Veggie Garden Update

I got a lot done in the garden this morning, and finished up by about 2:00pm, right before it started raining.  Yay - it has been pretty dry so I am glad to see some rain.

First, the tomatoes needed some pruning and staking.   The row of tomatoes along the back of the veggie plot are supported by just a rough homemade bamboo frame (made out of bamboo stakes stuck into the ground with a couple of bamboo "cross-beams" running horizontally).  Since there is nothing to attach the frame to the side of the house, the weight of the tomatoes is starting to pull the frame over.  I should have taken a photo of it earlier - you can kind of see in this older photo how the plants are starting to list to the left.

The vines have been growing like crazy in the heat, so I needed to pinch off many of the suckers (which grow in the crooks between the main vine and the leaves).  Some of them had grown quite large, so I felt bad about pruning them but it had to be done.  I needed to figure out some way to support the bamboo stakes so they would sit a bit more upright.  So I tied the right side of the bamboo frame to a pipe that sticks out from the side of the house.

Then I took an old metal stake that I found rusting in the backyard when we  moved in to the house and hammered into the left side of the plot and tied it to the bamboo frame on that side.

So far, this seems to be working.  We will see what happens as the tomatoes continue to grow:

slightly more upright

I also pruned the tomatoes in Tomato Pot Alley and added some fertilizer to each of the plants.

The extra orange bucket you see there is filled with water mixed with the tomato clippings I pruned today.  We read that water steeped with tomato clippings makes a good insect repellant.  After it steeps for a while, we will drain it and put it into spray bottles to spray on the plants to keep bugs away.

While I was pruning and staking the tomatoes, I noticed this:

One of the tomatoes is starting to ripen!

And this:

Another ripening tomato!

Second, I continued my cleaning up of the veggie plot by removing a bunch of the marigold plants.  You may recall that when I first planted the marigolds (which I did to deter insects from eating my veggie plants), they looked like this:

But, before long, they turned into this:

In other words, many of the marigolds have been completely overtaken by the other plants.  I was planning to just pull a bunch of them out and discard them, but for whatever reason, the Moth has developed an affection for them and wanted me to save them - despite the fact that we have more than enough marigolds in containers on our front steps:

The Marigolds are just there to protect the basil plants I have growing in containers

So, I pulled four of the marigold plants out of the veggie plot and transplanted them into a pot, which is now at the corner of our walkway, leading up to the front door:

After clearing out the veggie plot, and harvesting yet more of the basil plants, the peppers are finally getting a little room to breath.  I noticed that some of the hot peppers were bowing over a little, so I hammered a couple of bamboo stakes into the ground and tied them up:

I just use ordinary twine (which I cut into pieces from large ball)
to tie up my tomatoes and peppers

More peppers being staked:

And some new teeny purple peppers on one of my black pearl pepper plants:

Kissed by raindrops (yes, I'm poetic)

Another more disturbing thing I discovered while I was doing all this pruning and cleaning is that the stems of my zucchini plant (closest to the ground) looked as though someone had been chewing on them.  After some internet research, I realized this was probably not a furry pest, but an insect.  Maybe a cucumber beetle or squash vine borer.  There's a lot of different advice on how to combat them, but this is what I decided to do in the end:

I cut into the affected area with a sharp knife.  Any disgusting insects that crawled out (of which there were many) I shmooshed and killed.  Then, I sprinkled the vine with Diamotaceous Earth (which I had purchased on Amazon previously because I read it was a good insect repellant and/or killer).  Then, I sprayed with hot pepper spray, buried the vines with moist soil and then sprinkled again with DE. This is how the area looked after all of my machinations. 

I hope I'm not too late and the evil bugs have not already killed my plant.  We will see.  For good measure, I sprinkled the rest of the veggie plot, including the squash plant, with DE and sprayed some hot pepper spray.  Of course, a couple of hours later it rained, so it may all have to be reapplied.

Finally, I pulled up some very small onions that I have interplanted throughout the garden:

I was hoping they would be a bit bigger by now, but - okay - we will just call them red scallions.  How about that?  They are supposed to cure for a while before using - at least according to the internet.  Although, since I'm not exactly planning to store them for the long cold winter (this about half of the amount of onion I use for one dish) I'm not really sure if that step is necessary.

Seedlings, and Closets and Trees, Oh My

This week, I'm taking a "staycation" from work, to try to get a bunch of stuff down around the house and garden.  Our schedule is chock full of appointments with landscapers, tree trimmers, and closet designers.

Yes, I have decided to get a custom closet in the master bedroom closet.  I will finally have built-in shoe racks!  It's quite fun - although a little overwhelming because you have to choose how you want the closet configured.  And once you decide, you're pretty much stuck with the outcome, so you have to choose wisely!  I know I need a lot of shoe space and the MOTH needs tons of drawer and shelf space for his enormous and continually expanding collection of T-shirts, many dating all the way back to the early '80s (have I mentioned he's all mine, ladies!).

We have between 4 and 6 appointments scheduled throughout each day.  We've received several estimates from tree trimmers, with suggestions on how to tame the hideous overgrowth in my backyard:

And a couple of landscapers who have promised to provide us with design plans and estimates.  Interestingly, they all tell me that the plantings the builder put in at the front of the house are all wrong for that space.  Most of them will have to be moved elsewhere, or just eliminated altogether.

The good news is, I shouldn't be too sad about the death of my poor tree:

Because, evidently, it was all wrong for that space too, and now we can just take it out and replace it with something more appropriate.  Oh, another piece of great news?  Evidently, there is a huge cluster of poison ivy growing in my backyard like a ground cover, and like a vine up the gigantic oak tree at the bottom of the yard.  That will have to go!

Any free moments in between appointments are spent on garden-related tasks.  Today, I planted some new seeds:

I also picked several clusters of disgusting tiny green insects off my Lettuce (Rosalita) and Swiss Chard:

I don't know anything about insects, but I think they were Aphids.  They did sort of look like this:

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Today and yesterday, I transplanted some of my seedlings into bigger pots.  Here are some different varieties of tomato, an ornamental black pepper, which I planted along with some parsley, and another parsley seedling that I've planted in a pot with some chives seeds.

Tomato Sweet 100 (Cherry tomatoes), which I grew from seed

Tomato Akers West Virgina, purchased at the Rutgers Garden day on Saturday

Ornamental black pepper (from Rutgers) with a couple of parsley plants grown from seed

A type of black tomato I can't remember the name of right now - purchased at Rutgers

Parsley from seed.  I planted some Chives seeds around the edge of the pot

Here is a long view of all the new pots lined up next to each other:

I added bamboo stakes to the tomato plants, so they can be tied up as they grow

These are all transplanted into organic potting mix with a little fish emulsion fertilizer.

Then, I snapped a shot of this little Arugula seedling, which I direct sowed in one of the garden beds in front of the house about two weeks ago.  I sowed about 6 seeds at the time and around 4 of them are coming up.  I previously started some Arugula seeds inside, but they did not do well -  I think they "bolted" because they were on heat mats and were probably too warm.  So, after that I started several more Arugula seeds inside (without heat mats) and these ones outside.  It will be interesting to see which turn out better.  However, since it looks as though my plant beds are all going to be disrupted in the landscaping process, I won't be direct sowing any more seeds in those beds for now. 

Finally, I planted this guy on the corner of my house.  I have no idea what or who he is.  I went to a  meeting of my local town garden club a couple of months ago and several people brought in plants from their gardens to exchange.  I ended up taking home this guy - the person who brought him could not remember his name, but said it is a flowering plant and grows well.  He has been sitting in his little pot for that whole time while I tried to decide where to put him.  Again, he will probably have to be moved in the landscaping process, but according to his original owner, he transplants very well, so I'm hoping he'll be fine.  If not ... well ... easy come, easy go?

Unknown plant from a stranger

 Tomorrow, we make another trip to home depot for more  pots and potting mix. 

Busy, Busy Day

Whew! I'm exhausted.  Today was a busy day.  Although it's been a while since I posted, that doesn't mean I've been sitting around drinking champagne and eating bon bons.  Well actually, I have, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working really hard too!  The gardening stuff has been challenging because - well - you may not know this, but I have an incredibly demanding, busy job.  I commute a couple of hours to work each day and I work long hours and sometimes I travel (this week I was out of town for three days).  Fortunately, the MOTH has been helping a lot with watering the seedlings.  Today I started the hardening off process.  I probably should have started sooner, but just haven't been around enough to do it.  I put the seedlings outside in indirect light for much of the day and returned them to their basement home at around 4pm.

I started my day pulling weeds.  But, not in my garden.  Over the past few weeks, I was somewhat dismayed to discover that the beautiful pristine paving stones that cover my driveway and walkway were being besmirched by ugly weeds growing up in the cracks.  So this morning I spent several hours pulling weeds from between the pavers.  Now it looks like this:

Pavers after weeding - I should have taken a before photo

Meanwhile, I've been wanting to organize the junk in the garage and set up a work station - both for gardening and household projects.  So, I searched around and found this work bench for about $120.00 (including shipping):

We spent several hours assembling it today.  Once we figured it out, it was very easy to assemble but the instructions were so confusing and impenetrable that it ended up taking much longer than it should have.  We also ended up with several pieces of extra hardware, the purpose of which we simply could not deduce.  Anyway, here is how it looked in the end:

But that's not all we did today.  Oh no!  I'm on an organizational kick, so I put up this little beauty right next to my workbench:

I actually had to go to Home Depot to buy a "stud finder" (insert joke here), so that I could attach it properly. By the way, yes, I did attach it myself.  I have never used a "stud finder" before, but it was easy to figure out.  Then I drilled holes into the studs - I used an old drill that belonged to my dad and the big level you can see in the photo.  I have never had anyone teach me how to do this stuff - I've basically just had to figure out on my own (mostly using Google and little bit of common sense God gave me).  It may not seem like a big deal to people who are used to building stuff, but I grew up in New York City and never had any need or desire to be "handy."  I guess what I'm saying is, if I can do this, anyone can!

But I digress.  Anyway, I'm very happy with how it turned out.  I think we could use some shelving for additional storage . . . next project.  Anyway ... here's the long shot:

We decided to add the old clock at the last minute.  This is one of those situations where you almost throw something out that you think you will never use again.  We used to have this clock in our old kitchen and almost threw it out when we moved.  We didn't, and now I have a clock in my garage so I can keep track of time when I working.

In addition to hardening off our seedlings, I also started some new seeds.  My previous attempts at Arugula were not very successful.  It was suggested to me by a fellow blogger (thank you Melissa) that I might try it again without using heat mats, since Arugula is a cool weather plant.  So I have planted some new Arugula seeds in pots.  I have also planted some Rosemary and Broccoli, since my previous efforts were also unsuccessful:

I also planted some Broccoli and Arugula outside as well.  We'll see which comes out better:

Arugula planted outside

Broccoli planted outside

The other thing that happened today, is that we finally got our new lawn mower.  As some of you know, we only moved into this house last August.  Before that, we lived in a rental and we did not mow our own lawn, so I have never owned a lawn mower.  We did mow our lawn once last fall, by borrowing our neighbor's lawn mower.  But, I decided it was finally time to get our own lawn mower.  We bought one on sale at Lowe's and it was delivered today:

We were hoping to have time to assemble it today, but with everything we had to do, we ran out of time.  So it is still sitting in the box in our garage.  I also bought a garden cart from Amazon.com, that still needs to be assembled:

Garden cart - still in parts

How it should look after assembly

Finally, I've been extremely disturbed about a little evergreen tree in the front of my house.  About a month ago it looked like this:

That's the tree on the left side of the house

In the past few weeks, the needles have turned brown and fallen off.  Now it looks like this:

So sad

Based on my on-line research, it seems as though it could either be a lack of water or insect damage.  We haven't had a lot of rainfall here lately, so it could be drought.  I have been trying to water it a lot more.  Today, when we went to Home Depot, I mentioned it to one of the women in the garden center.  She thought it might be insect damage.  She suggested a combination fertilizer and insecticide that she said should help.  I haven't tried it yet, but I guess we will see if it works.