Updates

The one really big strawberry is just starting to get red!! I was very interested to see how all of this went, and it seems to be strait forward. Whats more interesting is that two of the five strawberry plants have 3-5 strawberries with quite a few more blooms. One of the others has 5-7 blooms that will be strawberries, and two of them have NOTHING in the way of blooms and or fruit. Both (one being the topsy turvy) seem to be healthy and green, just no fruit. I guess everyone moves at their own pace :)


On to phototropism. The broccoli are back at it. After staking them yesterday afternoon with bamboo stakes and zip ties, they are now moving back in the right direction from soil to top. All of them seemed to be without damage to the base of the stem, and there was very little work related to getting them to stand up against the bamboo without shackeling them to the support.


This is a photo of the broccoli just after it was staked, you can see that unlike the photo above, this plant needs to orient itself back towards the sun.


Here is the full line of plants that after I got done staking them. When all was said and done, I ended up staking all 8 (two in the adjunct flower bed) as 5 of them were completely down, and two of them were leaning. Once everything is said and done I am guessing all of these plants are going to jog at this location as all of the stem will not re-orient itself having little to no photo-reliant needs.

We shall see I guess.

Phototropism At Its Best

So most of the broccoli has fallen over, all but 3 instead of 3. I love the resilience of plants, and how they just automatically readjust. Here are some pics of the plants bending back up towards the light. The great part: at least two of these blew over this morning. Also notice: None of the stems are actually touching the ground. I will be heading to the nursery tomorrow to check on solutions.

Some Other Pics

Here are some other pics of the plants that seem to be producing fruit. From top to bottom: Jalapeno, 2 Czech heirloom tomato plants, and of course the strawberry. There are at least 8 new tomatoes growing on this plant roughly 12 other flowers that will become tomatoes already.

Sneaky Strawberries and Knocked Down Broccoli

Strawberries are sneaky little devils. Little did I know that I had 3 or 4 of these babies growing on the under side of one of the strawberry plants in the garden. Now all I am going to have to do is figure out when to pick these babies off, and to do that without destroying the plant in the process. Whats more interesting is it seems that the plants thats are blooming are the ones that are in the garden, and not the one in the topsy turvy, or in the adjunct pots in my yard. Those two plants are in the organic potting soil, and the garden soil is a different makeup. I am now wondering if maybe the PH and or sunlight has something to do with the lack of fruit on those two. It will be interesting to see how those play out over the next few weeks when these plants are supposed to be fruiting.

The second, and more disturbing item, is that three of the broccoli plants have toppled over. I have been watching these plants shoot up to become very tall over the past week or so. While this has been happening I had been wondering how these plants supported themselves with their seemingly top heavy nature.

Well, they dont do it very well. As of last night, 3 of the 7 have toppled. Whats more interesting, is that in my research on the internet, there is little mention of the plants toppling over. Most everything I have read states that broccoli develops hearty thick stems that help support a somewhat top heavy plant. The only thing I have come up with so far is that these plants do very well in cool wet climates, and with the weather we have been having, they have grown too much vertical, and not enough horizontal. So, I am going to get some dowells and ties this weekend and see if I can prop some of these plants up to see if they will survive.

First Fruit!!

Things are really progressing. The plants that seem to be doing the best ironically are the ones we spent the most money on. They may also have been closer to flowering then the others, but we have flowers on both grape plants, both hybrid tomato plants, and all of the strawberry plants.

It makes me feel like I might not actually screw these plants up :) Other then that there isnt much going on. The plants seem to be getting big and hearty (especially the burpee's) and some of the other plants are distinguishing themselves from the rest.


The best part is that one of the tomato plants has a small tomato started!! Its very nice to see those first visual accomplishments coming through. If things work out they way they look to be, these heirloom tomato hyrbrids are going produce quite a bit of fruit, and end up being pretty bushy. The good news on the bushiness is that we should hopefully not need to use cages on these two plants. We shall see how it works out, I can see already that we are going to have to put cages on all of the other tomato plants.

I will update on this fruit and any other fruits I see coming up soon. We are supposed to be getting some good rain over the next few days, so that should help exponentially with the flowering and fruiting.

Strawberry Flowers

We are moving along through week 3 in the garden and there is some pretty good growth with the four strawberry plants. All of them have flowers growing on them, and one has upwards of 6 going!! I am definitely noticing that as the weather warms up and the ground is drying out, that these plants seem to suffer more from a lack of moisture then any of the others planted. I have been letting the plants indicate when they need water (droopiness, curling leave tips) but I think I am going to have to keep watering the strawberries everyday.

I finally finished the first and most painful round of weeding yesterday afternoon. It only took 4 total hours!! I think it should be pretty simple from here on out as I will continue to turn the soil more frequently to help prevent the new little weeks from popping up.

I "planted" and matte of butterfly flowers last weekend. I will detail that later this week.

Flowering!!

Blueberry Flowers!! There are a few flowers popping up here and there on the strawberry, blueberry, and broccoli plants. It is nice to have something other then size as the bearing for the progress of the plants in this short a period of time.

I am noticing that certain plants are doing better then others if they go a day without rain or watering. The Burpee Tomato plants and the Jalapeno's seem to be doing the best regardless of the circumstances. The Burpee's especially seem to be developing extremely thick stems. This is no doubt because of the size of the fruit, and its interesting to notice the difference between it and something like a pepper plant that doesnt require the same sort of support.

We had a large storm with high winds last night, so I will be out there checking out the damage (if any) today.

Weeds!!

Weeds, they are everywhere!! Its not the best picture in the world, but you get the idea. I knew this was coming being that I converted this area over from a less then spectacular area of grass, but its seeming daunting now.

So, I am going to have to take a day this week and just spend an hour out there getting the bigger pieces of grass etc pulled out so the plants have the time to do their thing, not fight weeds. Its all part of gardening I know, just the rigmarole of pulling weeds is something I am not in the mindset of yet.

Also, I had to move the Topsy Turvy as I don't think it was getting enough sun....the strawberry plant in it wasn't looking so good. I know the new location will get it FAR more sun, lets hope it rebounds.

I have some flowering on the blueberry plants, I am going to try to get some shots of it today and post that up tomorrow.

The Garden Layout

I know this is incredibly dorky and ridiculous of me, but I am going to do this anyway. Above is a layout of the garden as its planted now. The original intention was to have more of a variety of plants this year, but I decided to try my luck with plants that are a little more resilient while getting my feet wet with the whole gardening thing.

That being said, you will see LOTS of tomatoes and peppers. I tried to go for variety with both so I can see what grows easier then others, and more specifically, what we find works best for us to eat. So we have four kinds of tomatoes, four kinds of peppers (including a metric ton of Jalapenos), and then a smattering of strawberries, broccoli, and blueberries. The blueberries and white grape plants aren't expected to fruit much this year, but the blueberry plants should bear quite a bit of fruit next year.

I will update the chart as things are added/deleted, as I fully expect to lose a few plants in this process, and I will replace it with something else.

Topsy Turvy

For those of you who aren't aware, this is a Topsy Turvy. Its a fantastic invention that grows plants upside down! This specific bad boy was very generously donated to our gardening cause by a fellow gardener (Thanks Jen C).

We have put a Sequoia Strawberry plant in the Topsy Turvy as our local garden center horticulturalist said its a great way to grow strawberries. Also, he said it makes it harder for the squirrels to get them.

Its a simple concept, place the plant in a Styrofoam ring at the bottom that holds the plant in place and then you add the potting soil into the bag on top. From there on out you just water from the top occasionally and fill in more soil from the top as it compacts.

It has its place on the back porch near the garden, so lets see how it does.

Adjuncts to the Garden

Along with doing the "traditional" garden, we are doing a small pseudo container garden in our yard. We are doing this mostly as we want to let the girls (mostly Nora) help through the process of growing these vegetables so they start to get an understanding of how to grow your own food. I guess we are learning together as I am not 100% what I am doing either :)

We have just three plants here: A large "bush" heirloom tomato plant, a Sequoia Strawberry Plant, and a Red Raspberry Plant in these pots.

Our hope is that if nothing else, these three plants turn out to be the best of all of our gardening with all of the attention they should get from the whole family (even Hank as you can see). We are not expecting too much from the raspberry plant this year, but with the fence nearby we should be able to get some good vines going this year that will lead to a bountiful volume of raspberries next year.

Topsy Turvey information tomorrow......

That Dirt Is Now A Garden

In a spur of the moment decision, the family trekked to Gethsemane Gardens in Andersonville. There were plenty of choices in Tomatoes, Peppers, Raspberries, Broccoli, and Strawberries. I am not going to get into what I have planted so far, as I will leave that for this week. However, I will say that it was a LONG day, and we are going to have a ridiculous amount of Tomatoes and Peppers when this is all done.

Above is a picture of the fully planted garden. All you can really make out at this point is some rows of a plants and a few flowers. The few flowers are Marigolds. It turns out that Marigolds are good at attracting Ladybugs. Ladybugs like to eat aphids. Aphids like to eat vegetable/fruit plants, so the Marigolds are the guardians of the garden so to speak. In an added bonus, Marigolds apparently have a certain scent that rabbits dislike, so we have that going for us as well. Now all we need to do is figure out a way to keep the squirrels from eating everything, and we will have some vegetables to eat in 2-3 months.

Later this week I will post the layout for the garden as well as the varieties of each vegetable/fruit that we have chosen.