Derek's Blog

It was a hot, dry week last week in Atlanta.  The pepper starts aren’t looking too great, but I think they will make it.  The tomato plants were probably left indoors too long, as well.  We replaced three of our tomato plants with new plants from Pike’s.  The early girl was replaced by a large early girl start; the mortgage lifter was replaced by a massive goliath, and one of the husky cherry red tomatoes (that I broke when planting…) was replaced by a sweet 100 plant.  One of the unknown pepper plants had died and was replaced by a decent-sized habanero plant.  The plants were given thorough water this weekend.

I applied Miracle Gro Tomato Plant Food to the tomatoes and peppers, two gallons of 1tbsp/gal concentration.  I’m hoping this perks up the tomatoes a bit.

I’ll be taking a bunch of pictures next weekend, but the onions are looking really good.  We will be able to pull some green onions in a couple of weeks.  The onion plants are close to 8″ out of the containers.

I’ve finally finished assembly of my raised garden beg for this year’s planting.  The bed is 7′ by 3′4″.  I decided to go with untreated pine, which will rot away, but I’m not a big fan of the pressure treated wood.  With all of that being said, I picked up 15 bags of soil from Pike’s (10 bags of Garden Soil, 2 bags of Mushroom Compost, and 3 bags of Soil Amendment).  Our soil here is heavily compacted red clay, with numerous rocks.  It took a long time to clear out all of the rocks from the plot, which was painful to do.

I planted several sets of onions, garlic, and shallots last week.  I planted approximately 45 each of yellow, white, and red onions in plastic containers with drain holes drilled in them.  Half of the onions will be harvested as green onions to free up space for the other onions to get moderately large.  I expect that the garlic will yield about 30 cloves.  I really have no idea about the shallots, I just threw them in the ground and am hoping for the best.

In the raised garden bed, we planted:

• 2 better boy tomato plants
• 2 husky red cherry tomato plants
• 1 mortgage lifter tomato plant (from started seed)
• 1 early girl tomato plant (from started seed)
• 7 jalapeno peppers
• 4 cayenne peppers
• 3 random peppers (either cayenne, jalapeno, habanero, or anaheim)
• 2 raspberry starts (no idea about these…)
• 1 strawberry plant (everbearing)
• a row of soybeans
• two rows of carrots
• a bunch of california wonder peppers
• a bunch of mini bell peppers
• a purple basil I started from a clipping from our AeroGarden
• 1 rosemary plant

Pictures:

The raised garden bed from the deck

A closeup of the bed & containers

A side view of the garden

A closeup of one of the onion containers

The next stage of garden prep was to clear the backyard woods of sticks, branches, logs, weeds, thorns, vines, etc and so on.  We haven’t ever really cleared the woods since we moved in in 2005.  Some of the lower tree branches were getting pulled down and broken from the mass of vines.  In three or so hours, I was able to clear most of the backyard.  I’ll be finishing the clearing tomorrow to prepare for building the raised garden box.  Some pictures of the effort:

The backyard prior to clearing

Before clearing part 2 - This is where the garden will be located

My pile of sticks, logs, vines, et cetera.

Cleared junk

Our AeroGarden after I pruned and dried a bunch of basil, purple basil, dill, and thyme

The starter tray of hot peppers. This container got a bit moldy, unfortunately.

Tomatoes growing well

Starter tray of tomatoes, growing strong after 6 days

More tomato seeds (I think!)

This blog will consist of things that I do on my weekends, etc.  I don’t expect that anyone, other than myself will read this, but it will be a good source of information for myself

That being said, Allison and I have decided to step up our efforts at making a garden this year.  Last year we weren’t able to start planting at the right time, but this year we have gone all-in.  Perhaps this will cut down on our CSA “withdrawals.”

We bought some small plants, including one lavender, one rosemary, two raspberry poles, one strawberry, two cherry tomatoes, one big boy hybrid tomato plants.  We also planted a bunch of seeds in starter trays.  We planted a total of 168 seed pods, with either two or three seeds per pod.  After we get some shoots with leaves, we will be keeping the strongest seedlings.

The seeds that we planted are:

• Long Thin Cayenne Peppers
• Medium Jalapenos
• Serrano Chiles
• Anaheim Chiles
• Habanero Peppers
• California Wonder 300 TMR Bell Peppers
• Mortgage Lifter Heirloom Tomatoes
• Mini Bell Blend Peppers
• Early Girl Hybrid Tomatoes

We will also be growing Olympian Hybrid Cucumbers and Melting Sugar Snow Peas.  After a few weeks, we will planting them outside in an elevated garden bed that we will be constructing.

We have also been growing herbs during the last several weeks in our AeroGarden.  We are currently growing basil, purple basil, dill, mint, chives, dill, and parsley soon (the original pod didn’t sprout).  We have been impressed so far with the yield from the AeroGarden.

We also bought a cheap shelf from WalMart for the seeds and plants to grow inside before we move them outside.  As much as I want to like things from WalMart, I find they are always such poor quality.  The shelf we bought was really thin tin with no less than 300 nuts and bolts. Not worth it!  Worst $18 ever.

Some more pictures of the setup:

Updates to come!