I think Jeff has been staying up late nights planning this year's garden. Going with the square foot concept we picked up those discarded booth bases from Applebee's dumpster and adapted them for the corners. Once the grid was installed in them, Jeff got busy filling and planting the two in the lower or driveway corners. He's got catnip in both top squares and a variety of veggies in the other levels. Over the weekend he tilled the main part of the garden and measured off a double square foot row. It took 2 days...and most of the seedlings in my tv room but it's planted...with tomatoes, peppers, beets, onions and carrots. More than I thought would possibly fit but the concept is why plant an entire 'farm' row when you're going to thin it to...whatever? Just plant the seedlings or seed that distance apart to start with. It looks very organized especially with the groups changing every foot down the row. There's room for 2 more double square rows for whatever and a farm row for potatoes. Jeff took the plastic off the peas and romaine and is planning on putting corn on both sides to finish the row. Peppers,
tomatoes and eggplant are in square foot groups between the boxes across the driveway side.other. We have 2 'spaceship landing crafts'...oops, I mean, pvc bean towers for climbing beans, cukes, squash and melons. They will be covered with garden netting and hopefully covered with green vines and fruit. The blackberries and raspberries got planted yesterday in their pvc cages. Got to get some net to cover them so the birds don't feast on the fruit before I get to pick some... like last year. The greenhouse over the gutter garden was on borrowed time and was taken down yesterday. It did it's job starting the season a couple of weeks early.
Potato Tubs #2 & #1 (l-r)
Everything is growing nicely in the gutters. I still like the idea of the self-watering gutter system! The potatoes in tub #1 need to be 'hilled' again. We're not sure the tubs will be deep enough to make it thru the season! Maybe we'll use plastic garbage pails next year. Jeff started a tub
of 'compost tea' Sunday to give the transplants a boost. We've used up just about all of the compost that formed this winter mixing it with bagged soil and peat moss to fill the boxes in the garden and Strawberry planter
the pails in the gutters. I'm planning on putting flowers at each end of the double rows, along the driveway sides of the boxes and near the gutters to encourage bees. This weekend we shared our shady spot with one big, fat yellow & black bumblebee who was feasting in the clover but we all ignored each other and lived to tell about it. Jeff wanted me to start putting in the flowers yesterday but things have started to sell in the shop and I didn't want to stop knitting to play in the dirt. I want to finish a sweater and some baseball hats to get in there for this weekend. It's been raining gently off and on since I got home from work and Jeff worked outside before and after supper trying to get things planted. Instead of sitting and knitting I was the gofer bring out the seedlings. I've got 2 hats done in white worsted weight cotton ready for the embroidery to make them look like baseballs and after we came in tonight I finished the 2nd sleeve on a size 9months v-neck raglan from the neckdown sweater. With a little luck the rest of the sweater will be done tomorrow. Since it's in acrylic I'll have to do a hat to go with it. It may mean a fast trip to Cooperstown...maybe Saturday morning. We'll see.
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