Vegetable Gardens ??

[BigBallzWillie]

Planted sugar snap peas today, in about 100 sq ft of tomato bed. Mostly for the nitrogen fixation but I'll eat a few if they present themselves.

The peas I planted on 3/12 are above ground.....a little cold is why they are late but looks like a decent germ rate, maybe 70%. First round of radishes took 10 days to show. Be eating them in 30 days. Planted about 50 beets directly. The peas I planted 2nd, 2 weeks behind the first are popping too. Cold frame..everything is popping, lettuce, broccoli, chard, all up, thinned and I planted the thinnings. Cleaning up the beds and creating some new beds. Mixing rootball bombs with regular dirt to fill planters.
I'll have some strawberries this year, but this is it for that bed. Garlic is up......I believe there are 800+ out there.
I dug out a bed of elephant garlic last year........2/3 of it appears to have come back...............this was to be the new strawberry bed, I'll do it again mid july...make strawberry babies in september.

Cabin fever is setting in, I had a great time outside today betwixt the rain drops.

 

[BigBallzWillie]

I've got my peppers going in my basement with two 315 watt CMH going to keep it warm, I'm in the midwest. So far the sweet pepper standout in vigor is not my beloved Carmen, its actually the Takara. That's got me excited for these ones! The hot pepper standout so far is Hot Paper Lanterns. These things are going to be big.

Hot paper lanterns...........that sounds like fire, lol. One year I grew these orange habenaro's.......big crop, beautiful....looked like a paper chinese lantern. I took one bite, permanently lost nasal hair and that was it. Jalapenos I can do all day.............I don't venture much hotter.........it mighta been Hot Paper Lanterns for all I know...

 

[gwheels]

My order got delayed and then i found a Canadian seed company that had a ton of organic seeds in stock. So i have more variety. This should be seeds for life now.

Where did i hear that before...

And thanks to some advice from Big Perm...i am going to make a couple of commander totes into sips. I bet those yellow summer squash would grow awesome in 1 of those. A bush squash..I never heard of that before.

I have an order in for a 35 gallon sack of perlite to go with my other stuff. I will make a nice loose medium. A raised Sips too for lettuces.

I need a farmer hat and coveralls now

Items​

Dalvay Pea​

Delicata Organic Winter Squash​

Manny Organic Cucumber​

Oregon Sugar Pod II Snow Pea​

Seychelles Bean​

Celebration Winter Squash​

Pruden Purple Organic Tomato​

Merlin Beet​

First Crop Beet​

York Rutabaga​

Sweet Sunrise Organic Pepper​

Napoli Carrot​

Sunstripe Summer Squash​

 

[BigBallzWillie]

Looks like a nice list! I'm going to run a few of Prudens Purple myself, first time for it. In fact I havve to get some tomato beans wet already

 

[BigBallzWillie]

Got a bunch of tomato seeds wet this morning

6 Prudens Purple
6 German Johnson
6 Principe Borghes
6 Cherokee Purple
16 Mark Twain
32 Opalka

 

[gwheels]

After talking it over with someone...

I am going to also make some sips out of some spare commander totes i have kicking around. I have enough stuff to build 3 of them.

I think that squash that grows like a bush would do very well in one of them...lettuce in one and...i will think about the other one.

The original seed guy said they are really on the way...mail is slow because of covid etc.

2nd order will probably arrive at the same time. Oh the stuff i will grow.

 

[BigBallzWillie]

I built a worm farm from a burn barrel today too. Fairly easy to assemble. Portable. No need to purchase worms. Includes the easy harvest handle.

Starts out as Willie's Worm Farm, next thing you know Dicks sporting goods is getting nervous. (That's how Dick's started, selling fish bait)

Once I get the plans downloaded from auto cad, they will be available for $5 and I'll throw in the instructions for making a glue bottle from a mustard bottle for free!

 

[gwheels]

My worms are ready too. I will build an Easter worm tote

Red wigglers

Time to read about worms

 

[BigBallzWillie]

Things are moving. Got a bunch of stuff coming up outside. Peas, arugala, lettuce, radishes, chard. Prepping existing beds and filling my plastic pots. I also pricked out any extra seedlings and transplanted them. Fedco's seeds are mostly high 90's germ %. So if you plant two...you get two. And every broccoli, turnip, cabbage seed I ever planted popped, I don't plant two of those. Chard and beets seeds are actually a conglomeration of 3 to 5 seeds. You can pluck out the extras and plant.
Some lettuces



lettuce extras


Broccoli and chard


more lettuce/escarole




Chard up close, 2 plants from one seed.

 

[BigBallzWillie]

This is one of the tomato beds I planted peas in on the 9th. some action, planning on turning these in, then fabric /plastic the bed. You can see the vetch I planted last fall in the next bed over. The narrow space between beds is a path and should show almost 6" of board, but they always fill up. Those paths get mucked out after a year or two, and placed in pots. What comes out of there is like black gold. Then new wood chips, wash rinse repeat.
For max nitrogen gain, these peas should get cut when they flower. If you want to eat them.............it's still a net nitrogen gain. Win Win

 

[Now1more]

Nice weather. Good to be out since we just had snow yesterday. Got plenty of flats going. Really starting to look forward to the garden season. Hope everyone is well!

 

[gwheels]

Now im just stirring soil. I will add the fence when i get planting.

the 2 X 25 gallons are for GMO cake. I found another 25 and i might have to put that clone outside i have kicking around...the rest is vegetables.

1 yard premium organic soil
4 feet of spaghum moss
2 bags ocean forest
2 bags organic potting soil
1 bag of hydoton (perlite is sold out EVERYWHERE)

It is some fine soil. Maybe the finest in the land....i think i am officially an outdoor farmer now..

Those 3 raised beds (2 x 4 x4 and 1 x 2 x 4) are still smaller than my bloom room LOL

 

[MtRainDog]

Roots broke through the bottom in these sips a few days ago. They’re taking off like wild fire now

 

[H.A.F.]

I had to pull my stuff in because of storms that blew through. I rigged a little screen porch with a greenhouse roof.

Something I learned last year is that cloth pots are only self pruning if you have them on a surface rots cant grow into. I bought a few bags of decent "raised bed soil" at Lowes that actually mentioned mycho's LOL Anyway, I am planning very short "raised beds" that are still in the planning stages.

I only want them 6-8" tall to save soil, and only wide enough to set a 5gal cloth pot on. Cloth pots on the 6-8" of soil to get the roots going, then let it hit untilled earth and do whatever it pleases.

I also tried having an overhead support system for the maters that worked well. Just have a sturdy bar/board/pole/whatever about 8' over the plant. Think trellis.
Dangle twine from the pole for each main limb on the plant and secure it to the base of the limb. as it grows wrap it around the twine in a spiral. You can support smaller limbs or heavy tomato branches from the twine with more twine.

 

[H.A.F.]

if you have them on a surface rots cant grow into.

*roots*

 

[gwheels]

@MtRainDog how did you make those sips ? Whats in the bottom?

5 gallon sips...well i might want to try a couple of those. I have a few feet of soil remaining

 

[BigBallzWillie]

Some tomato seedlings. I have noticed that the ones in dirt look much better than the ones in the peat pellets. I might'a bought some non jiffy pellets it seems. They were supposed to be jiffy but came in a generic bag.anyway so far they work

 

[H.A.F.]

I have noticed that the ones in dirt look much better than the ones in the peat pellets.

I hate the pellets. I used some rapid-rooters this year and had good results - BUT - if you have two plants pop in the same one there's no separating them into two pots. Dirt rules!

 

[BigBallzWillie]

I really like the Jiffy tomato greehhouse for germinating them with. It's dry here and the lid keeps them nice. Nice to have 48 starts in 3 sq ft too. These pellets are too tall, so I had to move them outside a couple of days sooner because the maters were pressing up on the lid. Next time I'll just get new ones entirely. Truth is the little greenhouses cost the same as the "bulk refills" ones, so now I'll do that and landfill the plastic.

Or find a bonfide source for the real Jiffy products.

 

[MtRainDog]

@MtRainDog how did you make those sips ? Whats in the bottom?

5 gallon sips...well i might want to try a couple of those. I have a few feet of soil remaining

It's just 5-6" of perlite in the bottom. I feed into the soil, water into the perlite.

For the raised bed planters I plan on building, I'm going to use large rectangular totes with the same method basically. Difference will be, I'll drill holes around the bottom of the totes maybe a few inches up so not too much water pools in the perlite (from rain water).