Since the garden has been continuously updated from Facebook I’ve decided to make a single post containing the entire backlog to make catching up easier. Future updates will have their own posts.
Garden Update: (Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 4:01pm PDT)
A lot has happened since our last update. Our snap peas (soilless mix experiment) are in pots and our seedlings are in the process of being hardened off. We also have quite a few new seeds in the process of being germinated. The broccoli are the first to the party this time and we only just sowed them on Monday! We are trying out some new seedling pots made from toilet paper tubes this time around. The toilet paper pots worked great and none of the plants got root bound. A great feature of the toilet paper pots is air pruning. We just wanted to try something new. 😛 We are also trying out some tiny little terracotta pots under domes in the window sill.
Garden Update: (Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 8:35pm PDT)
Found this guy in our vermicomposter. He’s going to be a huge beetle some day. Probably a Scarab.
Garden Update: (Sunday, September 28, 2014 at 4:25pm PDT)
Just got done with readying our soil and planting our first round of seedlings with Hannah! We amended our soil with our soilless mix and top dressed with alfalfa. We also decided to mulch between our rows with rice hulls.
Garden Update: (Tuesday, September 30, 2014 at 3:17pm PDT)
After discovering (the hard way) that our loose cool organic matter made a perfect home for pests, I removed all of our mulch (added it to the compost pile) and cleaned up the garden area big time. I also compacted the areas around our rows and the side walls of our rows to discourage little insects from easily digging into the soil for shade.
Garden Update: (Friday, October 10, 2014 at 5:22pm PDT)
All of our plants are thankfully going strong despite the weather. We thought all of our peas were doomed but three out of five survived and have recovered! The plants also seem to be loving their watering schedule despite how little we actually water them. 🙂 I don’t remember if I posted about this or not but we caved (until I have time to build the one I designed) and bought a commercial DC valve controller and have it set to water for 20 minutes every other day using .5 GPH emitters. I might actually hack the commercial controller to work with the E.C. probe. Anyway that’s 1,800 gallons yearly which is equal to roughly $5 (where we live… and yeah, that’s per year) to water 120 plants worth of food. To put that into perspective, that’s less water than one person will use in a year in toilet flushes using the lowest flow toilets available.
Garden Update: (Thursday, October 23, 2014 at 1:03pm PDT)
There has been a ton of new growth since the last update so I decided to snap a few pictures while I was weeding. On a side note, we just had an irrigation connection to the hose bib burst. We were super lucky I was working in the garden when it happened. (Off to the Depot…)
Garden Update: (Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at 2:53pm PST)
Most of our plants are pretty happy. Our peas that previously looked deathly are slowly but surely coming back now that the temperature has fallen in So Cal. Something seems to be getting at our spinach but we have yet to find the culprit. :/ Other than that though our plants seem to like their homes! 🙂 Oh! And the carrot seeds we sowed a couple of weeks back seem to have sprouted after the rain which it pretty exciting!
Garden Update: (Thursday, November 13, 2014 at 12:37pm PST)
Not much to update on aside from the fact that our plants are all doing well! 🙂 The broccoli and cabbage are getting really big now.
Garden Update: (Sunday, November 23, 2014 at 5:52pm PST)
Spinach and Butter Lettuce from the garden! 🙂
Garden Update: (Sunday, December 07, 2014 at 1:40pm PST)
Our plants have all been doing very well. They have been absolutely loving the rain we’ve been having. The broccoli have all developed visible heads and both the scallions and cabbage plants are nearly ready to harvest!