JookyG Dot Com

Now that the leaves are growing in and I see how fully the neighbor’s tree will block the sun during the height of summer, I’m worried that my garden plot won’t receive enough direct light to support sun-loving vegetables. My tomatoes last year didn’t take off until late summer, and I surmise it is because of the angle of the sun. Once our local star passeed this latitude, the tomatoes fell into shade, and it wasn’t until the sun returned to a more southerly position, thusly addressing the tomatoes in full, did they start to produce. A late crop is better than none at all, but this year I had hoped to improve the situation.

Tomatoes need 8 hours of full sunlight each day for optimum production. Sections of my garden spot may receive that amount at times, but the shifting position of the sun, and the location of the trees and house, make it a moving target. So I’ve decided to set tomatoes out in containers this year, so I can keep them on the patio in full sunlight, and move them if necessary.

I’m still going to try my hand at corn and squash in the garden area and hope for the best. There’s a narrow slice of earth that I suspect may capture the sunlight sufficiently for my purposes, and that is where I will sow. The lettuces I now have growing vigorously in the vacinity should reach maturity around the time the sun ducks behind the trees, which will conincide with the hottest days of summer, so that may be a boon. The strawberries will be in the summer shadow as well, except for a few hours in the morning, so I’m hopeful they will survive. But all this is moot if the slugs discover either crop.

Due to the damp conditions after I set out the purple sage starts, the plants started getting white spots on the leaves…powdery mildew. Sage is apparently prone to it. A quick internet search revealed an easy remedy: mix a solution of one quart water and one teaspoon baking soda, and spray the plants every other day until the plants are healthy.

It worked wonders! Frequent sprayings over the past week have eradicated the mildew. I have a few leaves that are dropping off, but I think the plants are going to survive, and now that the weather’s better, I’m hoping the mildew won’t return.

I had to re-sow almost all my beans because I planted them too early. The cool temperatures and rain caused the beans to rot before they could sprout, so today I started over. Fortunately I had just enough of the heirloom seeds from Jeff. Here’s hoping the weather stays nice for a week, so the seeds will germinate and flourish!

The master bathroom toilet has a leak in its drain pipe. We discovered this by finding a 10-inch water pimple in the latex paint on the ceiling of the basement bathroom. Behind it was a very soggy piece of 40-year-old drywall and a pretty good leak whenever we flushed the toilet. Nice, huh?

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This weekend I turned part of the patio planter into a hummingbird heaven, by planting fuschia, impatiens, columbine, and scarlet runner beans. I’ve managed to attract a couple to the feeder on the patio, but not enough to make it worth cleaning the dang thing out every few days. So I’m trying the plant route, with a bunch of annuals. I’m not willing to commit to large annuals in the back planters, because I don’t know how much longer they’ll last before crumbing apart. So all the plants I chose are annuals for this climate.

The most striking will be the scarlet runner beans, once the start blooming. The seed went in today, so it will be a while. I built a crude arbor by lashing bamboo poles together, and placed it so that the plants will obscure the view into my neighbor’s kitchen. The bean poles will also serve to shade some of the more sensitive hummingbird plants, like the fuschias, from the worst of the late summer sun. If they survive long enough to see the beans take off.

I’ve got a problematic patio. In the winter and early spring, when the sun is low in the northwestern sky, the patio planters receive full sun. But the neighbor’s roof line and huge trees keep the planters in the shade at the height of summer. Parts of the planter don’t receive enough sun during peak growing time to try sun-loving plants, but it receives too much sun in the spring and late summer that it might fry the shade-loving ones. I’m taking a chance by planting these, but if they don’t make it, I can always replace them once the beans have created enough shade.

Beans (seed) and sage

Vermont cranberry and French climbing beans

These seeds are from my friend Jeff in Salt Lake City. I sowed them in containers against the patio supports like the peas, and companion-planted them with sage. The supports will give them plenty of room to grow towards the summer sun, and will bring some well-needed greenery to the patio.

UPDATE: I planted the beans too early, and the seeds rotted in the ground before they could germinate. Re-seeded on May 16.

Purple sage

With the cranberry and French beans, I planted purple sage, two 4″ starts purchased at Tony’s Garden. I’ve read that it helps beans, but I have no idea how.

Scarlet runner beans

I picked these up recently by chance, not really knowing what they were, but I was looking for smething annual, pretty and vining. It was a fortunate choice. They climb like crazy, which will help me create a privacy screen against my neighbor’s kitchen window. But they also are good eating, or so I’ve hard, and produce gorgeous scarlet blooms that attract hummingbirds.

The beans are planted at the base of a simple bamboo arbor I created in the patio planter. Well, not much of an arbor, really just five poles lashed together. I put plastic cups around the seeds to protect the tender sprouts from earwigs and cutworms, both of which I’ve seen in that planter before.

Spicy Oregano

This is the variety I enjoyed so much last year. I picked up two 4″ starts from Home Depot. They’re an organic brand, locally grown, though I didn’t pay too much attention to the source. I read recently that oregano repels aphids, so I’ve planted it around the allium and daylilies, which are prone to aphids.

Cilantro

Cilantro also reportedly repels aphids. I planted 12 seeds with the oregano and will thin to the healtiest four. In about a month, I’ll plant some more. Cilantro matures quickly and then goes to seed, so if I stage them right, I can constantly have fresh cilantro that seeds itself.

http://www.stoptheride.net/2008/04/planting-potatoes-in-old-tires.html

What a great space-saving, back-saving and recycling idea! This article describes planting potates above-ground in old tires. FYI, the chemicals in tires are too tightly bound to leach into the soil–they never break down.

I’m not prepared to start this project this year, but saving it for next year. Hopefully my new garden will be more in shape by then. This will make a great addition, and help break up the angular design I’ve developed for the garden layout.

Good grief, clay soil is hard to work! When it’s wet, or even damp, it’s heavy. When it’s dry it gets hard. I know, I know…amend it! Well… I’m too cheap and too lazy to buy compost by the bag and haul it home, then hoe up the whole area. The soil’s fertile and full of worms. It’s just hard to work and doesn’t drain very well.

But the hard work is done. I’ve tilled just enough to break up the soil and create small rows and furrows. These are they key to my drainage problem. I’ve planted the lettuce and strawberries (and soon basil and maybe more) in the rows, and the drip line runs alongside in the furrows, then I packed cedar bark around the plants to hold the moisture. I think it’ll work. As a bonus, cedar mulch repels insects, especially slugs, or so I’ve read.

A test of my homemade irrigation system proved successful. I simply connect the hose to the end of the drip line and let it run for about 20 minutes. The rows seemed to absorb enough water, and because of the furrows, I believe it will seep deep enough to prevent shallow root growth. The only issue I see so far is that seedlings might not initially have enough root depth to reach it, since the water comes in from the side, and not the top. They’ll have to be watered by hand for now.

I also spread bone meal along the rows before planting, and finished by sprinkling organic Sluggo Plus throughout to kill slugs and other harmful insects. I’m hopeful my tender lettuces will survive the wilds of the backyard.

I picked up a $5 soil testing kit at Tony’s Garden, and finally got around to testing the soil on the west end of the yard, where I just leveled the pile of fill. It’s not an incredibly accurate test, but seems to be reading about 6.8 pH. That seems right in the middle of the range for most vegetables, but I need to check on the plants I want to put over there, like corn and squash.

Took six days to go from seed to this much growth. Actually, they’ve already visibly grown more since I took the photo this morning.