Trip to SciWorks

Summer Days!

Fashion.

 Swinging at Tanglewood Park.

 Walks can just wear you out!

 More. Fashion.

Waiting patiently for some popcorn

Plants in, frost coming

This year I learned a very important lesson about my gardening....that the fluorescent lights I use in the garage to start the seeds each year is an excellent setup!  I tried starting the plants in Winston using sunlight and they just didn't respond the same.  Most of the plants were smaller and "spindly."  However, 5 days under the fluorescent lamp in the garage had them looking great!  Because I was rehabilitating the plants I have waited until the last possible minute to plant them in the garden.  But that time has come so this morning I put in the remaining tomatoes, jalapenos and eggplants (these are just to distract the bugs from the stuff I actually want to eat).

But as luck would have it, there is a good possibility that the last frost of the year will be tonight, right after I leave town!  Fortunately I had been experimenting with a row cover earlier this spring to get the brussel sprouts and swiss chard going.  Since the tomatoes, jalapenos and eggplant (all of which are very sensitive to frost) are underneath the trelises, it was fairly easy to rig up a modest protection to frost.  They don't have protection on the sides, but I am hoping that this will be enough to allow them to survive.  Also, I got the impression that the row cover kept in some heat and allowed the sprouts and chard to really take off....hopefully a few days under the row cover will allow the plants to continue the excellent progress they've started under the fluorescent lights.

Just because...

  5 cows and a Congressman

Drank too much coffee and had to get checked out by the doc on site.

 Just so stinkin cute

Garden Insanity

Its that time of the year again.....summertime!  As the years have gone by that has increasingly meant fewer students and more vegetables for me.  Being the first week of May, I have just finished most of the major setup on this year's garden.  There are still seeds to sow and plants to transplant, but the structures and irrigation are set.  Here are some photos of the process.

I constructed three trellises in the garage during my trips back over the past month.  Here is the prototype.

 I tilled the garden with the help of my new friend....big yeller!  The white tarp in the back is a row cover over some swiss chard and brussel sprouts.  The shrub that stays in that same spot every year is rosemary.

 The first two trellises in, the row cover off.

 All three trellises in, landscape fabric on the main bed to keep the weeds down, and irrigation in.  The back row will have popcorn growing vertically while squash and melon grow along the ground.  The bed with the rosemary in it will have sunflowers and something else....maybe some of the flowers CJ picked out at the flower store the other week.  The main bed already has seeds sown for purple speckled limas, gourds and okra.  I will transplant some tomato, jalepeno, eggplant and tomatillo before I head back to WS.

 Swiss chard in the front, brussel sprouts in the back.