This area has been blessed with a warmer than average spring season. I’d venture a guess that everything is a full two weeks ahead of schedule as compared to the last few years. The above photo is a tribute to how azure blue a spring sky can be.
Here is a photo of one of the apple trees in silver tip stage just two weeks ago. I sprayed the trees using organic dormant oil with my newly acquired backpack 4 gallon sprayer. But I don’t wear it on my back…
That’s right; I use the shoulder straps to secure the sprayer from falling over in the back of my trailer. And it works very well! There’s a fine line between being called “lazy” or “smart”…
Ah yes, the garlic is up! If you go back a few years in this blog, you’ll see that I started with 10 cloves planted in October of 2008. In October, 2009, I planted 46 cloves and it appears that 44 have made it through the winter. This variety (German Extra Hearty) can have 4 or 5 cloves per bulb. I’m making a prediction that I should have approximately (10 x 5 = 50) + (4 x 34 = 136) = 186 cloves to plant in fall of 2010.
I found some of these combo thermometer clocks at Home Depot and decided to create a nice housing for them to display at each garden. This one gets direct sun at sunset so the reading is off a bit. Actual temp was about 75 degrees.
These two photos don’t really show what I wanted to illustrate, but you might be able to get an idea of what I am doing. I added more turnbuckles to my overhead wire staking system. I liken it to winding a guitar string tighter & tighter. Each 70 foot wire now has 2 turnbuckles to keep them tight enough to bear the weight of whatever I tie to them; i.e. Tomatoes, cukes, squash, pole beans, etc.
And now for the inside… Here are two photos of the seed trays basking in the warmth of T8 fluorescent lights. There are about 400 seedlings growing right now, mostly 31 varieties of tomatoes and 7 varieties of hot peppers.
This is an amazing photo of my Tomato Pepper – yes, that’s the true name of this variety. These seeds were written about in the 2010 Winter edition of
The Heirloom Gardener Magazine
(in my opinion, their best issue ever! You can order copies by clicking on the link to their website).
What’s so amazing is that I found only one source for some seeds and the only seeds he had were seven years old! So what you see here is 17 out of 24 seeds planted that made it after 7 years of dormancy – wow!
That’s right; I use the shoulder straps to secure the sprayer from falling over in the back of my trailer. And it works very well! There’s a fine line between being called “lazy” or “smart”…
Ah yes, the garlic is up! If you go back a few years in this blog, you’ll see that I started with 10 cloves planted in October of 2008. In October, 2009, I planted 46 cloves and it appears that 44 have made it through the winter. This variety (German Extra Hearty) can have 4 or 5 cloves per bulb. I’m making a prediction that I should have approximately (10 x 5 = 50) + (4 x 34 = 136) = 186 cloves to plant in fall of 2010.
I found some of these combo thermometer clocks at Home Depot and decided to create a nice housing for them to display at each garden. This one gets direct sun at sunset so the reading is off a bit. Actual temp was about 75 degrees.
These two photos don’t really show what I wanted to illustrate, but you might be able to get an idea of what I am doing. I added more turnbuckles to my overhead wire staking system. I liken it to winding a guitar string tighter & tighter. Each 70 foot wire now has 2 turnbuckles to keep them tight enough to bear the weight of whatever I tie to them; i.e. Tomatoes, cukes, squash, pole beans, etc.
And now for the inside… Here are two photos of the seed trays basking in the warmth of T8 fluorescent lights. There are about 400 seedlings growing right now, mostly 31 varieties of tomatoes and 7 varieties of hot peppers.
This is an amazing photo of my Tomato Pepper – yes, that’s the true name of this variety. These seeds were written about in the 2010 Winter edition ofThe Heirloom Gardener Magazine
(in my opinion, their best issue ever! You can order copies by clicking on the link to their website).
What’s so amazing is that I found only one source for some seeds and the only seeds he had were seven years old! So what you see here is 17 out of 24 seeds planted that made it after 7 years of dormancy – wow!
:)
I was able to get the big gardens tilled last weekend. I noticed a Robin was scouting the area for many hours, looking for worms and insects that were exposed during tilling - smart bird!
