sb158′s Valley Garden

The previous post should have been put up on Saturday night, but I was too exhausted from the miserable heat to finish it. This is a continuation thereof, with all the stuff I should have already posted.

So Saturday evening, I planted a few of the indeterminate tomatoes (ie, Roma, Big Beef, and TripLCrop) after it cooled off some, but before it got too dark. You know, for all the misery and threat of impending T-storm, another front blew in and chased the rain away. So, no rain and no relief from the heat.

Sunday I planted the rest of the indeterminates along the long side of the trellis, as well as some borage, dill, sesame seed plants, stevia, and a hot pepper called Pasillo Bajio.

This morning I finished up all the plants that were big enough to go in the garden. Got some more peppers, cukes, etc, to go in soon as they get big enough. Cukes and cantaloupes will go on the short side of the trellis. They’re outside hardening now, but aren’t ready to face the heat yet. Speaking of heat, it got up to 100 degrees again briefly today, about 5pm or so. What kind of lunatic gardens in this heat? Please don’t answer that, rhetorical question…Still way too early for that crap!

Was going to take a pic of my newly planted garden, but all you would have seen would have been those miniature-milk-crate-storage-cube thingies I used to cover the babies to give them a bit of shade and protection from the heat. I’m sure I’m gonna need those for a few days yet.

What else? Oh, the lavender in the container with the lantana and Blackie Sweet potato vine has joined the bloom parade. And, the sweet potato I’m sprouting in the house for slips is getting a sprout, just barely.

In between giving myself heat stroke and recovering from same, I have been slowly working on my Monster Pot. I put on a few more layers and waterproofed them, then decided to try mixing a little mortar mix in with the joint compound, just to see if it made the pot stronger or broke it! Did my first layer tonight; I’ll see how it looks in the morning after it dries a bit. If you look at the pic, you can see the gray mortared area in contrast to the white joint compound part. I mixed up my usual amount of mud to play with, but it didn’t go very far. Usually I get two and a half layers per batch, but this time, only got about 3/4 of a layer. And it was very stiff and dried a whole lot faster. May try more paint this time, see if it helps. The pot will be the eventual home of my rosemary, after I waterproof it thoroughly and paint it. I’m still debating between a terra-cotta color or some of that cool Krylon spray paint that looks like stone. Leaning towards the Krylon, but this is subject to rapid and dizzying change.

What else? Oh yeah, I mixed up some “dirt” for my first SWC and filled it today. Waiting till tomorrow to plant it, just to make sure the dirt got thoroughly wet. I used Al’s 5-1-1 mix from the Container Gardening forum on Gardenweb. It gets rave reviews, so I thought I’d give it a try. This one is for two Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes, couldn’t resist planting tomatoes with such a cool name. They’re very different-looking than most tomatoes; we’ll see how they do.

I’m gonna put two Heatwave tomatoes in the next one I build. Right now they seem very happy in milk-jug SWC’s I made for them, so there isn’t that much of a rush.

Okay, I’m done for now. Long post already, and I am very tired. Night, all!

Tags: Monster Mud, Square Foot Gardening, Veggies

This entry was posted by sb158 on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 12:44 AM and is filed under containers, Square Foot Gardening, Veggies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.