Garden '09

The planting is complete for the garden this year. The furthest planter box hosts tomatoes: stilitz, stupice, gajo de something, husk cherry, and amish salad. The makeshift greenhouses made from the potting soil bags are covering basil seeds, lettuce seeds and the potato tubers. The front planter hosts pumpkin, lemon cucmber and watermelon (all seeds,) zucchini, ancho pepper, rio de oro pepper and the aji amarillo pepper. At some point some transplanting may be required. The three black containers at the front host herbs, beets (only teeny sprouts thus far) and a Sweet 100 (tomato.) So, I exploded from last year's single box to two boxes, three rectangular boxes (10-15 gallon,) and 5 pots (15 gallons.) I planted early, used better stuff, and am keeping my fingers crossed. I had to pull up the beet sprouts to empty and move the older planter box, so I'm a little worried they won't survive the stress.

Additional tips I learned from my class: (1) Always water in the early morning, you don't want to send roots into the cold night temperature wet, especially when they are young plants; (2) If you use black containers (as I did because they were super cheap) you can super heat the roots during those dog days of summer, so it is suggested you create a shade barrier on their south facing side; (3) plants need lots of food (duh!) and that was something I didn't seem to think was all that important last year. Ever had that brown spot on the end of your tomatoes? Its called blossom end rot and it forms when tomatoes don't have enough nutrients. The suggested combo was 4-6-4, balancing the right amount of nitrogen (for leaf growth,) phosphorus (for root growth,) and potassium (for flower growth or fruit - my notes are a little hazy.) Now, one class does not make me ANY sort of expert, but I thought I would pass that along. Oh, and another thing that I need to go out and do, is any seeds if planted directly in the soil (which I did quite hopefully) should be covered with some sort of "greenhouse" and stay out of direct sun. Oops.

I inherited this book that's sort of commical called Down to Earth Gardening Know-how for the '90s. I'm assuming not much has changed from the 90's till now, so that will serve as my simple reference guide in the mean time.