Tuesday, May 25, 2010

How does the garden grow?

We put drip irrigation in the greenhouse late last week. It sure beats using the watering can every night! Now that it has gotten warmer, I was emptying a 2-gallon watering can 3 times just to try to keep things somewhat wet. I ended up losing 8 Roma tomato plants to the dessication the heat caused. I replanted the seeds, but that puts us behind about 3-4 weeks. Oh well, that's what a greenhouse is for at the end of the season :)

Over the weekend, it got into the mid to upper-80s F, and it looks to be that way all this week. So, I took the ends off the greenhouse for the summer. I figure I'll take the top off in about mid-June. (By the way, for those of you who follow this via RSS, I changed my profile picture to show the greenhouse and some of the garden.)

I ate the last of the cold frame radishes the other day; Debbie, Jim and Shannon aren't radish lovers, so more for me :) The ones I had planted outside the cold frame aren't ready to eat yet. I'm going to have to work on the timing of that next year. The spinach is doing nicely—I've been picking it for nearly 3 weeks now—and the romaine will be ready in about a week or so. The peas are in bloom now, and the onions that I started in the cold frames have huge tops; I just hope the bulbs are growing, too...

Next spring I am going to put row cover over all the beds until the maple trees are done sending down their helicopters. I think I have pulled a couple hundred maple saplings 1-2 inches tall out of the beds—ok, maybe only 100, but they are everywhere.

Speaking of row cover, I bought some 10-foot long 1/2 inch PVC piping to use for low tunnels. I thought I might try them over the tomatoes this fall, but the angle is too tight. Oh well, I'll cut them in half and make true low tunnels for some of the beds. The potatoes are doing very well under their row cover...

Talk about a bunch of
<idle musing>

No comments: