Garden 2020: Olla Pot

 Our tomatoes all had some sort of blossom end rot and were useless.  It is possible that the problem was inconsistent watering.  Somehow I learned about olla pots which are an ancient sort of in-ground watering system for plants.  They are pretty easy to make.

You need an unglazed clay pot plus the same kind of bottom.  This is what I made.

This was made with about a 4" pot and a larger bottom.  I used Gorilla glue to put them together.  Put the plate on the shelf then wet the top of the pot with water.  Run a bead of Gorilla glue around the top of the pot then place top down onto the plate.  Wiggle around a little bit to make sure the glue is well spread around.  Now wait for AT LEAST thirty minutes. I waited longer.  The glue surprised me by turning sort of whitish/yellowish.  Next I put water inside the pot and watched the clay begin to look wet.  It took a few minutes before the whole pot was wet, and thus able to keep the roots wet when put in the ground. Exciting!

This pot is now buried in the container where we are going to plant a tomato here at the end of August in hopes of getting another harvest this season. Well, to actually HAVE a tomato harvest this year!

This pot is now covered up almost to the top with dirt and full of water.  A stone has been put on top to keep dirt out of the pot.  Every few days we will check to see if there is water in the pot, when we will take off the rock and carefully pour water into the olla pot.

Here is the tomato planted and the rock on top of the olla pot barely visible.  We are hoping for the best.

Garden 2020: Our First Zucchini!

Today I went out to water the sweet potato plants (I had just learned that they need watering every day for the first two weeks then every other day for a week, then less frequently!) and decided to give all the plants a drink.

This is what I found in the zucchini patch!!!

Okay, so you can barely see it. AND it is probably only 3 inches long, BUT IT IS A ZUCCHINI!!!  Our first one.  The plants seem to have taken off once I put that pine straw mulch around it.  Truly,  in about three days the plants were more than double in size.  Of course, Heavenly Father was watering them rather heavily for a whole week, so it is little wonder they are so happy.  I just need to keep it up!

We Have Begun Harvesting the 2020 Garden

There are some real advantages to living in the South.  Our daughter mentioned to me that we must like the long growing season.  Yes, we do!  We had been having kale right along until I ripped up the ones on the porch then moved them to the grow box in the lawn.  We used that spot where the kale had been for the lettuce seedlings we had started.

Also in the grow box we planted a large number of no-name kale plants, which are doing well and turn out not to be curly kale.  They seemed just right to harvest today so I went out and cut a bunch of them.  Also some basil.  ALSO four Sweet 100 tomatoes!

This was so nice to bring into the house.  The tomatoes went onto my breakfast salad and the kale was cooked to death in the Instant Pot for my supper.  Dear One is only a fan of kale chips, not kale any other way,  though if I put a teaspoon of cooked kale on his plate, he will eat it.  But he looks at me when he puts it in his mouth!!!

Last weekend we harvested the wax beans from the porch.  There may be three more beans there but we have had the major harvest from the porch.  They are not prolific producers, sadly.

We do have wax beans in the grow box with lots of blossoms. I hope they produce better.  Maybe two meals instead of one meal!

It is truly wonderful to eat things from your own garden.  You know everything that went into them.  You have total control over what you plant.  The only thing you cannot control is the weather.  When M mentioned how nice it was to have a long growing season, I had to point out that I have heard that many plants die a wretched death in the heat of the summer.  It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

If they all die, then we will plant again in September when things should be a little cooler.  We shall see.

Garden 2020: Wax Bean Blossoming!

Dear One LOVES wax beans.  He only eats green string beans under protest...usually picking them out of a frozen mixed vegetables side dish.  Funny guy.

Well, we planted some on the porch a month ago.  When we went out yesterday this is what we saw:

Someone else was checking out the garden!  He had eaten off a few shoots early on but probably decided he wanted green string beans!  Thank goodness. It would have been a real bust if he had sheered them all off.

Here is a close up of the blossoms!  We are so happy.  I asked Dear One if he remembered how long it was from blossom to supper but he could not remember, either.

Whenever it happens, we will be happy.  He asked if I had another packet of seeds so we could replant as soon as these go by.  Didn't I say he was a funny guy?!!

Garden 2020: Tomato Blossoms

In January I planted tomato seeds.  In March I happened to find Cherokee Purple tomato plants already started at Lowes.  Also Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.  In the South Carolina growing zone where we live the last frost is expected on Good Friday.  Since I was afraid of killing these good-looking tomato plants in the house, I decided to just go ahead and plant them a month early.

So, I put them in the ground.  When the bug man came for the quarterly bug eradication outside (not coming inside this time because we might be sick inside...which only works for a bit because I have now seen ants inside three days in a row!!!  We pay not to have ants in the house surprisingly so I will be calling the bugs and request inside service) I was sort of complaining about the hard orange clay soil that I could not put the tomato cages or posts into.  The guy said, "Get a four pound hammer and a piece of rebar.  Pound the rebar into the ground where you want the cages to go." What a great idea!  It never occurred to me to do that.  The bug guy also said it was a great time to do this because of all the rain we had just had so the ground would be somewhat soft.

So, off I went, homemade face mask installed, to the Ace Hardware where I found both the hammer and the rebar.  Also a couple more stakes.  The next morning I went down to the place I had planted the tomatoes and went to town on the project.  About the fourth strike on the rebar the hammer slipped. I still have a very impressive black and blue and yellow and purple mark on my lower leg.  BUT I was able to complete the job.  Yes, I could have asked Dear One to help and he would have been happy to do so...however, I prefer to do my own projects since I still can.  If I was physically (or maybe mentally!!) unable to do anything, I would ask.  Otherwise, I will do my own projects.

The cages were successfully installed.  The tomatoes have blossoms but are hard to see in this picture.  I am pretty happy with these tomatoes.

The very next day after this tomato project was the day we saw the water moccasin in the pond for the first time.  The tomatoes are right down pretty near the pond.  R-r-r!  I guess I will have to get over phobias.

More Garden 2020

This morning I decided to get a little exercise and be productive at the same time.  After all, this garden I want to have in-ground is not going to dig itself magically overnight.  So, I went out with my stroller (in case I needed to sit down all of a sudden) and the round pointed shovel.  This is what I accomplished:

 

You can see how rich and lush our soil in.  Not!!!  You can also see the shadow of the stroller and my finger over the lens.  Good work, Lady!!!  Maybe I will take another better photo some other day....Anyway,  this is about four feet wide and six inches deep.  Enough for one day.

Dear One mentioned to me at lunch time that the tomatoes were getting awfully leggy.  He is right.  SO...I decided to take the leggy-est one and plant it on the deck.  What can we lose?  Planting time down here is said to be around Good Friday.  That is a few weeks off but the full moon has already passed and, after all, this plant is, well, not ideal.  We shall see.

Looking at it, we all see that the plant is pitiful.  I hope it has at least a few happy days outside.

Since I was on a roll,  I thought I would throw in some yellow string bean seeds.  This is their new home:

More or less taking a page out of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book (which, by the way, I have not yet read...it comes in the mail tomorrow) I planted the seeds about 4 inches apart which is what the seed packet said though the seed packet also said in rows 21 inches apart.  We shall see.  Dear One loves yellow string beans.  Sadly, he does NOT love green string beans. 

In case you are wondering,  Dear One is still of the opinion that we need not to invest a lot in gardening.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when he said we can be like most other people in the country and buy our vegetables at the store or farmers' market.  Well, not tomatoes.  In my opinion. There is nothing like a juicy flavorful tomato right out of your garden.  Even if it does give you an itchy rash if you eat more than one at every meal...

Basil!!!

The basil is up!!!  I just had to share the good news.  It is not supposed to be up for another week, according to the seed packet. I think those lights make a huge difference. 

Tomorrow I will be able to transplant the second planting of tomato seedlings.  I am going to hope for the best for all these little dearies!

Garden 2020: True Leaves and Real Babies and Maybe Basil

Tonight I took a picture of the tomatoes in their greenhouse, bathed in full spectrum light.  I realized that what I was seeing was a display of true leaves!  And new babies going to town.

Tomorrow I will need to transplant the big plants into pots.  I will also need to move them a little bit away from the light.  It looks like the number of plants started that first day is 10.  There are going to be four in the newly planted seeds once I clip off the second plant in each pellet. 

Another thing for tomorrow:  plant some basil seeds in the remaining peat pellets.  We shall see how they do.

More Garden 2020

Following Gary's at the Rusted Garden's advice, I put aluminum foil all around the inside of the Rubbermaid tote so the plants could get more light.  I also moved it off the kitchen island so the greenhouse is out of the way and I can work in the kitchen!

You can see the foil and the lamp operating.  We ordered a power strip that has a manual timer so the lights will be on 16 hours a day without me having to remember to turn them off or on.  Bonus!!!

This is a close-up of the greenhouse with the foil and lamp.  You can see that some of the pieces of two by fours I collected from dumpsters outside building sites in our neighborhood have come in handy.  After hearing about not only sunshine/full spectrum lights, that the lights should be 2 inches from the plants, I found another piece of that dumpster-dived two by twelve and lifted the tomatoes up.

Garden 2020!

Because the back deck garden did so well, in my opinion, we are going to try again this year but are starting plants ourselves.

A couple of weeks ago I went out to find seeds for this year's garden. I found some Brandywine heirloom tomato seeds. I remember Brandywine tomatoes as being so luscious and flavorful that I had to buy them.  There were several other heirloom tomato plants I wanted to grow but Dear One asked me how many tomatoes we were going to eat.  Good question!  With the raw tomato allergy, it does not make sense to raise lots of them.  Or does it?!  I can dry them. I can turn them into sauce and can them.  OR I can dice them and can our own diced tomatoes.  How good is that?!!  So, I started tomatoes.

On 27 January I planted eight or ten Jiffy peat pellets with 2 seeds in each one after re-hydrating them with water.  On the 31st those little babies pricked through the soil!  I was so thrilled to see them. 

We got a clamp-on shop lamp and put a sunshine lightbulb into it.  After watching a few gardening videos on YouTube by the Rusted Garden, Dear One ordered a different lightbulb for our plants.  Apparently the seedlings need to have specific lights 2 inches away from them as they start growing...so in fact, we were late in putting in the light. Because of this on 4 February I started a few more seeds growing.  These kids came through the soil on the 7th of February!  These little guys have  had their lights at 2 inches above them from the moment they came through the soil. I am going to note the difference in growing.

Here are the seedlings with two seeds per peat pellet in the clear plastic Rubbermaid tote and the lamp clamped on.

Plant wisdom is that you start two seeds in each pellet then, when they are up and growing, you pinch out one of them.  This is very HARD TO DO!!!  Cutting off the life of one dear little plant seems so wrong. But I did it. I did apologize to the plants as I was doing it and thanked them for their service to my soul in coming up and growing so well.

Gary at the Rusted Garden also gives the advice that the tomatoes will do better if you take them out into the sunshine any day the temperature is above 50 degrees.  This will apparently kill any potential mold or other nasties in the "soil" plus will start hardening off the plants from about day one! 

Our little pals have been out several days.  They went out last Friday when we were having big wind.  I went out after 45 minutes and those poor little creatures were lying on their sides, just like trees at the head of a canyon in Utah!!!  I brought them inside and told them they had had enough sun for the day.  Now they are really happy again, and standing straight up.