It appears the cool weather we’ve been having hasn’t hurt the garden at all! Seems it’s all growing great guns! The tomatoes, peppers all have flowers and the eggplant getting big. The squash has these beautiful blossoms…I wish I’d caught them fully open. but there are squash coming, can’t wait for saute’d zuchinni!

Nice weather brings out the other flowers too… Tons of Hawaiian Spider plants, have to ship some of these off to my son in WI.

Need a little more room around here!

It’s Memorial Day and heat and humidity machine has been turned on!!

The ‘maters are doing well in their EarthBoxes.

I put up that netting today and tied everybody up..two of them in the middle were draping all over the place…so it was time to give them a lift! The bell pepper plants look good but as usual, that zucchini plant is getting big and putting on the “squash sprawl – have to move it soon to give it more room. And the spinich is filling out that pot on the end.

I now have two Cherokee Purple plants, the one in the bucket on the end  is the little volunteer plant that came with the bigger one. It’s big brother is the big, stocky ‘mater on the right side of the middle EarthBox.  There are also two cherry tomatoes, Sweet 100 in the two buckets.  

It’ll soon be time to start more lettuce, this time they go in the shade behind the EarthBoxes. I hope to get another bunch of lettuce by using a Buttercrunch variety rather than the leaf  type. We’ll see.

I have one last chore for the day out there…spray some SNG and that will do it for this week. Found a few aphids on the tomato plants when I tied they up, but nothing to get in a twist about…hoping I won’t have to go “chemical” on everything…

Time will tell. 

The weather is messed up…we all know that…and I think the plants are thinking it’s too cold..there’s not enough sun, so I have to set buds NOW!

I have a zucchini plant…maybe a month old, has one true leaf…it’s no more than three inches tall…it’s setting buds.

All of the pepper plants are setting buds…they are less than 8 inches tall, still have their seed leaves…

Most of the tomato plants have set buds…they are not two feet tall!

The only thing I’ve planted that is really doing what it’s supposed to do is the spinach.

I’ve been gardening for YEARS….generally, plants like tomatoes, peppers, squash all grow big and FAST– BEFORE putting out buds.

Now, there are those who are going to say, the plants are stressed, not enough moisture, not enough fertilizer…something.

These plants are in EarthBoxes, they have the fert, the water…the rest are in individual 2 bucket sips, they have the fert, the water…..they ALL have excellent soil…MG ammended with coco coir, perlite…they’ve been sprayed with Spray and Gro…

Is it that the plants think this is FALL and not SPRING?  I know they’re predicting warmer weather this week…but, it’s supposed to be cloudy and rainy off and on most of it…

The plants need SUN…not clouds…

Today it was in the 60s, and a drizzly, breezy 60 at that, making it feel even cooler…I had to wear a jacket out into the garden…what is up with that????

Am I the only one with this issue?

About three weeks ago, I started putting my 2 bucket sips together, filled two of my three Earthboxes as well as four of the bucket sips. I planted two grafted tomato plants – a Brandywine and San Marzano Gigante in one EarthBox,  spinach seeds in a bucket, carrots in another and one squash in a third.  

The spinach is doing very well as are the tomatoes, in spite of the unusually cool and cloudy weather we’ve been having.  The carrots, well, barely showing up, but that’s not the fault of the seed, I’m afraid, it’s that I covered them too thickly with fine vermiculite which tends to dry out and keep the seeds from germinating. Once i roughed up the surface, i noticed more sprouts. 

The week after that first planting, I made a trip to the local nursery and bought a nice Cherokee Purple and a Super Steak tomato, each in 4 inch pots. I planted them that day in the other EarthBox and in two weeks they’ve really grown!

I also bought three little Sweet Million tomato plants,  some bell pepper and Sweet banana pepper plants.  I didn’t get around to planting them until this weekend, planting the ‘maters  as deep as I could stick my hand down into the planting mix, leaving only their little tops above the soil.

Oh, and from the purchased Cherokee Purple – there was a second little plant that I managed to separate from the larger one  and I planted it into it’s own little pot to grow out a little before it gets it’s own 2 bucket sip…it’s already grown beautifully and I’ll leave it alone for another couple of weeks until  I’ve made some more sips. I’ll be interested to see how well it grows – alone- in a 2 bucket sip as opposed to the larger plant that went into the EarthBox.

I have so many more plants to put in, next week 3 cukes in the third EarthBox I filled this weekend, an eggplant into one of the 2 bucket sips and whatever else I find promising at the nursery this next weekend.

As you can see from the pictures, I have a lot of potted houseplants and such in this enclosure too, happily protected from the “tree rats” and stray cats that frequent the yard. 

I also planted two sub-irrigated window boxes, one with lettuces and the other with onion and garlic.  These window boxes work very well for the shallow -rooted plants like these and they’re easy to handle.

Well, that’s all for this week. After my next trip to the nursery, there will be more. See ya!

First, we start with the bucket…5 gallon bucket nested inside another 5 gallon bucket. The 2 bucket sip.

It’s work, no lie, the reservoir bucket has to have a few drainage holes so, put buckets together and you can see where the top bucket stops inside the other, so drill a few holes just below the bottom of the top bucket, this will allow drainage so the top bucket doesn’t sit in water, needs air circulation which is good if the plant roots find their way down into the reservoir – which they probably will!

Once that’s done, the plant bucket itself needs drainage/air holes drilled in the bottom also, so, get ready, it’s a lot of holes to drill! Plus you’ll need an inch wide hole saw for the tubing, (of course this depends on the size of tubing that you will use. I went cheap and used a smaller diameter tubing – which I won’t do next round) But the inch hole saw will work for a larger tube without having to pack the side of the hole with the wicking material to keep dirt from sifting down into the reservoir.

Note: I ran out of the tubing I bought but I had an old water hose that had just been sitting around. I saw RESERVOIR TUBING!  Actually, it was easier to use, gave me straight pieces that didn’t bend in crazy places, and there is a lot of it. Cheap, and hey…it’s RE-PURPOSING!

Okay, back to the buckets:  You will also need 4 slots for the wicking material to crisscross the bottom and into reservoir. Remember to cut them long enough to reach all the way to the bottom of the reservoir, in my case, 4 inches…so add the width of the bucket bottom plus 4 inches on each end.

I’m using Pellon Thermolam Plus, a type of interfacing/batting that makes a wonderful wicking material.  Buy it by the yard at a Fabric/sewing center; it’s about 45 inches wide, folded in half, cut your strips about an inch and a half wide, cut on the folded edge and you have the two pieces for the bottom on one bucket.

I was able to get three sets put together because there’s something wrong with one drill and the other one needs a new battery which I’ll have in hand next week.

This Saturday however, was for the dirt. It was time to get mixing. Now some people will want to skip all this, and if you can pay a little bit premium for potting mix, you may not have to. But I used Miracle Gro and no offense to the manufacturer – Scott’s, but years ago, when MG potting soil was introduced, it had a very light texture, had visible pieces of perlite and didn’t seem to have so many twigs and pieces of bark and hard lumps. I don’t know what they have been doing, but the bags I’ve been buying lately are what I call heavy, lumpy and almost void of perlite, also gritty which means there must be sand added.

For the purposes of sub-irrigated planting, a heavy mix is not acceptable and i’ll mix my own, thank you. I start with about 8 gallons of MG, 4 of coco coir, 1 gal vermiculite (try to find the coarse…I could only find the medium at the local garden center, so I had to make do) 1 gal perlite and the last thing, about 1/2 gal of worm castings.  Now, I have about 4 trays of worms happily making castings, one tray of which I harvested today. This stuff is rich, black and doesn’t smell, mine was very wet, so when mixing the ingredients in the 18 gallon tub I was using, I didn’t need to add any water to get it to the right moist feel.

This is a lot of work, if you can avoid this, GREAT!  I’ve been mixing my own soils for potting plants for years so I automatically go this way. Because I don’t have a car, getting around to other nurseries to see what they may carry and then getting it home, is quite out of the question, so when I was able to rent the van and get to Lowe’s, well, what they had is what I got, simple.

After mixing two full sets of this stuff, I found out it will comfortably fill 4 sips plus some, so that part of the work is done. But there’s a lot more to do before I can get into the planting part.  In a couple of weeks we’ll see how the plants work out.

Saturday, I managed to get the netting on…it was NOT fun. Netting catches on EVERYTHING…your shoes, clothing, splinters on the wood…for a large area like this, it takes more than just two hands, but it seemed my “help” was occupied otherwise, so I just did the best I could and got most of it stapled in place until arthritis in my hands said otherwise. Well, so what are you gonna do?!  I quit for the day and went to my room. 

On Sunday, my “helpers” got started earlier than I did, but extra hands makes a project go so much faster.  So, the netting went on the top rather quickly, and then the 6mil greenhouse film over that, batten tape had been applied to the lumber before hand and then another strip of  applied on top, all stapled down.

The true test will be the winds..which seem to appear with every cloud that appears in the sky…so how well the batten tape fares in holding down the plastic will be interesting.

Bottom line, it’s all done except for some kind of door…once all that is done, it’s ready for plants. Next week, spinach, carrots and lettuce get planted. The grafted tomato plants should be arriving soon and they go into Earth boxes which gives them 2 cubic feet of growing space,  the others can do quite well with a 5 gallon 2 bucket sip. Should be interesting.

Keep ya posted.

Yesterday, having half of the frames put together, today I had the other half to do. But unlike yesterday, when I ran out of 2 1/2 inch nails and ended up using long screws which just didn’t fill the bill, this morning I decided to go to a nearby hardware store and buy a box of nails. I just wasn’t going to fret with those screws today.

When I got back, I knocked out the rest of the frames in no time! 

The enclosure is nothing more than a 12 foot by 12 foot cage, or will be when I get the netting. Another unfortunate thing with living in this city, not enough places to get such items as bird netting in bigger sizes…I HAVE seen it at a local nursery near me, but only 14 foot square and with a BIG PRICE.  Not going to work…so, to my favorite source of all “gotta haves”, Amazon.com! I found a 7 foot by 100 foot roll for around 20 bucks and 10 bricks of much needed coconut coir for the potting soil, also around 20 bucks! Good deal!

The reason I need such a larger amount of netting: it has to cover the sides AND top. It’s the perfect size for the sides and I can layer it over the top without worrying about running out. If I want to double layer for extra protection, I’ll certainly have enough and plenty to go around the patio enclosure (that’s another entry later!).

With the help of my daughter, when she wasn’t tending her chick chicks. we put up the frames like a prefab house and the frame was done! I’m happy, every muscle in my body aches from such unaccustomed labor! YEEESH!

Hoping the netting will arrive by next Saturday, barring more rain, I might be able to get it “draped” and I will be ready for plants!  I’m ready!  More to come…..

Well, today, the real work began.

The day was cold, raw, raining/sleeting/snowing but I had the day off and the frames had to go up.  First, was clearing off the back porch, not an easy thing to do when you can’t move stuff into the open (rain, snow!) But finally, an 8 foot square area cleared, first frame goes down.

This is the scrounged lumber, all solid 2 x 4s and the first of 8 frames comes together.

It took awhile to get them put together, but I now have the two back frames and the two front frames. The front frames are 6 inches shorter to allow a 1 inch per foot slope for good runoff of rain water as the frame will have a cover. I want an enclosure that completely protects the plants from hail and hard rains.

Finally, around 4pm, I have 4 frames and have cut the lumber for the side frames…THAT’S for tomorrow. I’m tired and half-frozen…time to head inside for the day.

Hoping to get the rest done tomorrow and get it put together…then next week will be the rafters and when the greenhouse plastic and netting comes in…that will be an easy job.