Notes for July 31, 2007

Still no rain. So I had to water last night and fight off the mosquitoes. I did pick several large tomatoes, about two dozen cherry tomatoes, about a dozen onions and about two dozen cucumbers. My cucumbers are doing well this year. I probably should have thinned them just a little more but so far so good. And during the last few years I always seem to lose a few plants so I left them thick this year.

I did notice that I probably should pick green beans before this weekend, maybe Thursday.

I am surprised I haven't seen any tomato horn worms yet.

weather radar?

If I wasn't there I probably wouldn't have believed it. I watched the radar. I watched a wall of green dissapate as it approached from the west and watched it reform to the east in yellow, orange and red. All we got at my home was a few drops and alot of thunder and lightning. I will have to water tonight if it doesn't look promising.

I am now picking regular sized tomatoes along with about 2 dozen cherry tomatoes and about a dozen cucumbers every two or three days. I will probably be picking green beans next weekend.

Notes for July 27, 2007

I watered the gardens and cut the grass but didn't do much else due to the sweat running in my eyes and the bugs in my ears.

The beets I planted a couple of weeks ago seem to be dying off. I guess its too hot for them. They were supposed to be in the shade but the sunflowers they are planted behind have taken hits from the rabbit and ants so that they are only 3 feet tall right now. The last two years my sunflowers were up to 9 feet tall.

While watering I have noticed that I have lost a couple of the perennial seedlings I planted a few weeks ago as well as a couple of my hostas I planted this year (all of my hostas are from a friend who can't grow them due to the deer in their yard).

I also need to mulch heavier. I have weeds coming up in the exposed soil spots in my veggie garden.

Notes for July 26, 2007

The family schedule has prevented me from doing much anything lately. Hopefully tonight I plan on cutting the grass and watering the gardens. I would like to do more but that depends on the weather (normal possible thunderstorms) and how much energy I have and how bad the mosquitoes are. I would like to continue planting the garden edging I have had laid out for a while now. And I have some perennial seedlings still yet to plant.

I did pick cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and onions last night and I noticed that I have a regular tomato getting ripe (my first this year). When it looks like I have picked all my onions, I will dig up or I should say sift through the soil and see if there are any I missed. But that won't be for a few weeks.

Notes for July 24, 2007

I emptied 0.3" of rain from the rain gauge last night. Rather disappointing.

Lately I have been observing the different daylillies in bloom in my area. There are three types that have caught my eye. There is one that is the same color as the most common orange but this one has a double layered bloom and is slightly frilly. Very pretty. One is a yellow but is more mellow than the yellow stella that has aleady bloomed. The third is an orange color that reminds me of an orange creamsicle. I'm going to have to try to find these.

Notes for July 23, 2007

It's raining today and its a Monday. Normally that gets people down, except gardeners who haven't had any measurable rain in two weeks. Yea!

Didn't get to any new stuff this past weekend, too much on the family calendar. I did pick cherry tomatoes and cucumbers twice and was able to cut the grass on Friday evening.

My fourth daylilly is in bloom but there won't be a picture. It's another red one like just bloomed last week.

Notes for July 20, 2007

Here is a pic of the third of five daylillies I purchased and planted last fall. Its now in bloom and as you can see its red. A beautiful red. The fourth looks like its going to bloom next week and the fifth has yet to form buds.

I emptied 0.1" from the rain gauge last night and there was nothing in it to empty this morning. Looks like I will be watering tonight. In the last several days we have had brief showers and a bundle of thunder but it never rained hard enough to wet the ground under the trees.

I also need to cut the grass in the backyard as well as pick some cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.

Notes for July 18, 2007

I did pick veggies last night. I picked several cucumbers and cherry tomatoes.

My cucumbers I start from seed right in the ground and I try to buy and use only seedless/burpless cucumbers. I try to plant them around Memorial day weekend here in southern NJ. I plant the vine type and plant them along a 5 ft high fence for them to climb, but I am constantly putting the vines along the fence and away from the outer fence and or the tomato plants. I usually have to walk on both sides of the vines to spot the cukes and normally have to walk back on the first side and pick again the ones I couldn't see. The 5 ft fence is about a foot and a half inside my outer fence.

Notes for July 17, 2007

I did finish mulching last night. So everything I wanted to get mulched this year, is now mulched.

I watered the vegetable garden and the flower beds last night. I will need to pick tomatoes and cucumbers tonight.

I now have another daylilly in bloom and it is a dark red. I hope to have a picture later this week. Of the five I purchased and planted last fall, it is the third daylilly to bloom. The fourth has buds but the fifth does not.

I weeded the onions again and picked around 8 onions whose stems were brown. That's when I pick them (or rather dig them out) is when their stem turns all brown. They were all medium size. Now they are sitting on the picnic table for the outside to dry out a little (or at least until the stem breaks off easy). The mulch I used on the onions was grass clippings which turned out to be very weedy. Since the onions are closely planted, I guess I will stick to leaf mulch next year.

I started to plant more garden edging but the mosquitoes in my ears were too much. I should have gone into the shed and used the skin so soft that's in my fishing box but I was also tired of the sweat dripping down onto my glasses (the hat I was wearing wasn't doing a very good job of soaking up the sweat). The edging is for a third flower bed planned. I have enough edging for a fourth and that will be next.

Mulch, mulch, mulch

During the first part of the weekend, I got out of the way the required routine chores (trimmed the suckers off the tomato plants, tied the tomato plants and cut the grass). Then I worked on my "to do" list. I did alot of mulching this weekend (but I still have more). That picture I recently posted of a daylilly, you can see bare earth in the picture but I finally got that flower bed mulched. I use my compost pile of ground up leaves and grass clippings.

Before I could mulch some areas I had to weed the flower bed, so I did some weeding too. The buckets of pulled up weeds also went to the compost pile and are on the bottom of next years pile. I also did some trimming to the mini white rose (the one that grows like a weed), trimmed the forsythia and pulled out every bit of mint I found in this one evergreen bed. I am sure I missed some and it will come back. Every year or two I pull the heck out of it and it comes back. I enjoy its smell. I also found a hosta I thought I had lost. I hadn't it was just under the weeds.

I picked a bunch of cherry tomatoes and my first two cucumbers this weekend.

Sunday I planted about half of the perennial seedlings that I started back in April (indoors). About a month ago I moved them outside and they have been sitting on a small table near my veggie patch since. I did learn one thing this year about starting seeds. The plants where the grow light was closest looked the healthiest. So next year I will sit the grow light right on top of the seedlings. Not sure what perennials I will try next year but I am sure to grow my tomatoes and peppers next year. Anyway, I planted Centaurea, Agastache Rupestins, Primrose, pyrethrum and pincushion. I had chose these based on growing height, soil type and sun light requirements that fit my yard (mostly shade and poor sandy soil, although I have a couple of spots that a couple of hours of good sunlight). With each plant I mixed in a trowel full of composted horse manure. I have a bucket and a half left. I get a truck full each spring mainly to use in the veggie garden and then use the rest in flower beds as the summer progresses. Tonight I hope to finish mulching.

Notes for July 13, 2007

The picture is of another daylilly in bloom. Of the five I purchased and planted last fall, this is the second to bloom. There are two more with buds but the fifth does not have buds yet.

I did walk through my garden last night and did see that the beets have germinated, I just had to look closer (its easy to see germinating beans from further away). I also saw plenty of tomato suckers that need to be trimmed and numerous cherry tomatoes getting ripe.

My peppers are doing worse than they usually do. Every year at this home, I don't get peppers until September. This year the plants don't even look good. Has anyone out there had the same problem of no peppers until September? Is it something lacking in my soil? Or is it just the fact that my garden doesn't get but about 3-4 hours of good sunlight?

Notes for July 12, 2007

I emptied 0.25 inches from the rain gauge this morning. I guess I will have to water either tonight or tomorrow (I water by hand using a wand sprayer). I like to use the rule of thumb that I read somewhere that tomato plants like two inches of rain a week. So I try to water every three or four days.

I did notice numerous cherry tomatoes getting ripe yesterday, YEA! I have at least 12 cherry tomato plants. That's how many I bought, but every year I have tomato plants that come up on their own from the tomatoes I let drop on the ground due to bad spots etc. So I've got a bunch more cherry tomato plants than I bought.

This morning when I emptied the rain gauge I did notice that the row of green beans AND the small row of LIMA BEANS I planted on Saturday has germinated. WOW! I couldn't tell if the beets I planted had germinated but then again the are much smaller and I didn't look that close. The Lima Beans are encouraging to me. I am glad to see the much better germination over the two earlier that were very poor. But it could be a combination of the larger seed and the warmer temperatures that gave a much better germination this time.

Freebies

It's free, as long as you don't consider the time required as an expense. This year I have found several different places for free stuff, locally.

There is a website craigslist.org that is a bulletin board for all sorts of things for sale, employment etc. This website has numerous localized versions, and of course there is one for my area (south jersey). The website also has a link to a "Free" list. In this list people post things that they want to get rid of for free. The list varies greatly and of course some things I would consider trash. But as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Some of the treasure that I have found has been bricks and cinder blocks and concrete landscape edging. I use the cinder blocks to build my compost bins. I use the bricks to expand my patio and the edging for new perennial gardens.

Another source for free stuff are groups on yahoo, and these groups are local too. Freesources, Freecycle, SharingisGiving and freeshare are the root names of several local groups I belong to and keep watch for items I am looking for. I got more concrete garden edging from a group member.

I am also beginning to establish contacts in my local gardening world in several local gardening yahoo groups. I have been trying to exchange my abundance of perennials with others in exchange for perennials I don't have. It hasn't happened yet but I feel it will happen some time.

Another thing I get for free is horse manure. I found an add in the local weekly paper about 15 years ago and have been going every year since. They have a pile from which anyone is invited to load. I sometimes knock at the door and make sure its still the same people. So far it has.

Notes for July 10, 2007

I accidentally picked two onions last night while weeding. Instead of trying to re-plant them, I laid them on the picnic table for the stems to dry out. Both onions were a good size medium onion. If they are anything like my onions in the past, they are a strong onion (not hot).

I picked my first and only ripe cherry tomato last night. Since it was only one, it never made it into the house. It was nice and sweet.

Next year I am seriously considering planting a row of green beans every three weeks instead of four rows at once. That way I am picking every week for 12 weeks and then again in the fall. But I think as the season gets later I will probably re-plant with beets so that the beets are getting serious in late September.

Re-planting

On Saturday, I picked the rest of the green beans that I originally planted on April 28th. I picked about one gallon (from two 15 ft rows). I pulled out the plants and cleaned off the beans. I replanted one row of beans and in the other row I planted 5ft of Lima Beans as an experiment and 10 ft of beets as an another experiment.

I tried Lima Beans earlier this season but they just wouldn't germinate. Those seeds were from Parks. The seeds I planted this time were from a local store and were from Ferry Morse.

notes for July 6, 2007

No photo yet for the latest daylilly blooming but my fourth out of five plants I bought last fall has started to bud.

Yesterday I emptied 0.8 inches from the rain gauge and this morning I emptied 0.5 inches. Very nice, but now I will have to put cutting the grass on a higher priority on my to do list (I don't have sprinklers so I only have to keep up with the rain).

I plan on picking the remaining green beans from the garden this weekend and replanting more for September picking. We'll see if I get that far.

Here are two pictures of my dogs. The border collie was put down last fall at age 14. He had to be carried up and down the steps the last few months. The other dog is now 4 1/2 years old and is a find from Petfinder.com. I wanted a Golden Retriever (having grown up with one) and it took me six months of looking everyday and I finally got a puppy.

Annual Minor Milestones

I have a cherry tomato getting ripe. I have lots of cherry tomato plants and so the flow of ripened cherry tomatoes should start. All of my regular tomatoes aren't to size yet.

Of the five daylillies I purchased last fall, another daylilly has started blooming. The Daylilly is a light peach colored. I will have a photo soon I hope.

The Bee Balm and the Butterfly weed I purchased this spring have started to bloom.

Beans

I picked three gallons of string beans last night (I used three one gallon plastic containers). The beans are from two 15 ft rows of beans planted on April 28th. This is the second picking from these plants. I will pick one more time (probably this weekend) and pull the plant and then plant more beans for September picking. From the first picking last week, the wife made green bean casserole, and it was good.