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Blog Post 6 - Sept 29, 2011

It's been awhile since my last post and things are moving right along here. School started and my work load is pretty heavy. What little time I have had has been spent in the garden. Which has left little time for blogging. But I have been taking pics along the way, so I will do a mass update since the last posting.

FALL IS HERE!!! Temps in the upper 80s this week... ok so they're still real close to the 90s and I'm being delusional, but the 70s overnight has actually helped the beans and peas along. It even stopped monsooning really bad. Only 5" of rain in the past 7 days. Yes that's an improvement from where it has been! My bean plants have been struggling with all the water, but I've been doing a weekly spray of Spinosad/Serenade and that has been helping them to at least survive and they are now blooming. The ants have been horrible as a result of all this water. They are in and on all sorts of places/things they usually don't bother with. My bean vines seem to be their favorite ride on up out of the wet :(

So I'll start with the beans and peas since I direct seeded those into the garden. Here is a pic taken on 9/1/11 of the Southern Peas (left) and the lima beans (right). These guys are about 25 days from seed. They were given a small dose of the fox farm granular 5-5-5 fertilizer (I've gone over my organic ferts in detail in a previous post). The temps were still very high and the sun was strong so I kept the side shade rolled down full time and it seemed to help them along. The limas had previously looked very wobbly, so I gave it some support and it perked right up. Sorry for the huge pics but I just don't have the time just now to get them sized down smaller.



And here is a pic of the same plants on 9/13/11 about 37 days from seed. They really started to grow after the Fox Farm ferts and the sun intensity decreased some, so that I was able to roll up the side sunshade full time. I had to get a different support set up for them because they were falling over and trying to go everywhere. The Southern Peas were sending up blooms at this point. Love the purple flowers :)



And here we are today - 9/29/11 - 53 days from seed and these guys are super happy! We were actually able to harvest a few of the Southern Pea pods this past weekend and as you can see a few pics down, we'll have more to harvest this weekend. They were very tasty. We picked some young pods and ate the whole deal. We're going to let them bulge a bit more this time and shell them in future. The lima beans have been sending up blooms that started 45 days from seed. No pods as of yet, but with the amount of blooms out there today, the potential for lima beans in the future is great!

Limas



Southern Peas - I'm trying to reign them in, but they seriously have their own ideas about where they want to go and I've let them win the battle!




Southern Pea harvest on 9/24/11, 49 days from seed. I know it's a super tiny harvest, but I am so excited since my peas in the Spring were a total FAIL.





And more to come!!!



Now onto the Pole Snap Beans. These guys have had a real challenging time of it with all of the moisture and they've not had as much of a benefit from the sunshade as the peas and limas have. So they are showing some definite signs of stress and illness, but I have been able to keep it to acceptable levels by spraying the spinosad/serenade concoction weekly.

Here they are on 9/1/11 about 25 days from direct seed. I tried planting two more on 9/7/11, but they did not make it - too much rain equaled their doom - tropical waves are not a friend of my gardens!



Here is a close up of their issues, taken on 9/1/11.



The plant as a whole has been growing like crazy though, so I think I may have things under control. Pic taken on 9/13/11, 37 days from seed. These guys got some of the fox farm 5-5-5 as well.



And here we are today - 9/29/11 - 53 days from seed. These started throwing up some blooms on 9/21/11, but no actual pods as of yet. Tons of blooms so I am hoping tons of potential. I transplanted a seedling I started under lights out to the plot on 9/13 and that one is showing some signs of illness similar to the first two plants. But it's not as prevalent. So, hopefully it will be ok. You can see it growing up on the right side of the pic. At least it didn't dampen off like the second two! I have another seedling I started under lights that is hardening off now. I will try to transplant it this coming week.



Here are some snap peas and another lima bean plant that I am working on hardening off and will probably transplant out into the garden this coming week.



Now onto the watermelons!! These guys are fascinating to watch and very fast growers.

I direct seeded these on 8/16/11 and did things a bit differently. By this time I had the fox farm starter fertilizer in and decided to mix it into the soil before planting the seeds. This was a first, as I did not have the ferts when I first started to direct seed. The results were incredible! These guys outdid the seedlings I had started inside - to the point that I actually scrapped those!

Here is a pic taken on 9/1/11, 16 days from direct seed. On the left is a Sugar Baby, supposed to be icebox size and on the right is a Crimson Sweet supposed to be 15 to 25 lbs. I also planted a muskmelon (cantaloupe) seedling in this area on 9/4/11, but don't have a pic of it at that point.



And here they are on 9/13/11, 29 days from seed. They also received a small dose of the more mature fox farm 5-5-5 fert at the same time the rest of the plants did. They started to toss up male blooms, but no females in sight just yet.

First up is the Sugar Baby.



And here we have the Crimson Sweet.



Here is a muskmelon pic taken on the same day,9/13/11, 9 days from transplanting, 46 days total from seed started under lights. I also started a direct seed in the plot on this day as an experiment. That is the second "collar" that you see. I wanted to see if the direct seeded muskmelon would act the same way that the watermelon seeds did - growing stronger, quicker than a muskmelon transplant.



And then it was all of a sudden like the watermelons had kicked in to turbo mode!!! They were out of the plot, on the ground, had split off into multiple vines, and I was needing to figure out some way my Mom was going to do the yard work around them! So we devised a simple solution we hope will work. We just laid down some weed fabric for the vines to climb across and I'll try my best to keep them on their little zone. That way my Mom can weedwack and mow without worrying about running them over or chopping them off. They are ambitious though and will need daily adjustments!!

Pic taken on 9/24/11, 40 days from seed.



We notice the first female blooms on 9/25/11, 41 days from seed. I don't think they were pollinated though :(





And here they are today, only 4 days after the pictures above were taken - you can see how rapidly the vines are running. This is 45 days from seed.



And here is the muskmelons today, 9/29/11. The larger one on the top is the transplant, 25 days from transplanting and 62 days total from seed. The small one just below and to the left is the direct seeded experiment, 17 days from seed and you can see a HUGE difference between the growth of the two plants. The direct seeded plant is way further along than the transplant was at the same point in its lifecycle.



Now on to the last thing I have out in the plot - radishes. I was very early with these, but wanted to see what I could do. The more you stress a radish the more bite it has when you eat it - and we like that bite! Spices things right up. The radishes we enjoyed the most last year were actually the last round that grew when they weren't supposed to be growing. But I coddled them along by putting them in partial shade. Now we're not "supposed" to plant these until the temp cool down further into October, but I decided to give it a shot earlier and see if I could achieve the same end of season growth. Unfortunately, it looks like I won't. Even though I have lots of foliage, I don't have any bulbs developing :( I've decided to leave them in the plot and see if they will develop bulbs once it starts to cool more. If they start to rot or look diseased, I will pull them out. The plants closest to you in the pic were direct seeded on 9/1/11 and the batch further out were planted on 9/13/11. I'm going to try to plant another batch this week and see what happens. This way I'll know in future exactly when the temps are right to plant them - so far it appears that upper 90's and even upper 80's are just too much.



Now let's move away from the plot and inside the pool cage and see what's been doing!!

Recall my lonely little basil plant? Well it found a whole bunch of friends! I added two more bushes. My neighbor had some more spring up in his front yard that I gladly took off his hands. We love basil here!! One of my favorite lunch items is sliced tomatoes, layered with sliced fresh mozzarella and then sprinkled with chiffon-ed basil and finished with an ample drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette. It's delish :) We also make a mean pesto round these parts. Considering that a single batch of pesto pasta requires 2 cups of basil leaves, we need a huge crop in order to be able to harvest regularly. We also use a lot of cilantro, oregano and parsley in our meals. So I have added those to this pot as well. I am trying a sweet and spicy oregano this season and I LOVE it! Don't think I'll be going back to the regular oregano after this.



Prepping for pesto :)



Now onto the corn. I decided to grow the corn in the pool cage in an effort to reduce the chances of the dreaded corn earworm and other diseases. I started 4 seeds under lights on 8/7/11. Before I even got my little guys completely hardened off outside, they had a darn visitor! A small worm for a small plant!!!! I picked him off, snapped some pics and SQUISHED. Have not seen any since, but I hawk these plants and am ready for more squishing if need be.

Transplants in the hardening phase, 9/1/11, 25 days from seed.



R.I.P. corn eating heathen!



So, I get my little guys hardened off, set up the bin I will grow them in, and transplant them. They were a little wobbly so I used some soft ties and bamboo sticks to keep them upright. Here they are on 9/13/11, 37 days babied from seed. I also direct seeded two more seeds and started two more seeds inside under the lights.



I added a side dressing of blood meal when it was "time" (corn are heavy nitrogen feeders - another reason why I decided to segregate this crop) and I ran into my next worm - except this one has four legs, is not squish-able and my Mom would be very upset if I had. I love that dog, but she'd better stay away from my babies!!! She apparently loves blood meal more than fish emulsion and rooted her nose right into my bin and uprooted one of my transplants! I have since elevated the bin, hopefully out of her reach.

Pic taken today 9/28/11, 16 days from transplant, 53 days total from seed. They are really starting to look like corn stalks now.



Now the only thing left to cover are the seedlings. I have a batch that are now outside full time now and they are going to be potted up one more time, I'm thinking before I choose the strongest to go into the plot. I have 8 different types of tomatoes, 5 different types of peppers and an eggplant all still growing. I have since potted them up from the small pods shown in my earlier posts to some 16 to 20 oz drink cups. I used a solder gun to melt holes in the bottom of the cups and have been able to keep them moist, but not soaked, by adding small amounts of water to the bin itself and they pull the water up through the drain holes as needed. The system has been working very well and I am very happy with the results thus far.

Here is a pic of the batch that was started on 8/7/11 in the burpee seed starting trays - maybe 2oz per pod. I will never use those again. I also will never use their seed starting soil again. While it worked, the results were nowhere near as good as the system I employ now. I'll explain with pics - So in this first pic you can see the small stature of the plants. Photo taken on 9/1/11, 25 days from seed.



And now here's a comparison. Photo taken on 9/1/11. In the cups are the seeds started on 8/7 (25 days from seed) in tiny cups using the burpee organic seed starting mix. Next to them are seeds started on 8/16 (15 days from seed) in 5oz dixie bath drink cups in a coco coir seed starting mix. The seedlings that developed from the drink cups were much stronger and grew quicker than the first batch. They actually surpassed the earlier planted seeds even though they were younger. The size of the initial pot chosen for seed starting made an obvious difference. Bigger is better, but not so big that they get dried out easily or overwhelmed, which apparently is possible. 5oz cups seem to be doing the trick for me. The cups are way cheaper than the trays and the real beauty of them - I can label right on the cup!! No stupid diagrams.



Closer up



And now fast forward to 9/13 and here are the seedlings that were started in the smaller Burpee system, 37 days from seed. They have just kind of stalled after the shock of transplanting. I actually lost two pepper seedlings to the shock of trying to get the root balls out of such a tiny oblong container - have I said never again?

I started hardening off the stronger of the burpee batch, taking them out on what my Mom calls "field trips" early each morning for a half hour of weak sunshine. Sadly, I forgot to take pics of the other comparison seedlings, but they were passing these guys up. Even though they were 10 days younger.



I decided to try experimenting with my lettuce seeds since I had so many. I decided to try to figure out who might be able to take some heat and see if I could get an early batch in. I tried two types of loose leaf - Tom Thumb and Capitan. The Tom Thumb germinated and continued growing, but the Capitan only germinated, wilted, and then died. My similar experiment with spinach seed also failed.



So I decided to transplant some of the germinated Tom Thumb into a bin I could keep in the shade and see if I can get them to grow earlier than late October. Here they are transplanted, 12 days from seed. I mixed in some used coffee grounds into the soil mix, since I have been told that they have a Nitrogen rating of 2 and that lettuce likes a bit of extra nitrogen.



I've since lost 2 to some sort of bug and one wilted. But out of the 8 I transplanted, 5 are still going and growing slowly. I just might get some early heads of lettuce!

Pic from today, 9/29/11, 28 days from seed, grown predominantly in the shade with only about an hour of afternoon sun.



And here is the seedling update as of today. All of them have been hardened off and are waiting to be potted up one more time before I decide who will go into the garden. The 16 cups on the right are from the Burpee batch (54 days from seed) and the 10 slightly smaller cups on the left are from the dixie cup batch (44 days from seed). The burpee batch are just now growing to be the size of the younger batch, but they don't have as much foliage and I think the stems are slightly smaller. The dixie cup batch grew quicker and I think developed better and will probably be the ones who ultimately make it into the garden plot. Only the strongest of the two batches will go out.



I have a cucumber plant in the hardening off phase that desperately needs to get into its plot. Similar to the corn, I am going to be growing this in the pool cage in an effort to avoid a worm infestation. I'll need to pollinate these since there won't be any pollinators in the cage to do the work naturally, so we'll see how it goes.



And finally are the seedlings I am growing under the lights. I have some spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, some peppers from the 8/7 burpee batch that are very slow growing as well as an eggplant from that same batch. The spinach probably won't make it once I try to bring it outside. I will keep the broccoli and cauliflower under the lights for awhile longer as well until the temps drop some more.



Goodness, I really need to try to do these updates more often. That was a lot of work!!!