July 2018

July 6, 2018
Here it is July with not much more progress in the garden.

June 2018

June 9, 2018
Another month has scooted by way too fast. It's been blazing hot the end of May and now into June. My water tank is mostly full but struggles to stay that way. Rain comes but only in very small amounts. Many times less than .1 inch. Plants are struggling to survive let alone produce. My garden schedule is extremely sporadic this year. Family, friends, and neighbors have tasks for me to help them with and I just can't say no. I don't feel that my lack of gardening care this year is a strain on my life. Helping others is my focus and gardening is my enjoyment. So if pulling weeds is all that's accomplished this year so be it.

June 13, 2018

 Weeded the first planting of corn today. Pulled the weeds in bed 3 & 4, Gave bed 5 a stir, the tomato bed, and weeded bed 2, the cabbage bed. It was a very productive day for sure. Things are starting to look a lot better. Now concentration is on the second half of the garden.

I started some seeds in soup cans. Squash, cucumbers, and Chard. I'm not sure they will come to harvest but I think they should have plenty of time to mature. It's the latest I've ever planted such plants and it will be a experiment for sure.

The volunteer tomatoes that looked so desperate are perking up and will make it. I knew those cherry tomatoes woould not die. They are too determined to give up and die. They will be taking over the bed before long.

I've been wondering what to do about the rain gutter trough that is leaking and decided to use the Flex Seal to line the entire gutter. That should seal it up. I have room for the three gutters on the patio which would give the total buckets to 21 when in full production. The watering would be entirely gravity fed with mini float valves to keep the gutter full. 

I think I'll open up the garden to outsiders that I know next year. Jeanie would be a good candidate and possibly Sharon. I'm not sure who else. I would get the beds ready and they could plant and care for what ever they wanted.

May 2018

May 6, 2018
April flew by without much gardening going on. The weather continued to be cold and snowy up until the middle of April. The cold weather continued after that but no rain for April. Just a half inch of moisture in the month of April put us behind since April's average is 3 inches. The rain catch water tank barely had any water in it by the end of April. Finally as May crept into the days, the temperature blasted up into the 80s which now is abnormally warm. This looks to be a garden season of extremes.

The fence panels that were the ICON of the garden were all but destroyed by vandals last Fall so fence repair was on the schedule for April.

Once again the free fence panels from S&W fencing came to the rescue. I picked up enough panels to repair this section of the fence.  It looks like redwood but I think it's just painted wood.  Cedar maybe. The next section over was repaired with cedar planks. With the fence repaired I can now turn my attention to the garden beds. One bed is planted with potatoes. I always have potatoes that never get eaten and turn into mushy sprouts. I will not plant as many thing year and harvest them earlier.  I do like the early small potatoes. I might try canning some of those for winter consumption.

I spent this last Saturday mowing the grass at 35th street and spreading it over two beds at Terra Nova Gardens. That grass will be buried in the bed before planting. Another layer of grass clippings will be spread over the top of the bed as mulch. I'm hoping to get more mulch from my Urban Ranch yards for that. 

Right when I need to do the most work, a family function will take me away for five days.  I expect those five days will be perfect days for gardening and probably the day I get back rain will start delaying planting again. It's seems to happen every year. I'm not too distraught this year. The garden will get done when it gets done. I've discovered that I don't always have to try to be the earliest one to have a tomato or pepper.


May 9, 2018
Spent some time at Terra Nova Gardens. The yard grass clippings from UR yards were just enough to enrich the digging and cover the bed before planting.  Here is the bed before work began.

 I didn't start that many cabbage seedlings this year.

March 2018

March 6, 2018
March is here with a vengeance. We just had the snow storm of the month with heavy wet snow.  I had to be creative and shovel two paths up the west hill to the house and put some ice melt on the pathways. The next time I left the hill was clear of snow.  That's what I like about March snows.  They are heavy wet filled with good nitrogen that soaks into the soil, and it melts away quickly. By tomorrow night the snow will probably mostly be gone.

I have started some Simpson lettuce seeds. I've decided to start 18 seeds every week through out the year. I have a package with 2000 seeds so that should last the year. Actually, it will last 111 weeks which would be 2 years.

March 23, 2018
I haven't been following through with my lettuce plan. The plants that I thought were eggplants and peppers turned out to be lettuce and now I'm left with leggy eggplants or peppers I think. I really must be more efficient with record keeping.

This is the rough cleanup of bed 8 at Terra Nova Gardens. This will be the potato bed and be the first thing to be planted. I will require more cleanup and a good turning of the soil. I had to clean this out by hand. My trimmer has a broken starting rope. It was a new rope and broke on the third pull. I'm not sure just what that's all about. It's the second time the rope broke this year. Any way this next week will have to a week of Terra Nova Gardening but Monday the forecast is for thunder storms. It's been one of those Springs when the difficulty is getting into the garden. We had some of that last year and I had to plant in the mud a couple times. 

March 31, 2018
This is the cleaned up Bed 8 for potatoes. The weather today is cloudy with dropping temperatures that will bottom out in the upper 20s and gusting wind up to 40 MPH. It's an ugly day to be outside in the garden so I'll put off gardening for another day. Maybe a little work in the back yard but nothing at Terra Nova Gardens. It's been a tough year for gardening but I'm sure things will work out eventually. They always do. I should do some re potting of the green peppers and start some tomato plants and plant some more lettuce. I haven't been too true to my plan of planting lettuce every week. There's plenty to do if I just get busy and do it. March is not leaving like a lamb this year.

January 2018

The New year is here.  The last two weeks of December has been bitterly cold and it looks like January is going to be no different. Time to start thinking about seeds and starting up the seed starting station. I have some new ideas about watering the plants under the grow lights that will automate the process and not require daily watering.

  January 8

This is a 72 cell seed tray that I use for starting seeds. Once the seed get started I use bottom watering to keep the plants watered. It's always been a challenge to be sure that there's always water in the tray and the plants don't dry out. This is a very simple but effective plan to help keep the plants watered. The plan is to sacrifice two plant trays which is a total of 12 seed starts to put three bottles of water to maintain the water level in the tray holder. Basically the system is a water bottle turned upside down on a piece of 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe. When the water level goes below the bottom of the opening of the water bottle, an air bubble will gurgle up through the water releasing water into the tray holder.  This action will continue until the water level is above the water bottle opening at which time air can not get into the water bottle and the water flow stops. I always like to have about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of water in the tray holder for bottom wicking to water the plants. Depth of the water can be adjusted by varying the length of the 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe until the desired water depth is achieved. I use a chop saw and shave increments off one end until trial and error gives me the right depth. Unless you have many bottles that are the same, the length of the PVC will vary depending on the length and thickness of the bottle neck.

January 23
https://modernfarmer.com/2013/07/straw-bale-gardening/ 

January 27

This is gravity watering for the seed starts 2.0. It's a V8 juice bottle with a shorter collar to stand on. I don't know if three of these will fit in the tray but I think they will. Two seed trays will be eliminated at the end of the water tray to allow these watering bottles to keep the water level even. So if I have to go away for a few days or forget to check the water level, the plants will continue to get watered. The trip that concerns me this year is the one in March. It seems that the trips are always at a critical time for gardening. I will have to start all the warm weather plants after I get back from Texas. The next time will be May which is another critical time as the plants need almost daily attention then. Why is it so difficult to plan gardening.

November 2017

November is here already.  The weather hasn't turned bitterly cold yet but killing frost happens almost every night now.  Upper to middle 20s are the norm. Gardening is definitely done expect working on fences and cleaning up the weedy beds.  The garden got completely out of control again this year.  It's not an easy thing to keep up with all the other things I do and tend to a garden that's as big as I have.  I've started planning for next year and have three empty beds that I don't know what to do with.  I might be downsizing a bit and just use those beds for building up the soil for the following year.

November 3

 

Yes this is bed three that had green beans in it.  I had planned to harvest the bean pods but it was such a weed mess that it wasn't worth the effort. I weed whacked down the whole mess and covered the bare ground with the leaves I picked up off my front yard.

I'm not sure how that creepy reflection of me got into this picture.  It really freaked me out when I saw the picture.

Kids had a good time breaking into my garden this year and messing around with all the stuff inside. This is the second section of fence that I had to replace because they just ripped it open and went inside.  The old chicken wire fence needed to be replace anyway so it just stepped up the schedule.  Now I need to work on the wooden part of the fence that they damaged. It too was starting to look crappy so this Winter I'll be making a new sign for to cover up the damaged area.  In the mean time I'm putting steel fence over that section as well to keep them out as well as wild life.  It's not that wild life have any thing to eat inside right now but I don't want them to get into the habit of being inside the garden.

This is a closer look at the fence replaced. I still have to shore up the bottom of the fence to keep critters from digging under the fence.  I should have just bent the bottom two sections of fence to a right angle when I installed it but I didn't so now another way will have to do. I'm amazed at how much the Rugosa Rose bushes have grown in the last couple years.  Four years ago they were just little sticks that came in the mail.  They are really starting to do what I hoped they would do.

Here's a look at the cleaned up section. One more bed was cleaned up after fixing the fence today. This year I don't have any time to do Fall digging of the beds.  I just get rid of the weeds down to the bare dirt and cover the bed with yard waste.  Next Spring I'll bury the yard waste and prepare the beds for planting.  I've discovered that bare beds in the Spring are a good thing. As the weeds sprout, cultivation can be done easily and quickly.  It takes about three or four times of  cultivation before mulching and planting.

This is the last bed to be cleaned up in the formal part of the garden.  Eventually the pathways of this part of the garden will be all poor man's brick and with rock around the beds.  There's still much to do but each year I've accomplish quite a bit.  It will be exciting to see what will happen next year. I never know what I'll have time to do when the season begins.

This is pretty sad isn't it? All the work and effort that went into the design and building of these sections of the fence are now falling apart.  I suspect the demolition kids of the neighborhood helped this along some. I've put a steel welded fence over the sections to keep the critters from getting used to making their way in and out of the garden.  Then as time permits the sections will be covered with plywood that's been primed and painted.  I hope that lasts longer than the pallet sections did.

This is the haul of squash for this year.  Seventy five in total.  It's a bit more than I really expected.  I'm cutting back next year to half the plants.  I'm not sure what I'll be doing with this stash.  Hopefully, I can give much of it away. 

Monday November 7

Bed 4 where the Eggplant, Zucchini, and Chard was planted has been cleaned and dug. It will get a cover of yard waste when I pickup a couple loads this Thursday from the neighborhood.

So, this is it for the Formal part of the garden.  I've started on the inner garden by removing the slanted wire fence that had squash but was supposed to have cucumbers. All the steel posts have been removed. It's a real mess back there.  Two of the beds have been cleaned and dug but the others are going to be tough.  

The mulch laid down last Fall before the inner steel welded fence went up has pretty much composted down to dirt.  I'm going to remove that and just leave the carpet bare.  That seems to be a better way of pathway weed control.

I've decided to burn the garden debris.  I'm not sure just how I'll be doing it but it seems to be the best way to deal with the pile of debris that comes from the garden every year. It takes too long to compost down and that leaves big piles of weeds and grass laying around. I've thought of a burn barrel but have decided that maybe a permanent burn pit would be better.  I have enough rocks to build one. I will have to find out what the requirements are for burning inside the city limits. After research, burning weeds, grass clippings, and leaves is illegal any where in Nebraska. Bummer.

Tuesday November 21

Garden clean up continues as long as the weather holds and the time is available.  This is the beginning of the cleanup for beds that are inside the electric fence. This is bed 11 and 12.  Bed 11 was the cucumbers and squash.  Bed 12 was the first sweet corn bed. I'm thinking that next year I'll only have two sweet corn beds.  I was so inundated with sweet corn this year that it buried me.  I didn't even harvest the fourth planting at all.

This is beds 9-12 after cleanup. The trimmer, rake, and hula hoe can work wonders on a bed and pathway.

So here's the next three beds that will be the last challenge.  It's a real mess. Hopefully, I can get it cleaned up before the snow flies.

October 2017

October is a month of mixed feelings.  It's a transitional month where the garden is waning and Winter is coming. This year the garden has been prolific up until the very end it seems.  I am finally just pulling out the tomatoes and green peppers because I have no where to store the continuing production of the plants.  I guess that's a good thing as the garden is totally over run with weeds.

 October 7

 Tired and wrong tomatoes were a great disappointment this year.  Over and over again I've said and written about the miss labeled package that wasn't Rutgers but cherry tomatoes. They look pret-tee sad don't they. Next year will be different.

October 9

The potato harvest was more than I expected. My guess is about 50 pounds from just a couple pounds of potatoes.  These were Walmart potatoes. 

This doesn't look very nice but under all that weed mess are the potatoes.  This year's weed control was a disaster.

Wow, this bed cleaned up good. The potato bed is done for the year.  It's all cleaned up and ready to be covered with yard waste.  The pathways are in terrible shape and I'm beginning to think it was a mistake to put down mulch over the carpet. Another year will tell if mulch was a good thing or not.

This is the potatoes that will be stored in the basement storage room. They will last until about February or March before starting to get squishy. I'd say there are about 15 pounds in each box. 

Those potatoes that were stuck by a fork while digging were canned in the pressure canner.  They will be used for soup during the Winter months.

The green peppers excelled at producing this year.  Last year I didn't get a single pepper from the plants.  This bed was not a good producer from the very beginning.  I did direct composting last fall and spread bags of manure and sprinkled lime on the this bed last Spring.  After digging it in, the bed was mulched with fresh grass clippings and a irrigation setup was built for the bed.  It was hooked up to be watered every day in June. I have so many green peppers stored away in the freezer that I'm wondering if I will be able to eat them all over the Winter. I finally just pulled them out because I didn't want any more peppers.

Yea, finally the green pepper is finished producing.  It's all cleaned up and ready for Winter. The garden beds look great when they are cleaned up.  Now if only I could keep them that way.  I just need more time but it seems that doesn't happen yet.

Saturday October 28
Not much happening in the garden today. The killing frost finally came last night with a vengeance. The low temperature was 15 degrees according to the weather channel. I'm hoping to get things wrapped up at Terra Nova Gardens and Urban Ranch soon.