Garden in the Redwoods

Thursday, June 01, 2006

June 1st Update

The tomato babies have all survived and seem to be doing well. They have been in the ground exactly two weeks now.

Black Krim.













Rosie Romanian.













Purple Russian. The leaves on this one are very thin and finely detailed. I wonder how this one is going to survive the season.







Lemon Head.













Costoluto Genovese.













Cerise Red Cherry.















And the rest. From left to right, Hess, Early Girl, Green Grape and Celebrity.

Check out the new tomato cages! I finally built some of my own after struggling for years with those wimpy wire ones from the nurseries. This weekend Kevin and I unrolled the roll of deer fencing wire left over from building the fortress around the garden. I snipped off the bottom 2 1/2 feet and ended up with a 5' high cage with some tines to poke into the ground for anchoring. They are sitting right on the dirt now. I still may need to anchor these to the boxes. I think I can do it later with some u-shaped nails if they get too tippy. I am very excited about these cages! And the fencing appears to be galvanized so there is no rusting. (Although I happen to like the rusted appearance too. It's so rustic.)

And now for a few more row shots of how things are growing....

Top row. The beets and chard in the front are looking a little ragged. A redwood hangs over this corner of the garden and was dripping rain on the seedlings last week, which tears them up a bit. And then they don't get as much sun up here either. But they'll do fine. With less sun the beets don't grow as large so they're really good. The salad greens are in the last two boxes.

Middle row. The front box has everything but the kitchen sink (peas, sunflowers, two bell peppers, cukes, fennel and bush beans). The second box is pole beans and basil. The last tiny box (barely visible) is herbs.










And here's a shot of the kids' box. The pumpkins are starting to really grow!

5 Comments:

  • my goodness gracious!!!!

    you blow me away...

    looking forward to how those new cages work...

    yeah for you all!

    By Blogger ipodmomma, at 12:40 PM  

  • I really like your raised beds and the drip irrigation. I've just been reading part of your site and I'm guessing you like somewhere near Big Basin, which is one of my favorite areas of California. I used to live in Marin County and I've spent a lot of time in the Santa Cruz area. I had a chuckle when I saw the rats in the live traps, I lived on a creek in Marin and had a lot of problems with them until a couple of gopher snakes took up residence in my yard. Now I just have chipmunk and squirrel problems here in Pennsylvania. Your garden is beautiful and it makes me homesick for California.

    By Blogger Stunned Donor, at 5:18 AM  

  • oops, in previous post, like=live.

    By Blogger Stunned Donor, at 5:19 AM  

  • We are not to far from Big Basin, as the crow flies. And what I wouldn't do for a nice big gopher snake! We have moles and voles all over the place. Fortunately the gophers stay next door and eat my neighbor's pampas grass. We have numerous small garter snakes around our lawn and one in the garden... but they don't look large enough to eat a mole.

    I'll post more about the irrigation in the future, but it took me a long time (years) to figure out how to irrigate the garden boxes without having whatever method I was using clog up with hard water deposits. Our well water is incredibly hard and any drippers or soaker hoses I used would not last a summer season before clogging up. Overhead sprinklers would turn everything white with deposits by the end of the summer (plus water every weed on the ground around the boxes). So I found these small 360 degree sprayers that spray high enough to distribute the water, but low enough to still hit the dirt under the taller plants. This is my second season with these sprayers and I'm really happy with them. I only had to replace one or two. (Oops, long comment... should have been a post!)

    By Blogger sandy, at 11:45 PM  

  • I used a lot of drip irrigation in Florida and I was really fond of the pressure compensating emitters. The water down there is really hard as well, a lot of iron and sulpher and I had to soak the emitters in vinegar every now and then.

    By Blogger Stunned Donor, at 7:31 AM  

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