New Zealand Spinach first planting

Four seeds planted in a strip in front of the beefsteak tomatoes. These spinach plants are supposed to grow like vines, so we shall see how they fare.

Dwarf Sun Flowers growth update

The Dwarf Sunspot sunflowers have started to form the sunflower spot.

Bloomsdale Spinach first planting

I planted eight Bloomsdale spinach seeds in this section of the garden, adjacent to the Roma tomatoes. Hopefully the two are compatible. Those two sprouts to the left are onions that I had planted last year that did not sprout last year and so I had not dug them out.

Beefsteak Tomatoes growth update

After the risk of frost nights, the beefsteak plants didn't look too good. I am hoping that they will recover.

roma tomato growth update

A buddy of mine was able to differentiate between which was which, so now I know which are the Roma tomatoes and which are the Beefsteak. We had a risk of frost two nights in a row last week after I had planted them outdoors and I had to over them. The Roma plants seemed to survive this ordeal okay.

Garlic growth update

The garlic plants are really tall now. I'm curious to know what is going on underground but have no inclination to disturb the growing.

sweet bed

The book 'How to Grow Sweet Potato in a Northern Climate' strongly recommends using a plastic sheet as mulch to greatly increase the temperature of the soil as that is what sweet potato requires. Who am I to question the author who has the experience? Here is the new raised bed, covered. The corn I will be planting by seed in a few days, the potato I will be receiving slips in the mail in a week.

new raised bed

I built a new 5x10' raised bed for the sweet corn and sweet potato which I will be attempting to grow for the first time this spring.

Water Barrels not leaking!

After the first rain this is what the rain barrels looked like, a check for leaks yielded a clean install.

Garlic growth update

Garlic Growth update...

tomatoes growth update

It has been a considerable amount of time since last I posted. The photos taken were on May 5th, though I am posting them on the night of May 16th, I've back dated the post to better represent the timing of the images.

The plants had overgrown the greenhouse and so I put them outside one morning. Here they are:


There ended up being thunderstorms on that very day with some wind gusts that the plants were not terribly pleased about, as evidenced in the following two photos:




Fortunately, the plants did not break when they fell over, they merely bent. When I planted the plants, the point of the 'bend' in the main stalk of the plant ended up being about four inches below the surface as I buried the plants quite significantly when I put them in my raised bed. The following four photos show them in place: