sb158's Valley Garden » Lettuce

Did you say kvas?

sb158 — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:46:29 +0000

I know it’s been too long. I have been gardening – in the 90+ heat and humidity – which is why I haven’t been blogging. When I’m done for the day, all I want is a shower and a rest! Still house-hunting, too. We’ve seen some nice houses, just not “THE” house yet.

Lots going in in the garden, as you’d expect this time of year.

The volunteer tomatoes keep pumping out fruit; I’ve collected more than 4 3/4 lbs of tomatoes so far. And they taste so good! My under-the-shade lettuce is still hanging in there, but I doubt for much longer. Now that I’ve gotten rid of the stupid little green caterpillars and the snails, we actually get to eat some of it.

BTW, that Sluggo snail and slug stuff works. I’m finding dead snails all over the place.

I have a few cukes almost ready to pick, some zucchini getting there, and even a watermelon, some cantaloupes, and another kind of melon coming along. Would have had some green beans, but bean borers keep getting into them.

Oh, if you’re still wondering…in my previous two posts, I mentioned using Gold Bond medicated powder to dust the cucumber and melon leaves to keep the cucumber beetles from killing them. It sure seems to work. We had a couple of rains, which washed it off. If I forgot to reapply, I had holes in the leaves. This reminded me very quickly, for sure. I kept the plants dusted for about two weeks, then decided to stop and see what happened. They must have migrated to somebody else’s garden, because I haven’t found any new holes in several days.

I planted another succession square of bush beans recently. One day I noticed ants crawling up the stems from under the mulch, and the poor seedling looked nearly sucked dry and dead. Next day, I noticed the ants on the next bean seedling over. I happened to have the powder in my hand, so I just dumped some down around the stems of the affected plants. Figured it would annoy the ants, if nothing else. Let me tell you, they did not like that at all. Acted like I had dumped poison on them. So naturally I dumped some around the stems of the rest of the beans too. No more problems with ants in the beans. Cool, huh? Too late for the first two seedlings, but the rest are okay so far.

I still wander on over to Gardenweb every so often. Popped in on the Organic Gardening forum recently and saw a post titled One of the best recipe 2. I figured any topic that needed two threads had to be interesting, so started reading at the beginning. The Original Poster is a girl in Russia, who uses a traditional Russian drink she calls kvas to water her plants. It’s essentially 6 Tbsp rye flour, 2 Tbsp molasses mixed in a gallon of water from which you have let the nasty stuff evaporate for 24 hrs. You put it in a closed jug, shake it frequently, and do not open for 3 days. The stuff ferments into something that Russians swear is very healthy for you to drink. Apparently plants think so too.

I gave it a try, thinking it surely couldn’t hurt. Go read the thread(s) and decide for yourself, but I gotta tell you, my garden sure seems to love the stuff. I foliar feed it at 1 cup per gallon in my sprayer, sometimes combining with cornmeal tea, baking soda spray, or garlic/pepper tea as necessary, about twice a week so far. Plants looks so much greener, seem more able to handle the heat, and seem to be making more fruit than previously. All in all, the garden is doing much better (knock on wood) than it did last year.

In conjunction with our house-hunting, I’ve been doing lots of garden-related reading to help me decide what kind of a garden I want when we actually do get a house. Yes, I’m still daydreaming about it…

I’ve come across some very interesting ideas, about which I will post soon. Until then…

Garden Update

sb158 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:05:40 +0000

I took some new pics today, as promised, to see what a difference some rain makes. I gotta say, I need to take more macro photos, as I did not see all the bugs on the plants with my old, half-blind eyes. It’s a good thing the garden is scheduled for a bath tonight, anyway, unless it stays too hot.

Pics within:

Speaking of hot, can you believe this temperature? It comes straight off my local TV station’s Desktop weather thingy, so I ain’t lying…

Heat Index 107? Gimme a break, already!

Got a couple baby cantaloupes, which makes me very happy. Love these things.

And a baby watermelon, which made Hubby very happy.

Finally seeing pepper blossoms. This one is Lilac Bell.

My lone surviving Sesame plant is blossoming. Isn’t it pretty? I thought it would look nice against the purple basil in the background.

A garden overview

The container with Blackie, lavender, and lantana is looking good.

Lastly, my inside-under-lights lettuce, since it’s too hot outside. It’s growing better since I added a jury-rigged drip waterer, made of a water bottle with a hole poked in it, and fish tank valves and tubing. Working so far. The bigger plants were planted a while ago, the smaller ones shortly before I went to CoSpr, and last night I just planted some more seeds.

I had a bunch of things I wanted to do outside today, but with this heat, not happening. Not quite ready to die of heatstroke just yet…
I need to lift up most of the landscape fabric and put plastic underneath the seams, then tack it down better. Didn’t have time before I went to CoSpr to do it right. After that’s all fixed, I need to get some edging to go around the garden area, to hold in the mulch that should be there.
Hubby brought me a big blue pvc barrel, to which I want to hook a makeshift drip irrigation system for the raised bed, after which I can finally mulch that, too.
And we need to do some cleanup and rearranging in the yard, so that we can move Hubby’s picnic table to a better place, closer to the grill and out of the middle of the yard…LOL! Sigh…how long till winter?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. While I was out trimming the runaway cucumber vine, I found 2 ripe cukes that had grown down behind the back wall of the garden. My first official harvest! As hubby said, nothing like $500 cucumbers…

EDIT: Hot or not, I went out and bathed the garden with Murphy’s Oil Soap, baking soda, and a wee little bit of my puppy’s flea shampoo. Hopefully washed off and/or killed all those nasty buggies I hadn’t noticed before. Garden looks happier, though it could just be from getting a nice cool shower after a REALLY hot day. Always makes me happier, anyway…

Bean Cages and Lettuce Boxes

sb158 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:41:39 +0000

When I posted last night, I said I’d build a Bean Cage in the next few days, but I had to do it today. It’s been a while since I grew bush beans, and I forgot how fast they grow. When I checked on them today, the first sprouts had already grown as tall as the little green cages. My cage isn’t pretty, but I do hope it works.

Here are a couple pics of my pitiful-looking bean cage. Here’s hoping it works better than it looks.

I’ve mentioned before that I was going to try growing lettuce in the house, under lights, since it’s already too hot to plant it outside. I transplanted the lettuce babies into the window box yesterday and put them under lights. I did a bit of digging on Gardenweb, and found this post, which was very helpful. Now I just have to remember to cover the babies every night. I set the alarm on my phone to remind me. Only filled up part of the box, and planted some seeds in another part, to start my succession crop. Left some room for more seeds in a few weeks. If it works out, I hope to have enough lettuce to keep me going all summer. Wish me luck! I’ll let you know how it goes, eventually.

Oh yea, just remembered. I’ve never had much luck sprouting chives, or any other allium seed, but I finally did it. I used the damp-paper-towel-in-the-baggie method, and put the baggie in the butter compartment of my fridge for about 2 wks. Then I took them out, and sowed them in a plastic baked goods container from the grocery store. Kept the lid closed, but didn’t put the container on the rope lights, just sat it on the shelf. Lo and behold, in a few days, much to my amazement, I actually had chive seedlings! Cool, huh?

Not much else today. Going to start some flower seeds for my containers, now that most of the veggies are done, for now. Just think, I get to do this all over again, along about the end of June, for my fall garden.