Planting the seed!

When we moved into our current home three years ago I knew that I wanted a garden. I knew that I wanted to plant, grow, cultivate, till, plant and grow until my fingers fell off. What I didn't know was that Mother Nature would do her damnedest to help and to hurt me all at the same time.

Big fat rain, little stinging rain...

It rained most of the day today. After a long day inside at school, the boys are home and subjugated to more indoor imprisonment, they are restless, and I think we will work on the front walkway flowers tonight to get out and enjoy at least SOME of the evening outdoors.

I've got the start of what I think is an allergy sinus mess, and don't really want to do anything, but the idea of putting more mammoth sunflower seeds in the ground is too awesome to waste. They were so much fun last year, the boys loved playing under them, and they provided a bit of privacy for our tiny front walkway. I will be planting in waves this year, so we can have sunflowers until November if possible. There's a local sunflower maze that does pretty well, and I've always wanted to do a "bean vine" teepee or sunflower shelter for the boys to play in.

All of the new plants from yesterday are still quite perky and happy, with today's rain and the biodegradable pots they came in, there's very little chance of transplant shock, so I think they will do just fine. I'm also interested to see if any more really late seeds sprout in the next couple of days due to today's precipitation. I don't "think" there's anything left ungerminated from our first planting, but you really never know.

I'm not sure what kind of cages/supports I will be using for the tomatos this year. I don't think I want to spend hundreds of dollars on metal cages, and I saw something on Pinterest or another random DIY site that used cheap fencing and a 2X4 cross that worked even better. I am just hesitant to put wood in the garden again this year because in my climate it draws squash bugs and their kind, which "could" attack the tomatoes. I also thought about using PVC, which worked very well last year, but that will depend on growth rates I think. 

Will be going to bed early tonight, received word that my father in law ordered a truckload of dirt for some raised beds that he has been mulling over. The work will be extensive, the garden area is covered in warped rotted plywood and we will have to cut down a very bent over oak tree. We will have to remove all the wood, prep and build the beds, and then cart several dozen wheelbarrow loads of dirt into the boxes, as the truck can't make it all the way into the backyard. Damn sugar sand. I'm excited! The idea of a manual labor weekend is just plain awesome to me.

Leggy Tomatoes

Went just a LITTLE crazy today at Lowe's. Meant to purchase only one or two warmer-temp veggies to get me through the summer. Ended up buying ten new plantables, two bags of soil, and more seeds. #sorryNOTsorry

This year's crops are smart. It took me three years to learn how to plant WITH the weather, not just what I want. I have several types of lettuce, a few jellybean tomatoes, lots of nasturtiums, some stubby carrots, a good 2 dozen or so sunflowers for heat protection in June and July, and some green onions, as well as a generous assortment of wildflowers and herbs mixed in. Originally our first planting was going to be sort of a checkerboard design, to help prevent disease and give the space texture. I was going to put string markers down and everything, but my toddler "helped" and it turned into a haphazard garden. I think I like it better that way. :)

Kid2, showing off his belly again. He's so proud of it. 

We also planted beets and spinach with our first planting, but as I mentioned in the last post, we had to pull them bc they were cutworm food. I HATE larvae. So today at the store I expanded our tomatoes by two different breeds, one of the favorite Big Boy variety, and six gangly Celebrity. They are spaced throughout the plot to prevent any disease spread (and because I barely had enough room). Kid2 picked out a very nice sweet banana pepper, I grabbed up two orange bells, and we also picked out some okra. I've never eaten it, but it grows in the summer down here, and maybe my father in law will take some of it. I also thought about some eggplant, I love the purple blooms, but we don't eat that at all, and it would just go to waste.

The best part about buying plants in the late afternoon is that all of the leggy/dying/ruined ones are pulled from the displays, and put on the same shelf, and are easy to find! I love leggy tomatoes and peppers because if you plant them deep you get giant and healthier plants. Gardening ain't always pretty people! The plants I bought today were long, but not long enough to "trench plant". I strip the bottom leaves off of a tall (lets say 8-9" from dirt to tip) bent-over, worthless-looking tomato seedling. Bury it in a hole that only leaves about 4-5" of plant sticking out, and throw some eggshells in with the dirt. The buried stem will shoot out hundreds of roots, way more than what is in the potted area at the very bottom, and you'll get a super healthy, super stable plant. As the eggshells break down they will release more calcium into the soil. Invest in a quality caging system, because that sucker is gonna GROW.  You never know, you might end up with a tree!

Admit it, this would be a REALLY cool problem to have.

I Hate Worms: Cornpocalypse

When people say that they "hate worms" what do you normally think of?

Is it the brown and pink earthworm, buried under a pile of wet leaves?

The giant orange mucus-filled slime-bags from Tremors?

The red pinkie-sized fishing bait that tears up the fish when season's in? 

 

I love all of those worms, the pink and brown lovable earthworms especially. I'm a big fan of super cheesy Kevin Bacon movies, so let's even count the monstrously awful Tremors worms. The worms that I hate? They're not even worms. Technically, I think they are a kind of larvae. And there's actually more than one of those larvae that I hate. If it eats my vegetables, I am an equal opportunity hater. Today? I hate cutworms.

What I originally thought was pickleworm damage to this year's Spring crop of beets and spinach very quickly turned into cutworms the size of the tip of my pinkie, apparently when I pulled up the beets I didn't turn over enough soil. This revelation today made me think of all of the damage that "worms" have done to my garden over the last five planting seasons, and how I can prevent these horrible monsters from making a mess of my garden this year!

I've lost an entire 20-foot crop of cucumbers to evil powdery mildew in a week, nothing in my power could stop it. Thankfully I had a very good season up until that point. The pickles I learned to make were delicious and fun!

I've composted beefsteak tomatoes the size of my fist because of tomato horn-worms. I've nursed cucurbits of multiple varieties through blossom rot and plucked so many baby plants out of their dirt to become food for next year. Watched beautiful flowering squash plants turn to dust under the ministrations of pickleworms, squash bugs, and aphids. Soap spray, Sevin dust, water blasts, nothing could stop the onslaught.  I made some mistakes along the way (if you have issues with squash bugs do NOT put pallet wood trellises in your garden!!!)


Then, there was last year's Corn-pocalypse. It was my first time planting corn. The seedlings were a bit slow, but the stalks grew fast, they grew GREEN and they were beautiful. My kids were so proud of them! I was amazed and inspired by my success with them. Doesn't life look so perfect in the below pictures? I didn't know what kind of devastation I was in for.

I figured it was time for a status report on the ears. The stalks were at chest height, the ears were plump and firm, the ends no longer pointed, and the floss was stringy and almost completely dry. With the awestruck wonder of a child, I slowly opened up my first ear.....to a big squishy half-eaten mess. I recoiled in horror as a giant worm fell out of the space where the corn kernels had been. I ripped open another, and another, and another! Worms everywhere! My bright sunshine yellow kernels were streaked through with digested vegetable matter and worm crap. For lack of a better phrase, I. WAS. PISSED. I was so mad that I ripped up a whole stalk right out of the ground, and then I basically rage-quit on that part of the garden.

At that point, It only got worse. In the ground were these hard, white, disgusting pupae, they were corn-worms that had had their fill of my beautiful crop and had already dropped into the ground to burrow, waiting to turn into adult moths. I checked for more signs of damage in the rest of the stalks that I had left, nibbles here, boring holes there, leaves with bite marks, the infestation was massive. WHY HADN'T I NOTICED THIS? Partly out of revulsion (they're GROSS looking) and mostly out of anger, I ripped up all of my sixteen shoulder height corn stalks, sobbing the entire time, ugly crying, the kind of relentless sobbing you reserve for Ben & Jerry's and a horrible breakup.

I then turned over the entire 24 sq ft area that I had reserved for corn, and plucked every cocoon I found out of the soil. I put them in a Ziploc bag because I hadn't yet decided their fate. I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't know how creative I wanted to get with it. [I'm sorry if you've eaten recently.] I smashed the bag once with my flat shovel, then tossed it into our neighbors trash trailer, hoping the sun would give them the same pain they caused me. 

 

A few days later I had recovered enough  to consider replanting in that spot. It was May, which in South Florida is the beginning of 4 months of 90+ degree temperatures EVERY. DAY. I knew that whatever I planted would either fry in the heat, or be a flower. I chose sunflowers, the GIANT kind, to replace the hole in my heart with their sunshining faces. I also learned that sunflowers provide an amazing amount of heat protection for the blistering summers here in Central Florida.
 

You'd think, after reading this, that no one should ever garden. It's too heartbreaking, too strenuous, the odds are never in your favor. You'd be wrong.
The point of this blog is to convince myself that each failure consists of a new tmro. Each drought, blight, infestation, fungus, or toddler-related gardening mishap can be rectified. If you expect results overnight, (and you plant from seed!) you'll be an emotional wreck in three weeks. But there's always tomorrow. :)