can see the main downspout attached to the garage.  It is not attached to the gutters though (hard to tell in the picture below).  Then there is another downspout coming from the top of the white barrel – this is the overflow downspout.  When all the barrels get full, water will overflow into this and go down this to the ground.

March 14 Update – More Concrete Timer Trials

This afternoon I got out and did some better testing of the water timers.

After I got the new system hooked up, the barrels collected just about 28 gallons of water amongst all six of them.  On the white barrel, there are lines every 10 gallons of capacity.  Of course, since the barrels turned upside down, the numbers also go backwards – so 50 gallons shows at the bottom.  Anyways, the white barrel was filled up to almost 3/4 to the line of the 50 gallon mark.  Also note that the white barrel is also approximately two inches higher than the rest of the barrels – so I estimate that all five barrels have 4.75 gallons of water and the white barrel has about 4 gallons of water (total of 27.75 gallons).

Since the barrels are not completely full, this means there will be less pressure as well.  When the barrels get full, I will take measurements again.

Using just the ball valve to open the flow of water to a gallon jug, the time it took to fill was just under 8 seconds.  This yields about 7.5 gallons per minute.  While I can't be certain as of yet, I don't expect this to decrease with the barrels completely filled – maybe by one second at the most.  The flow was fully unobstructed so this is what the 1/2-inch PVC pipe is capable of.

I then dumped the gallon of water back into the top of the barrel – just to ensure that the numbers would be fully the same.

Next up – the Gilmour water time.  I was very unimpressed and know that this clearly will not work in a situation where the barrels are at this level.  The Gilmour manual water timer took 68 seconds to fill a gallon jug – that is 8.5 times slower than just using the unobstructed ball valve on the PVC pipe.  Therefore, the Gilmour manual water timer puts out about 0.88 gallons per minute.

Water was them dumped back into the top of the barrel.

Lastly, the Nelson automatic water timer.  The Nelson water timer was quicker than the Gilmour – with it taking 40 seconds to fill up the gallon jug.  The Nelson timer effectively worked at 1.5 gallons per minute in a low pressure situation.  Therefore, my original estimate of the timer output of 1/4 compared to the unobstructed flow was almost correct – the actual output was 5 times slower, or 1/5 the output of the unobstructed flow.

The Nelson water timer may work fine for the garden – but that means I need to buy three more timers!  I need four total – because I'll have behind the garage, next to the house, and two 4 x 20 areas up front – and they will all have to be setup so that one waters an area and shuts off – then the next one would water the area and shut off, etc.  With the timer being on for 15 minutes, this would put out 22.5 gallons of water for each water space – multiplied by four watering spaces is 90 gallons of water.  Wow – good thing I upgraded the system to 330 gallons – because it would only take 3 2/3 waterings to fully drain the barrels!  That means I have a capacity of just about one week of water if I water every other day – provided there is no rainfall in the week.

So far I have discovered that celery is clearly a very picky seed to get started.

I started six Ventura Celery seeds approximately 12 weeks before our last frost.  I then planted another 12 at 11 weeks before the last frost.  Lastly, just last week (10 weeks before the last frost), I planted another 24.  The first two plantings were all done with only one seed in each square of the standard black six-packs

Finally after 18 days, only two of the six celery seed from the first planting (12 weeks before the last frost) sprouted and came up.  Originally, this seed was just directly planted right in the containers with about 1/4 inch of soil over the top of them.  So, this is about 33% seed germination.

The same was done with the celery planted 11 weeks before the last frost – one seed per square and directly seeded 1/4 inch under some soil.  Unfortunately, zero of these have sprouted.

Now, here comes the interesting part.  I read several places that by soaking seed overnight, this helps to break the hard casing of seeds.  I gave it a try and then I planted two seeds per square in 12 squares (between two black six-packs) for the seeds planted 10 weeks before the last frost.  The seed was also placed right on top of the soil (although by watering, the seed may have been covered by a very thin layer).  Some folks said that celery needs sunlight to grow – so I opted to place them on the surface.

The growing area ranges from about 57 degrees at night with the fluorescent lights off – to about 68 degrees during the day after the lights are on and warmed up.

Amazingly enough, so far 11 of the 24 celery seeds have sprouted!  That is almost a 50% germination rate.  And the interesting thing to note is that these have all germinated in 7 to 8 days.  That is a big difference compared to the 18 days it took the first two seeds.

So by experimenting with the Ventura Celery seed, it paid off.  I now know that one of two things caused the better germination rates and faster germination:

1. Soaking the seed overnight
2. Sowing the seed on the surface of the soil

To further experiment and to provide some insurance against seedlings dying, I am planting another 24 seeds tonight because I need a total of 16 celery plants to go into the garden this year.  So, I am going to plant two seeds per square in 12 squares.  However, I'm going to further experiment by planting one six-pack with the seeds about 1/4-inch under the soil.  The other six-pack will have the seed placed right on the surface – just like this previous bunch.

By doing so, this will tell me which is true – whether it is the soaking of the seeds that makes the difference – or if it is the fact that they must be sowed on top of the soil.  If the seed that is planted 1/4-inch under the soil germinates just as good as those planted directly on top, this will tell me that it was the soaking of the seeds alone that allowed for the better germination.  But, if those seeds sowed 1/4-inch under the soil do not come up as well, this says that you need both to place the seed right on top of the growing medium – and to soak the seeds overnight.

Here is a photo of the two celery seedlings that are doing well.  These are the first two that sprouted out of those planted 12 weeks before the last frost.  You can also see on the right right-hand side, there are two little celery seedlings that just emerged and are coming out.

Here is a closer look of one of the seedlings.  My camera just does not do a good job of getting close-up pictures so I'm not impressed with how some of these turn out.  But, there is a dark spot at the end of the seedling – and that is the actual seed itself.

Update – March 22

It seems that the Ventura celery needs to have a combination of being soaked overnight and also placed right on top of the growing medium to grow.  So it very well may be true that celery seed needs light to germinate.  I did mist the containers about every other day, but there have been four new celery that have sprouted from those squares where the Ventura celery was placed right on the surface.

None of the seed that was planted 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch deep have sprouted as of yet.

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There has been a lot of changes in the past week around the seedlings and the garden.

We had a nice Saturday where it got up to about 52 degrees and was even over 70 degrees in the sun.  So I used the time to work outside.

The retaining wall is almost finally completed!  I have a few more blocks to add, rebar to put in, and the fence to put up, but most of the work has been finished.  I asked a question on the GardenWeb forums about rebar and any problems it may cause with leaching iron oxide into the soil.  A piece of rebar will be placed in each square (two squres per foundation block) to help strenghten the wall.  The squares will then be filled with soil and one onion placed in each.  So, i was concerned that as the rebar gets wet, it would leach iron into the soil around the onions.  But, all is well and no problems with this setup.

This year I will be building another 4 x 20 foot box in the front yard.  It will be placed about two feet away from the current box and this two-foot area will undergo changes.  The plan is to put down pea gravel between the two beds and get rid of the underlying Zoysia grass.  The same will have to be done for the new box as well – so that is a large 6 x 20 area of sod that has to be removed.  In order to allow for this box to be built, I had to move the Granny Smith apple tree.

I dug another hole about 8 – 10 feet away from the current location and moved the tree.  The roots of the tree are still very small and didn't seem like they grew much in a year.  I think some of this is attributed to the damage the deer continue to cause.  Over the winter, it seems they have chewed off three or four more limbs at the ends.  That is not good because the branch will not grow from that point any longer – but more buds will come from it.  The tree already has several buds on it – so I'm hoping the tree can make a come-back.  We got some edging blocks and then put down some landscape fabric and rock around the tree so the Zoysia grass doesn't take over (like it did at the other spot it was sitting at).

Lastly – for the seedling update.  So far about 14 Copra Onion seeds have died leaving exactly 100 left.  Last Thursday I planted about 28 additional Copra Onion seed just as extra insurance.  The onions are also well on their way to having their second set of "leaves" – but some of them are bending over at a 45-degree angle.  Hopefully they will come out of it, but I'm not sure what they are doing.

As for the Ventura celery – I finally had one seedling come up last night!  It took 19 days from the time it was seeded to the time it came up.  The container it is in gets to about 58 degrees at night and up to about 68 degrees during the day with the fluorescent lights on.  The celery was planted in regular garden soil about 1/8 – to – 1/4 inch deep.  Folks on GardenWeb indicated that celery needs light to sprout so last Thursday I planted 24 additional seeds in two six-packs (two seeds in each square).  They were just put right on top of the soil and watered in.  So far none of them have sprouted.

Thinking maybe the celery needs to have a more constant and higher temperature, I took a six-pack of celery planted last week and a six-pack of celery planted the week before and placed them in the "greenhouse".  The greenhouse is just a container that has a veggie heating mat under it and a clear cover over the top to help keep in the moisture.  The heating mat seems to keep the temperature at a higher 75 – 80 degrees.  Once they sprout, i will then put them back under the lights with the regular temperature.  This will help to me to determine whether celery needs to be heated to germinate quicker.

That is all for now.  The weather has been in the lower 50's and continues to be in the lower 50's this week but up to possibly 62 on Wednesday!  The daily low temperature has not been below freezing in a few days either.  I hope that we still have nights below freezing because I'm not anywhere near ready to plant outside!  The average last frost date is April 27th – but I base the last frost date on May 11th – because there is only a 10% chance of frost after this date.

This week I will be starting the broccoli, tomatoes, and peppers.  This week is 9 weeks out from May 11th.