Assorted Update

Lots of things have happened in the last couple days. Here's the breakdown.

Tomato Bed:
The Hawaiian Currant made the transition back into dirt well and is beginning to put on some height. Given how miserable it looked when I picked it up, broken and wilted, off the ground a few weeks ago, I am shocked that it made such a recovery.

Hawaiian Currant looking good!

Green Zebra is still looking a little sad. I hacked it pretty good to remove a bunch of wilting leaves. The good news is that the brown wilt seems to be gone. The bad news is that there is only one growing tip left (until it grows a few suckers) and its leaves are somewhat curled, as if to protect itself or reserve water. I think it will be fine eventually, but it's not recovering easily.

Green Zebra...not looking good

The other tomatoes all have yellow flowers, and several are working on making tomatoes. Black Plum and Sun Gold both have lots of little green fruits. I'm curious to see who ripens first. Considering how well Black Plum did last year on neglect, and how well it's doing again this year, I suspect it will cement its position as favorite tomato.

Sun Gold tomatoes


Black Plum tomatoes

I put about 1 lb of E.B. Stone’s All-Purpose Fertilizer into the tomato bed. I also sprayed the bed with Neem Oil and sprinkled some Sluggo in the area. The tomato plants don’t seem too bug infested, but my poor pepper plants are just getting munched (except the Dulcettas, which somehow seem immune), I suspect by slugs & snails.

I bought a replacement Cayenne pepper to replace the one that got munched. It came in a 4-pack, so the others will probably go in pots. I also bought an Anaheim pepper. The one in the garden got so munched that I’m not sure it’ll make it, so I thought it best to have a plant on reserve just in case.

Anaheim Pepper might recover if the slugs stay away


Dulcetta Pepper looking awesome


Shallots (and one shallot that is probably not a shallot)


Garlic (Borage in upper left corner)

Legumes:
The pea plants look great. It’s going to break my heart when I have to pull them out in a couple more weeks. I’ve harvested about a dozen peas and there’s at least that many left on the vine for a salad or stir fry this week.

Very tall Pea plants


Peas

The fava beans are also doing well. There are several pods growing, and lots of flowers that should lead to bean pods soon.

Fava plants


Fava Beans

Leafy Greens:
Chard has taken over the garden. I really need to eat more chard. Lettuce looks fantastic. I think I’ll try to nurse it to the end of June for a BBQ on the 26^th, and then I’ll pull it out to give more room to the melon and strawberry plants. The Asian greens have also outgrown their welcome. I think they will become Chinese Chicken Salad this week. Mmmmm.

Red Chard


Asian Greens

Fruit:
A few of the melons have finally taken hold and appear to be growing. The ones closer to the back get much less sun, so they will take longer to get going, but I’m not sure having a delay between the plants will be a bad thing later this summer.

Charentais Melon

I finally got the 4 Chandler strawberry plants in the ground. Two of them already have strawberries trying to grow. Hopefully the others will get going soon.

Chandler Strawberry

Squash:
The zucchini plants are GIANT. I will have to hack it back a bit to get the corn in, but I doubt the plants would even notice. There are a couple zukes on it that will have to get eaten soon before they get huge. The other squash plants are doing well too. There are acorn squashes forming on one plant and the other squashes seem to have finally sunk their roots in and started growing.

Zuchinni growing


Acorn Squash

Other:
Radish seeds have sprouted out in the garden. Hopefully they’ll also be ready for salad for my BBQ in 3 weeks.

Radish sprout

The sunflowers have also grown quickly. I don't think I've mentioned them much in earlier posts, but the tallest is now taller than me.

Sunflower corner

My corn seeds have sprouted (all but one) in their little newspaper pots. When they reach ~6 inches tall, I’ll move them out to the garden.

Corn sprouts

Assorted Update

More peas are growing, I've harvested about a dozen now. I'm saving some on the vines now for using in stir frys along with the asian greens. I will have to pull out the pea plants towards the end of June, and I'm sure it won't be easy. They will still have a lot of life in them, but they need to make way for summer vegs.

Fava beans are continuing to develop, I just hope they hurry it up before it gets too hot in July.

Tomato plants are coming along. The Hawaiian Currant made the transition well and is beginning to grow up. The Green Zebra plant still has not recovered from when I hacked away the yellowing leaves. Its leaves are somwhat wrapped up, as if it is trying to protect itself, and it hasn't been growing. Much of this is probably to do with the fact that I had to remove all but one growing tip. I am hoping some suckers grow soon so I can get a couple vines going. I would be surprised if the Green Zebra didn't make it through this, but it's a slow recovery. Most of the other plants have flowers and many have little green tomatoes. The Sun Gold and the Black Plum both are tied for best growing plants. I am curious to see which ripens first, though they both have plenty of green fruits and neither seems to show any interest in changing color yet. With Black Plum doing so well again this year, I suspect it will yet again be my favorite tomato.

I went to Armstrong Nursery again this past week and picked up a couple more herbs (Lemon Verbena, cinnamon basil, among others), a cucumber plant, an eggplant, a 15 lb bag of E.B. Stone all purpose fertilizer, Sluggo, and neem oil. I also picked up a packet of lime basil seeds, which I'd never seen before.

With my new supplies, I fertilized/Sluggoed/neemed the tomato bed. The neem oil has a snazzy hose nozzle attachment that dilutes as spray, so I got a little excited and neemed the other plant bed too. Hopefully the sluggo and neem will keep my poor little pepper plants from getting eaten. Almost all of them are getting munched, except for the Dulcettas. They seem to be immune.

I also planted marigolds and chandler strawberries in the other plant bed....this chore is LONG overdue.

Return of the Hawaiian Currant

This morning I finally took my fully recovered Hawaiian Currant tomato out of the aquaponics bed and put it back in the ground. A few weeks back I found the little guy trampled, snapped off at the stem, and wilted. I didn't think he would make it, especially since several of its leaves began to yellow over the next days and weeks. But I'm happy to report if now has ridiculously long roots now, is 100% green, and I have every hope that it will transition well back to life in the ground!




















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More New Beginnings

I spent a chunk of my morning making small newspaper pots to start my corn seeds! Corn is always exciting to me because it was the flagship in my family's garden as a child. I will be planting corn along with beans between my already planted squash in a Three Sisters Garden. In this arrangement, the corn provides support for the beans, the beans provide nitrogen fixing for the heavy feeding corn and squash, and the squash grows around the base of the corn and beans providing shade (and therefore more moisture) for their roots and protecting them from animals with their prickly leaves and stems. This arrangement also allows for an efficient spacing of plants; I hope to have about 30 corn and bean plants planted by mid summer. The newspaper pots should provide a good nursery for my corn plants that will break down once I transplant the sprouts into the garden. The corn seeds are soaking as I right (and have been since this morning) and they'll go into their little pots this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Other new beginnings are everywhere. My pea plants have just started to blossom, the fava beans have blossoms EVERYWHERE, almost every tomato plants has little yellow flowers, and even my boysenberries have a few white flowers to show off for summer. The carrot seeds I planted a few weeks back have finally started to sprout. The asian greens and mesclun I planted with them didn't fare so well, with only a half dozen or so mustard greens sprouting. But summer is fast approaching and the greens will get bitter with the heat, so it's not much loss. Perhaps I didn't water enough, or the seeds were too old (I bought them in 2009).

Plans for this week are to put in the pepper and strawberry plants I bought last week, seed the corn, seed more radishes and beets, and tie up the tomatoes and fava beans which have outgrown their last set training ties.

Tilapia Time!

This weekend I went to visit my brother down in San Diego. I picked over a pound of chard to bring to his girlfriend, but the chard is so prolific you can hardly tell out in the garden.

While we were down there I picked up my stock of tilapia for this summer. I paid for 50 fingerlings ($1.79 each) from San Diego Pet Supply who get their tilapia from Tilapia Mama. The store owner wasn't too big on counting them as he put them in the bag, so I ended up with about 75 of them. Unfortunately ~20 of them died on our way home. Turns out stopping for a couple hours for breakfast/lunch was a poor decision; I suspect they died from lack of oxygen. :( In any case, I was glad he gave us so many extras because I still had 55 fingerlings to put into my system when we got home. We bought a mesh laundry bag to contain them, which should make it easier for water changes and the like. I checked on them this morning and it looks like they survived their first night just fine.




The heater in the tank keeps the temperature hovering above 67 at night, while it typically gets up well above 70 during the day.

In other aquaponics news, Bailey has discovered that the Daphnia tank is a fun toy. I will need to adjust my plan to keep her out of that, since the screen has already been dog-stroyed. I'll replace the screen to keep the mosquitos out this summer, but it will need something more to protect agains dog attacks.

I also took a look at my little Hawaiian Currant tomato today, which appears to have officially been saved by aquaponics. I pulled it's pot out of the float today and it has long roots extending out of the pot. I think it may be time to transplant the little guy back to his home in the tomato bed. Perhaps I will have Hawaiian Currant tomatoes this year afterall :)

Squash Planting Done! (almost)

Today I planted squash transplants. The squash I transplanted a few weeks ago are HUGE by comparison, so much so that I fear not all of these transplants will make it. But at least now they're in and they have a fighting chance. As I try to do with all transplants, I put a bit of E.B. Stone's Sure Start at the bottom of each transplant's hole. I still have a couple acorn squash and butternut squash transplants that I didn't put in, mostly because I don't know where the heck I'm going to put them!

I also pruned tomatoes. The Paul Robeson and Blood Gulch were slower to start and are only about half the height of the other tomatoes now. I realized today that part of the reason for this is that they were putting all their effort into growing strong suckers. I should have pruned them much earlier. Now I know.

The daphnia population for feeding my aquaponics has exploded. They're going through the green water really quickly. Every couple days I have to pull water out of the main setup to feed them, otherwise their water becomes quite clear and you can see the thousands of little bugs wiggling about.

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Happy Day!

Today is turning out to be pretty fantastic, not only did I get into my first choice school for the fall (Yes, I agree that is completely unrelated, but I don't care. I'm excited!) but I also discovered as I tied up a few of my tomatoes today that I have a BABY TOMATO!



Baby Black Plum Tomatoes, Weeeeee!
Actually there are two, and to make it even better they are on my black plum plant, which means they will not only ripen faster since they are little grape tomatoes, but they are my favorite kind of tomato so they will probably be delicious. I am so excited.

Three of my tomato plants are now tall enough that they need some tying. The Yellow Submarine and Paul Robeson are lagging behind everyone else, especially the Yellow Submarine which seems to have some really odd leaf shapes and not only because it is a potato leaf.

The Blood Gulch, I am pleased to report, has made a full recovery and is catching up with all its might. It has surpassed the Paul Robeson in size already and is looking very robust.



Blood Gulch



Blood Gulch looks tiny next to its neighbor
The Hawaiian Currant is still alive, somehow, but is looking a little crisp around the edges due to the intense heat we've had the last few days. I've not given up all hope for it yet, but I am certainly not holding my breath for it either.


Hawaiian "I'm not dead yet!" Currant
I also tied up my fava beans today as they were starting to crowd the chard and the sweet peas are just not getting enough light. Hopefully this doesn't negatively affect my yield from the favas, though I think the benefit to the chard and sweet peas should more than make up for it.



Favas & Chard
The chard is looking amazing. Earlier this week I was thinking about pulling a few leaves to put on a sandwich, but now I think there's enough for a side dish of sauteed chard. I will definitely be eating chard with my dinner tomorrow. That'll be the first harvest of the season. How exciting!!!!


Red Chard



Yellow Chard
I also discovered a little strawberry flower bud yesterday afternoon that today was open and smiling. Only 10 of the 36 strawberry starts I planted ever grew anything, but perhaps I will still still get some strawberries this season :)



Hello there!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

On Sunday Elliott and I went to Laurel's plant sale and bought a Sun Gold and a Black Plum for friends and a Red Olive Tomato, which I'm not thrilled about because I really wanted a Hawaiian Currant or a Peace Vine. Perhaps I will go to another plant sale in a few weeks and see if I can't still get one. The Hawaiian Currant that I'm trying to save using aquaponics looks better every day. I can't say for certain that it will survive, but it is definitely looking less like it's going to die. Another week or two and I'll know for sure.

After the plant sale, we drove down to Costa Mesa for a COAST fish club meeting. They hold monthly meetings, but we haven't gone in about a year. The real reason I was there was for the epic auction that always takes place afterwards. I was able to acquire a bag of Daphnia to start culturing some live foods for my (coming soon) Tilapia. I also bought a pair of guppies to put in the plant bed portion of my aquaponics setup. There are some mosquito larvae in there that I would rather do without. We bought a handful of plants and other items as well for our discus tank.

When I got home I was horrified to find that my remaining pepper seedlings were withered to a crisp. Apparently it was a hot day and they didn't fare well. It looks like one anaheim, the ancho/poblano, and maybe one dulcetta will make it, but I for sure lost the cayenne and probably the other anaheim and dulcetta. Oh well...c'est la vie.

Peppers

I transplanted most of my pepper plants into the tomato bed today. There is one pepper plant in front of each tomato, except for one...my Anaheim peppers are still a little too small so I left a spot reserved for one. From left to right they are jalapeno, cayenne, ancho/poblano, anaheim (coming soon), california wonder, sweet chocolate, golden wonder, dulcetta x3. Each transplant got about 1/2 a tablespoon of Sure Start at the bottom of it's new home and while I was there I also gave each tomato a heaping tablepoon of Tomato & Vegetable food.

Because I had 15 pepper seedlings and 10 spots, that leaves 1 ancho/poblano, 1 cayenne, 2 dulcetta, and 1 anaheim that will be going into pots in the side yard later this week. They will be joining my boysenberries and Martino's Roma tomato which, since I had it out, also got fertilizer today. 1 T for each berry plant and 3 T for the tomato. Hopefully I will get my herbs and those boysenberries into bigger pots this week as well.

The Hawaiian Currant that I put into a rockwool pot in the aquaponics bed may recover, but I'd say it's a long shot. Only a couple small leaves have perked up since yesterday and they are still looking mighty sad. The duckweed trough for my aquaponics setup is looking sad as well. I think I will do a water change on it this afternoon and get an air bubbler in there as well. The water from the change will come from my main aquaponics system. It has turned such a lovely shade of electric green over the last week that you can no longer see the fish, but this green water will be delicious food for the daphnia that I am hoping to purchase this weekend. I suspect that once the seeds in the net pots get going, they will outcompete the algae and this problem will resolve itself.

Recipe Therapy

I was out watering my garden today only to find that one of my beloved dogs snapped my Hawaiian Currant tomato plant right off its stem. In an attempt to calm myself down I came inside to look up recipes. I found this squash gnocci and spinach recipe and a fresh tomato soup recipe, both of which I must try later this year.

As for the Hawaiian Currant plant, I guess I'll be paying a visit to another one of Laurel's plant sales this weekend to see if I can locate a suitable replacement. I was REALLY excited about this plant considering I'd ordered one last year and didn't get one, but I suppose any red cherry type would be satisfactory. In the meantime, the dogs are seriously in the dog house.

On a somewhat more positive note, it appears the asian greens have started to sprout, the radishes have definitely sprouted, and I'm putting some chive and scallion seeds into my tomato bed today.

Tomato Bed Update

My tomatoes have really taken off. Many are triple the size they were when I planted them less than two weeks ago! Below I've posted pictures of several of my babies :)

Hawaiian Currant...tried to order one of these last year but didn't get one. I'm really looking forward to seeing the fruit on this variety.


Paul Robeson...not a big producer last year, but I did utterly neglect them and given the good reviews I figured this one deserved another shot.


Green Zebra...I'm not a big fan of green tomatoes, but when you have red, purple, orange and yellow tomatoes you gotta add one of these in the mix


Blood Gulch...tried to die (twice), but appears to be making a comeback!


Opalka...produced a big crop for me last year of fleshy paste tomatoes


Yellow Submarine...this one is looking a little frail still, but last year it took awhile for this potato-leafed plant to really get going and it later became one of my top producers.

Not Shown: Sun Gold, Black Plum (my FAVORITE!), Mortgage Lifter, Goose Creek


Shallots coming up! There appear to be many green stalks coming out of each clove. There are now 3 shallots that have started putting up shoots.


Mmmm....Garlic. All but two or three cloves have 6" leaves bursting out of the soil!

15 pepper plants (2 Anaheim, 1 Jalapeno, 2 Cayenne, 5 Dulcetta, 2 Ancho/Poblano, 1 California Wonder, 1 Golden Woner, 1 Sweet Chocolate)....many of these will be heading out into the tomato bed in the next couple weeks.

Pruning Tomatoes

As my tomatoes start to recover from their transplanting and look like they're starting to grow new leaves, I have to start thinking about pruning them. Last year I did very little pruning. I trained/tied them up a chainlink fence (which I plan on doing again this year) but I paid no attention to the suckers that everyone says you're supposed to pinch. I suspect this resulted in less than wonderful yields and also made for some big gangly plants.

I decided to do a little more research on the pros and cons of pruning and this is by far the best site I've found describing how and when and where to prune tomatoes: http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx In particular, I like that they explain to let up to four suckers (the ones right above the first flowers) turn into vines of their own. I plan to try this method this year and report on how it goes.

Elliott didn't kill any plants!

Last Wednesday I put my tomatoes, garlic, and shallots in in a hurry so that I could leave town for a visit with my mother. I was rather nervous about leaving my garden because many of the seeds I put in over the last few weeks are just now sprouting, others have been up for awhile but are still small and tender, and the process of transplanting tomatoes is pretty brutal for the poor guys and they're very fragile for the first week or two afterwards.

Well, I couldn't be happier to see my tomatoes are for the most part looking no worse than the day I put them in. Elliott reports that they were pretty wilted while I was gone, but they seem to look fine now. I put E.B. Stone Planting Compost on them today as a mulch because the ground is a bit cracked in some places. Hopefully a little mulch will hold the moisture in (and makes the bed look much prettier).

Several garlics have already broken through the surface. I suspect the others will all be up in the next week or so. No shallots or elephant garlic yet, but it has only been 5 days.

My fava beans look FANTASTIC! Many of the plants are 6+ inches tall now and growing second and third stalks. The peas (sweet, snap, and snow) are all popping up. They vary in height from 1/2"-3" right now and a few sweet peas have started growing tendrils.

More strawberry starts have grown leaves. Maybe 8 or 10 have a leaf or two on them now, and a couple of those already have multiple leaves. The larger of my two rhubarb starts also has a beautiful green leaf that grew while I was away.

Seeds are sprouting all over the strawberry/flower/vegetable bed. My sunflower seeds are up and working on their first true leaves. I have a nice row of chard developing and a number of other seeds that I don't yet recognize. Many of these seeds are probably weeds, but I won't really know until they've developed a little further. I won't pull anything for awhile for fear of pulling out something I planted on purpose.

My potted Roma tomato is looking suprisingly stocky. It is close to a foot tall now and has an impressively thick stem with dense branches. I suspect I will have a very productive plant....hopefully in contrast with my tomatoes from last year which ended up long and somewhat spindly.

Today I went to Armstrong Garden Center to spend one of my Groupons from a couple weeks back. I spent it on three bags of compost and a variety of herbs (trailing rosemary, English thyme, chocolate mint, stevia, Italian oregano), an Artichoke plant, and a half dozen seed packets. Most of these (except the seeds) will end up in pots on my porch or driveway window sill. I'm looking forward to getting those all in over the next few days!

Tomato Bed In!

I spent a few hours today digging up and planting my tomato bed (finally)! I started by double digging the area (2ft x 18ft). I only dug down about 8 inches or so because the dirt was already pretty loose and I was in a rush. I mostly just wanted to mix in the grasses and weeds that had grown and died (thanks to round-up) since last year.

Then the tomatoes went in. There are 10 tomato plants with 21 inches between each. On each plant I snipped off any branches besides the top three-ish. Before burying I dipped each root ball in kelp emulsion to give them a nutrition boost. Then each plant went into a trench with the stem placed close to horizontal and bent up at the end so the couple inches left above ground are vertical. This supposedly encourages quick root growth, but, more important to me, it allows me to have the plants come out of the ground only a couple inches from the chain link fence/trellis without cramping their roots.

Lastly, I planted patches of garlic and shallots between each pair of tomatoes. There are 6 elephant garlic cloves with 6 shallots planted in front of each, 3 patches of 7 garlic cloves, and 2 patches with 5 garlic cloves. So that's a total of 37 garlic plants (6 are elephant garlic) and 36 shallot plants. Spacing within each patch was eye-balled (again...in a rush) at about 4-5 inches. Depth was 1-2x the height of the clove/shallot. Many of the garlics and shallots were already sprouting, so I expect to see them putting up leaves (stalks?) soon.

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First Plants!

I tore out the ugly mess of last year's potted tomatoes today (Elliott and my landlord are probably happy about that!) and replaced one of the dead tomato plants with my little Martino's roma tomato. I'm so happy to have plants planted! I planted him in Home Depot's budget potting soil (which appears to be mostly sawdust). He got a couple tablespoons of E.B. Stone's Sure Start fertilizer and a couple tables spoons of John and Bob's Soil Optimizer. The latter I picked up at Armstrong Garden center over the weekend while attending a (mostly useless) free seminar on tomatoes. The "expert" raved about this stuff so I thought I'd give it a try this year.

I also dumped all the dead potted plants on the side yard and front porch. I wish I'd done it months ago as it looks so much neater now. Oh well...now I can fill them up again when I get a chance :) Update 4/2: I planted 8 sweet pea seeds around the roma, leftover from my fava bean/sweet pea planting. My hope is that they will climb the trellis while my tomato grows inside, and by the time the tomato gets really going the sweet peas will be spent. It may be too warm a spot there for my sweet peas though. I suppose we shall see!

Tomato Time

I went to Laurel's plant sale yesterday with my friend Karen and I managed to hold myself to only buying 3 plants. While I am somewhat proud of myself, I do have 8 more ordered that should be ready next week, so it's hardly holding myself back at all....though I did have 14 tomato plants last year so at least I've managed to cut back a little. Here's what I bought: Martino's Roma 75 days. This extremely prolific plant produces a huge yield--the fruit loads up in amazing quantities on a small 3 foot plant. Its yummy crop of 3" red pear-shaped Roma tomatoes that are great for cooking and sweet and luscious enough to enjoy fresh right out of your hand. Very meaty with few seeds, highly productive, marvelous for canning and for your favorite tomato sauce recipe. The flavor intensifies exponentially during cooking. Green Zebra 72 days. Visually enchanting, abundantly productive, this 2-inch round fruit ripens to a beautiful amber gold with dark green zebra-like stripes over the amber background. Inside, the flesh is beautiful, sparkling green. Another wonderful variety from Tom Wagner, it is gorgeous to behold, tangy and deeply sweet with lingering flavors. This exquisite tomato was chosen by chef extraordinaire, Alice Waters, for her restaurant, Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California and was among the first varieties to trigger the renewed interest in heirloom tomatoes. In my top 5.

Blood Gulch

85 to 90 days. Wow! This tomato is my new favorite. Cut into this magnificent fruit to reveal the deepest, darkest, blood-red flesh I've ever seen in a tomato. Decadent and delicious! A deep reddish-purple with luminescent green streaking, this 2 to 3 ounce fruit is an offspring of a pure platinum-silver tomato with darker silver stripes. This beautifully bizarre and stunning tomato is descended from that silver tomato discovered by Krystal Elser in a patch of Black Zebras. Krystal saved 8 seeds, 2 germinated. Grown out and stabilized, two delightful varieties resulted from that silver pearlescent fruit. Blood Gulch and Valhalla, also available this season. This is how a lot of the heirlooms came about. Mother Nature at her best! A Laurel's exclusive.

Must Try

Someday when I build up enough courage, I'm going to have to try this Raspberry & Green Tomato Cobbler

Tomato Hacking

The Juliet and Lemon Boy tomato plants I planted last September have exploded out of control, so I hacked them back quite a bit this morning, taking lots of little tomatoes with it. We picked any ripe or almost ripe guys we could, but there were probably just as many little green tomatoes that went into the yard waste bin.

On a related note, I'm unimpressed with these Lemon Boy tomatoes. We pulled off a dozen tomatoes today and all but the three smallest were cracked, rotting, and bizarrely shaped. I'll have to give those that we did save a try, but unless they are the most delicious tomato ever I'm not sure they're worth the vines they grow on.

Harvest:
2 lbs 7 oz Juliet Tomatoes
11 oz Lemon Boy

Busy Weekend

Alright...I spent all of Saturday afternoon and a couple hours on Sunday in the garden. Here's what happened:

In the Tomato Bed:

1. Tomatoes got pruned (any branches that were dead, dying, munched, or too close to the ground) and tied vertically against the fence



2. 13 Basil Seedlings (3 each Lemon, Mini, Purple, Genovese and 1 Sweet) were transplanted into the bed



3. 3 Scallions were transplanted into the bed



4. 1 Anaheim Pepper and 1 Red Bell Pepper purchased from Home Depot were planted
   


5. A cup or two of E.B. Stone Vegetable fertilizer was sprinkled on the bed
   


6. A bag of compost/mulch was spread around the bed

Along the concrete wall:

1. The edible peas and sweet peas were yanked up



2. Two bags of compost/mulch was spread around



3. Runner beans were planted (12 inch spacing...right under the drip line drips)



4. 1 Edamame bean was planted (I had others but I left them out overnight and somebody stole them)



5. Carrots tops were unburied so that they can continue to grow despite the mulch



6. Cucumber seeds were planted (3 sweet cucumbers, 3 English cucumbers)



7. A 5ish ft row of radishes alternating with carrots was planted.
   

In the corner:

1. 1 bag of compost/mulch was spread around



2. 7 corn seedlings were transplanted (and one new seed)
   


3. 1 acorn , 1 delicata, and 1 spaghetti squash were transplanted



4. 4 Sunzilla Sunflower Seeds
   

Beans Begin!

I emptied a package of Magic Beanstalk Scarlet Runner Beans and 6 Edamame seeds into a wet paper towel in a bowl. I'm planning on putting them in the ground on Friday or Saturday.

Tonight's dinner menu comes from our garden again. My Juliet tomato plant has finally decided it wants to fruit so I decided we should have BLTs tonight to celebrate the little tomatoes. Bread machine sourdough is rising as I type and a pack of bacon is defrosting. I've got a little head of some sort of red leaf lettuce (it randomly grew in what used to be the chard bed) that will join some Juliet tomatoes and a sliced red onion (sadly store bought). I also took out a cup or so of the fava beans I froze a little while back and I think I'll make a spread out of those to moisten the sandwich instead of the traditional mayonnaise.

All the squash seeds have sprouted except the Black Beauty Zucchini. Honestly, I'm not heartbroken about that! I only wanted the Black Beauty for its blossoms anyways, so having that plant get a little bit of a late start is fine by me. Zucchini squash is gross...except in zucchini bread (mmm).

The Dulcetta pepper seeds definitely get the award for being the most reliable seed. Another one has sprouted, and nothing from the other three types of peppers I seeded at the same time.

My tomato bed is becoming overrun with (surprise) tomato plant. I'll have to go out as soon as I get a chance and start training those up the fence so I don't lose the ground space. My plan is to plant my basil, onion, and pepper seedlings in there on Friday or Saturday.

Tally:
11 oz Juliet Tomatoes