Quick Update

I stopped by my garden on my way home from work and was astounded at the growth over there! No pictures today as it was raining and I didn't want to risk my camera, but I will put some up tomorrow.

In the course of 3 days my peas have gone from 1 flower to dozens with tons of side shoots starting to grow. I'm pleased, but surprised - I've never had pea plants get this big in the past! The sugar snap are about 4 feet tall and still growing up. They've long-since dwarfed their supports. I'm going to need something else to stick in them for support this weekend or they may topple!

All of my recent transplants (peppers, eggplant and tomatoes) are all settling in very nicely. I only seem to be in danger of losing 1 plant (a Wild Cherry tomato plant that is 50/50 on survival at the moment) and I already have a few bell peppers setting fruit.

The bush beans are starting to get some buds on them which is also great news! In addition, I filled in the few empty spots in the bean patch with my second set of seeds so hopefully I'll be able to have a nice staggered harvest this summer.

And finally, most of my squash family seeds are sprouting! I have almost 100% germination on my zucchini and cucumbers. The winter squash is also starting to poke their heads out of the ground (pumpkins and spaghetti squash). I'm very hopeful on these guys this year. I've never had amazing success with winter squash because of squash vine borers, but I'm convinced this is my year!

Potting Up

Most of the seedlings have their first true leaves so I decided that new homes were in order. I wanted to hopefully separate them out early enough that their root systems weren't completely entangled and wrapping around the bottom of the plant cells.

Prior to transplanting:

I think I timed it pretty well. Most of the seedlings had good root systems that were just starting to show at the bottom of the soil mix when I took them out of the cells. Most got put into deep plastic cups with holes drilled in the bottom, but some simply got moved into single cells in the interest of space. Between everything, I've got two flats filled with seedlings that are being rotated between the lights and a south-facing window.

A few days after potting up everything seems to be doing quite well:

These are the early Oregon Spring tomatoes. I hardened them off a bit and then put them on the windowsill in my enclosed porch to test their hardiness. So far they're doing completely fine.

In other news, I went out to check on the rural garden on Friday and did some transplanting, although I unfortunately forgot my camera. I thinned out the cells of broccoli, lettuce, chard and cauliflower, taking the most established plant from the cell and moving it to the garden. I moved 3 cauliflower, 12 lettuce, 4 chard, 4 broccoli deccicio and 4 broccoli waltham into the garden and covered all of the cauliflower and half of the broccoli with plastic bottles. I decided to only cover half the broccoli as an experiment to see which do better. If I lose some of the plants it's no big deal because I still have 6 of each variety growing on my porch.

I planted some spinach seeds last Tuesday and a few were beginning to sprout. Yay! I also planted 4 sq ft of carrots this morning (1 ft each of the Lunar White, Cosmic Purple, Amarillo and Nantes). I sowed them very shallowly, watered and then covered with a layer of hay to hopefully keep the moisture in and encourage germination. I covered the left side of the garden with a tarp and the back half of the right side with a thick layer of hay to help keep the weeds at bay until I plant next month.

Seedling Update

I'm sure everyone's getting sick of seedling pictures, but I'm proud of my babies and I need to show them off! This is really the first time I'm doing any major seed starting. Last year I started a hybrid tomato and broccoli, but that's it. I direct seeded beans and squash successfully, but all of my other plants were freebies that were donated by the local YouthGrow program to all of the community gardens. It's a great organization that gets teens involved with growing their own food. They start plants for the community gardens and plants to go into the large YouthGrow gardens that they help to maintain all summer. While I love free plants, this year my goal was to start all of my plants from seed.

Kellogg's Breakfast shared by EG and Oregon Spring

Black Cherry also from EG

Brandywine and Cherokee Purple from EG

Oxheart Pink and Polish Linguisa

Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper that was a freebie with the Tam Jalapenos I got from eBay

Tam Jalapenos and Organic Black Beauty Eggplant (With some cauliflower mixed in... I accidentally seeded the cauliflower in the wrong 6-pack)

Early Snowball Cauliflower from EG

Broccoli Waltham 29 and Organic Broccoli Deccicio

As you can easily see, EG (from Our Engineered Garden) was extremely generous and gave me lots of seeds to help me out this year. I'm a broke college student and I just can't afford tons and tons of seed unfortunately. However, I'll be saving as much seed as I can this year to start building up my own little seed library. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of fun stuff to trade this winter!

Some of these guys are starting to get their first set of true leaves, which means I'll soon be potting up! The cauliflower and broccoli will be first, as well as trying to rescue the cauliflower from the eggplant. We'll see how the extraction goes...

New Seedling Set Up

I finally got my lights all set up for my seedlings and I think they'll enjoy the extra light.

Girlfriend bought me the shelves from Target and the shelf heights are awesomely adjustable. The lights are 24" and one is cool white and the other is warm white as that's what I had in my apartment at the time.

The babies in their new home under the lights! It's pretty much all tomatoes, peppers and eggplant under here.

My Orange Sun bell pepper plant is once again producing peppers. After these two grow a bit I'll pick them and pinch back any other blossoms so I can *hopefully* transplant it outside. I hadn't even noticed these two until yesterday when I saw fruit.

The leeks are doing solidly and seem to be slowly getting thicker at the base.

The green onions got a little haircut and ended up as an excellent garnish for my salad the other day.

My chives are doing well once again! I've had this plant for about 2 years now and the fact that I didn't kill it was one of the things that made me want to start gardening in the first place.

First Seedlings of the Year

These are the Walla Walla Onions started from seed in their first 3 weeks of growth.

These are the Hybrid Green Onions over the past few weeks.

Lastly, here are the Large American Flag Leeks that were planted the same time as the Walla Walla Onions and Hybrid Green Onions.

In other news, my backordered seeds came, but unfortunately the Southport Red Globe Onions are unavailable this year so they sent Red Burgandy Onion seed instead. I was a bit bummed since I was wicked excited for the Southport Red Globes, but the Red Burgandy will have to do. I planted them last night and will update with pics when they start to pop up.

I'm also going to begin the germination process for my hot peppers tonight. This year I'm growing Hungarian Hot Wax, Tam Jalapeno and Chinese Paper Lantern. My plan is to have 3 of each plant with the intention of planting only 2 of each variety due to my small space. I have my five overwintered bell pepper plants that are currently showing new growth, so no need to start more bells!

Remember That Volunteer?

A month or so ago I posted about a volunteer pepper plant that appeared in the soil/compost mix that I repotted my chive in. The extraction was initially successful and the plant has continued to thrive in its new home.

It even has two babies!

I think this is going to be a white bell pepper, but I'm not sure because it was a mixed seed pack.

My chives and the other 2 winter bell pepper plants.

Within the next few days I'll be pulling the last of my outdoor pepper plants in an attempt to overwinter them. We'll see how it goes!

A Volunteer!

So I repotted my chives a few months back and about 2 months ago I noticed a small volunteer poking up through the soil. I was unsure of what it was so I left it and just let it grow. Well, I ended up forgetting about it completely and just recently looked at the pot and realized that my little volunteer must be a bell pepper plant that didn't germinate this spring. I also saw that it was quickly taking over the entire space and forcing the chives to one side of the pot. That night I sat down and extracted the pepper plant and moved it into a new home.

Before


After


A few weeks later everyone is much happier!

Harvest Mondays

It's been a relatively quiet week here....

Hybrid tomatoes, an heirloom from a plant that was gifted to me from REC and some Blue Lake green beans

Hybrid tomato, sweet Italian pepper and more green beans

More tomatoes and green beans with squash blossoms

The lunch made from the harvest shown above.

A lovely black beauty eggplant (that will probably end up as dinner tonight) and a small Italian pepper

The garden totals thusfar:
Summer Squash - 4 lbs
Tomatoes - 8 lbs
Green Beans - 1 lb
Eggplant - 1 lb
Italian Peppers - 1/2 lb