August 2017

Tuesday August 15
Well, I've done it again.  Records just don't seem to be my forte.  It's been six weeks since I've put any thing into the Garden Journal.  Weeds have all but taken over; squash has inundated their section of the garden; sweet corn is coming out of my ears; green peppers are producing abundantly; cherry tomatoes are ripening by the bucket full; and life is good in the garden.

The cabbage has turn out amazing this year.  You can see that the cabbage fly has chewed on the leaves of the plant but the head of the cabbage has not been harmed.

It's surprising just how many heads of cabbage that one jar takes to fill it up when making sauerkraut.  This pickle jar has three heads of cabbage in it.  The kraut is in the garage fermenting for about at least three weeks before eating.  I think the pickles I made are almost ready to be tasted.  I used a brine for about a week to try to crisp them up before pickling them.  This year seems to be a year to test out preserving.  Perhaps next year will be the year of preserving in bigger amounts.

Tomatoes are producing well but look a little scraggly.  I haven't perfected the method of growing in buckets just yet.  They have been changing from looking good to a little anemic.  I think I've over watered at times and then under watered at times.  It's a bit difficult to get a good watering technique.  The trough really needs to be leveled up again next year.  The middle seems to be sagging so I'll have to deal with that some how next year. 

For the last couple years I've been attempting to create an automatic watering system. Well, it's been longer than that.  Probably for about six or seven years.  The first attempt was with timers and big PVC pipes.  Then it was floating valves and gutters.  Now it's still gutters but a simple water tank with gravity. The water container is filled with water and air tight.  When the hose is below the water level and air can't enter the tank it stops flowing.  As the tomatoes wick up the water from the bottom of the bucket, water seal breaks and allows air to bubble up into the tank which allows the water to flow until the water level again seals off the air from entering the tank. Now that I've perfected this method, I'll make it better next year.  The nails in this picture have no purpose and were part of the last attempt to building this water seal method of keeping the trough full of water.

This tank is nothing more than a water dispenser from Walmart for about eight bucks and a short hose extension held on the spot by a little glue and a hose clamp. Next year I'm thinking that I'll not have the last bucket on the trough and maybe set up three on each side to keep the trough filled with water.  That would be about a weeks worth of water for the plants.  The float valve method worked great but had a tendency to plug with debris in the water.  Because of catching rain water from the roof, it's not totally free of leaf chunks and other small bits of things in the water.  This method has no small valve to go through so it works much better.  Each year the garden gets a little better than the year before.  

The water storage tank is down to about half full now. Last year it never got that low.  August has been dry with only a few light showers.  When I wanted to dig up a bed at Terra Nova Gardens it was dry the full length of the shovel.  Rock hard chunks were in the soil turned over. We could definitely use a good long soaking rain. 

Just received another light rain of hardly any substance.

Tuesday August 23
More rain has come our way.  The above water tank is at maximum level. It was about half empty couple weeks ago but two substantial rains have filled the tank and then some.  The new semi automatic watering system continues to work amazingly well.