One Month Later...

Howdy, friends and neighbors!

I apologize for my long absence; it's been a crazy month. So much has happened since my last post! For starters, the strawberries and peas are no longer producing, and in fact the peas have started to die. If you have been watching our Facebook page, you may know that we got quite a few raspberries from Anne Marie's canes (the ones I transplanted this spring are not mature enough to produce fruit yet - next year!) and that I harvested the first of the beets and carrots. I made the beets into a pretty darn good dish: Roasted Beets with Balsamic Glaze, and I added the carrots to a very tasty risotto. Many of the peas went into an alfredo sauce I made. :)

The solanaceae (peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant) have continued to flourish. All of them are blossoming and starting to fruit (although I pinch off the blossoms and berries of the potato plants) and we now have two eggplant - about two inches long apiece - and many tomatoes. The peppers have started to fruit as well, after flowering for some time. All of the above have survived several weeks of very hot weather, with the exception of one pepper: the Thai hot pepper. I think it probably really prefers humid climates, and even though we watered it religiously, the Colorado head and aridity got to it. It was a bummer to lose that little guy, but not a huge loss; I'm not sure what we would have done with so many Thai peppers! The only other ailing plant is a little cherry tomato - the one right in the center of its brethren. I planted five cherry tomatoes, and arranged them like the dots on the five side of a die. The one in the middle is alive, but tiny. I'm not sure what happened - maybe the tomatoes around it blocked a lot of sun, or maybe I was skipping over it somehow when I watered - but it's definitely the runt. I'm not really expecting many fruits from that one, if any, but I'll leave it in the bed just to see what happens.

On to the brassicas! The broccoli are nice and big now, but they still aren't flowering! I'm not sure why this is; they were seeded on time and transplanted pretty much on time, they've been adequately watered and have received plenty of sun... Hopefully they'll bloom eventually. The sooner, the better. The cabbages are doing fine. One of the green cabbages was pretty badly damaged by our hail storm, and lost its apical meristem. As a result, apical dominance was overruled and the plant sprouted four heads instead of just one! I removed the two smaller heads recently, and the remaining two are looking pretty good. They won't be as big as the head on the undamaged cabbage, but they will taste good nonetheless. The red cabbage has a main head as well, but it's a little smaller than the one on the whole green cabbage. Still, no complaints about the progress of the cabbage! The kale is doing great; one is huge, and one is kind of medium-sized (thanks again to hail damage). I really ought to harvest some from the larger one, but to be honest, I'm not sure what to do with it. I know it makes a great green, so I should probably stick it in a stirfry or some such dish. If you want a few leaves of kale, come on over!

I'll lump most of the root veggies together. The beets are doing all right, but they don't really like the heat, so they're a little droopy. I should harvest some of the older ones and use them in something. The carrots are doing fine, though I planted two more rows (about 24 seeds) a couple of weeks ago and they have yet to emerge. I don't like to think that they died, but I'm not sure what else could keep them from emerging. Honestly, they probably weren't watered enough. Hopefully they'll still come up somehow. The onions are doing fine; some of them should probably be harvested soon, as well. I allowed four bolting onions (two red, two yellow) to continue bolting so that they might pollinate one another and set seed, and now their flowers are fully open. I'll have to figure out some way to collect their seeds - it'll be pretty interesting to see what grows from them!

Next, the beans. All of them are doing well. As I said in my last post, the pole beans had some germination issues, and there aren't a whole lot of those. The bush beans did well, with about 75% germination for both varieties. The bush beans also have some blossoms on them, and some of the flowers have already grown pods! Can't wait to harvest those. The pole beans have sent out tendrils, and I have provided them with a trellis pilfered from the peas. The tendrils wrapped themselves around the trellis pretty eagerly, and they have grabbed hold. No blossoms on those guys yet.

Finally, on to the cucurbits! I provided the cucumbers with the peas' other trellis, and they have been climbing that somewhat reluctantly; however, a few cucumber fruits are now developing! A few standard cukes, as well as one lemon cuke. Very exciting! We'll be harvesting those soon. The zucchini and yellow squash, of course, are producing profusely. We have four zucchini, and have harvested from three of them (one is a little smaller, and may never catch up, because it's being shaded by the other three). We have five yellow squash, and two of those are somewhat runty because they were replanted after the original plants died in the hail storm, and now they've been shaded. There are currently three butternut squash (luckily!), which surprises me because I was sure that the ones I replanted wouldn't be coming up - it took them a really long time! None of them are flowering or fruiting yet, because they're so young. The bright side is that they have plenty of room and won't be shaded by other squash. All three types of melons have come up. We have three watermelon, two Tigger, and two cantaloupe (I planted three, but one didn't come up). The watermelon plants are huge, and they are blooming like crazy. One is already producing a melon, and there will be others soon! The Tiggers are also blooming, so it won't be long before they're fruiting as well. The cantaloupe are kinda far behind, so I'm not sure when they'll start blooming, but it shouldn't be too long. The pumpkins...never happened. The two seeds I planted never came up, in spite of my watering efforts, and it just got too late in the season to call Nick about the possibility of buying transplants from him. It is far too late now to think about trying a different variety and starting it from seed, as Frank had suggested.

As it turned out, I actually didn't need to buy more netting. Instead, when I removed netting from the zucchini, I put that same netting over the melons. Later, I removed netting from over the tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers, and now that's just extra. I also added the third layer of tires to the potatoes - again, I got the tires from Alpine Tire Center and painted them off-white using paint from the Larimer County Household Hazardous Waste Recycling Center - and filled the tires with soil and leaves. Ben and I still haven't painted fun designs on the tires, but we probably will at some point...maybe.

I went to ReSource for some floor trim to stake the tomatoes. It was very easy to do, except perhaps for sawing the trim into manageable pieces, but I felt pretty guilty because staking should be done as soon as the tomatoes are transplanted into the garden. Obviously, I didn't do that - and the result was that most, if not all, of the stakes tore through some of the tomatoes' roots. The poor little t'maters look okay still, but it was like I was mauling them! It does make me feel better, though, that there are so many developing tomatoes on the plants.

Well, that's all for now! A whole month's worth of updates. Hopefully it won't take me that long to post again. Until then, my fellow Green Thumbs, fare thee well!

WOG out.

Movin' Right Along

Things are swingin' at Westmore! As you may have seen on our Facebook page, we've been harvesting a pea here and a pea there, along with the occasional strawberry. The peas have been of good size and quite delicious - one challenge they have presented, however, is differentiating between the shelling peas and the sugar snap peas. We had marked each variety, but when the cats got under the netting (repeatedly), they not only disturbed the pea seeds and - I suspect - greatly reduced the number that germinated, but they also took away the markers.  Therefore, I have no idea which plant is a member of which variety, and I have to play a "wait and see" game with the pods. The ones that don't get fat quickly are the ones that I assume belong to the sugar snap variety, and the ones that do puff out are probably the shelling peas. So far, we've just stood in the garden and sampled them. Not that I'm complaining about that!

The strawberries have been sort of tricky - we've discovered that they're difficult to see even when they're nice and ripe, unless you're bending down next to the plants and specifically looking for them. I was a little slow on the uptake for the ones that have ripened so far, and we've either missed them entirely or gotten to them when they're past their prime. The good news is that the one or two perfect ones that we managed to sample have been absolutely delicious - sweet and bursting with strawberryness! Their amazing flavor is also impelling us to keep a closer watch on the strawberry patch for ripening berries - right now, we have about ten on their way.

The beans I planted the day after the hail storm are coming up nicely. The Empress and Golden Wax bush beans are coming up the most reliably - the Kentucky Wonder pole beans have had kind of spotty germination, for some reason. Hopefully, they'll all come up soon.

The first round of beets and carrots are getting big! They are really quite leafy, and I believe we'll be harvesting some soon. The second round are coming up and sending out some true leaves. I'll be planting a third round soon!

I replanted some cucurbits a few days ago, this time using two seeds per desired plant. I'm tired of them refusing to germinate! I replanted one cucumber, two yellow squash, three butternut squash, three cantaloupe, and one Tigger melon, and they should come up within another three or four days. If not, I give up! I also still need to call Nick at CSU to see if he has any leftover pumpkin starts that I could buy - Frank says I waited too long to plant our Howdens; they are too long-season to yield much before the season is over if I plant them this late.

About a week ago, I picked up the next three tires for the potatoes, again from Alpine Tire Center, painted them using free recycled paint from the Larimer County Landfill's Home Hazardous Wastes Department, and stuck them on top of the first layer of tires. I also drove in the rebar stakes I'd gotten - two per tire stack, to hold the upper tires in place against wind, shifting soil, etc. I only put on a base coat of light yellow; Ben and I will be adding some colorful designs pretty soon, to make them a little bit less of an eyesore. After I stacked the second tires on, I filled in their centers with soil from around the first tires, covering most of the potatoes' leaves. Then I stuffed some dead leaves around the inside of the tires (where the tubes would go), as per Louis' suggestion. Actually, Louis had suggested straw, but straw is a lot harder to find than dead leaves, and I think the same principles will apply to the leaves. They will probably break down a lot faster than straw would, but I think they'll be fine for this growing season. The potato plants only took a couple of days to pop right back up through the soil again, and now they're going strong once more.

We have a very healthy population of flea beetles at WOG. I first noticed them on the tomatoes, and now they are also on the potatoes and a few peppers. The eggplants alone of the solanaceae have been left unscathed. Flea beetles aren't a big deal at all in small numbers, because all they do is chew little holes in the leaves. Of course, this is not ideal, because it makes the plant take energy away from growth and fruit production and put it toward repairs, as well as reducing the number of photosynthetic cells, which is where the energy comes from in the first place. I have been smushing the beetles I've been able to catch (not many), but I'll have to purchase some Pyrethrum to get rid of them if their population explodes. However, Pyrethrum is a broad-target insecticide, so it would also kill any populations of beneficial insects we've built up, and that's the last thing we want to do. Here's hoping the population stays small, and that the beneficials we have will help to control it.

We also have some aphids. So far, I've only noticed them on the kale - Ben and I were sampling a kale leaf the other day, and I turned it over and discovered those darn little green bugs. Not a whole heck of a lot, but they were on the other leaves as well. I smushed them all, and so far they haven't made a comeback. There aren't any on the cabbage or the other kale plant, as far as I can tell, or anywhere else. Yet. Come on, ladybird beetles!

I finished the entire roll of netting yesterday. The roll was enough to cover the beets, carrots, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, yellow and butternut squash, eggplants, and peppers. Ben was a great help stretching the ungainly netting over tricky hoops - it was a lot easier to do with two people! The only things left uncovered that I'd like to cover are the melons. Gotta get more netting!

That's all the updates we have for today! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

The Tale of the Hail - and Other Stories

Hello, friendly readers! I apologize for my absence of late. It's been pretty hectic around here - I got a job, and they've kept me working almost every day, so it's all I can do to keep up with the garden, let alone write about it! But I have some time on my hands at the moment, so you're in luck.

My last post covered the trellising of the peas, which involved their (and the onions') de-nettification. Not long before that, I had planted all of the cucurbits, with the exception of the pumpkins. Since cucurbits spread so much when they grow, I gave them plenty of room to frolic and vine as they would. This means that they covered an awful lot of ground in the garden - too much, in fact, to cover with netting. We had enough netting to do so, but we lacked the tubing to make enough hoops. So I just left them all uncovered, with the exception of the cucumbers - they were close enough to the rest of the netting that it was no big deal to extend it over them.

Exactly one week after planting the cucurbit seeds, they began to sprout! I was ecstatic, as the zucchini and squashes sent up huge, healthy leaves, and the cucumbers poked their little heads up. The melons came up more slowly, but were still looking swell. The peas were starting to bloom, and the strawberries were flowering, too. Based on what happened soon after, though, I guess Mother Nature was just having a good laugh.

We got hail. Not a few tiny balls of ice, like we sometimes get in the winter when it sleets. We got real hail.  At the apartment, each ball was about the diameter of a quarter. I'm not sure how large it was at the garden, but Anne Marie said it was really bad. This I saw quite clearly when I went over to the garden the following day.

The first thing I checked was the pea patch. Since they're climbers, their stems are a little more fragile, and each hail ball can do a lot of damage as it plummets through the peas' foliage. Most of the peas had been hit pretty hard - broken stems, tattered leaves - and many had been torn from the trellises and plastered to the soggy ground. The blossoms were still there, barely opened, and drooping forlornly. I wondered if they would open at all, now. The good news was that the peas were still early in the flowering stage; they had not been carrying any pods. If they had, it would have been disastrous. It is hard enough to recover from losing flowers and having to take energy from the blossoms and put it into repairing stems and regrowing leaves - it is much worse to redirect energy from seeds to regrowth. I think most of the peas will still recover and bear fruit.

From the peas, I went to the onions. All of the plants had some damage, in the form of broken leaves, and some only had a few undamaged leaves. A few were bolting, though that was probably a result of the recent hot weather.

Next, I checked the cucurbit seedlings. The cucumbers were fine, having been under the netting. The zucchini looked mostly okay. The four yellow squash seedlings that had emerged were pretty much decimated - it was hard for me to tell where a couple of them were, because they were so ripped up and mud-splattered. The butternut squash were in a similar state. The melons were okay, except for the one cantaloupe that had come up - both of its poor little cotyledon leaves had been ripped off, leaving only the stub of a stem.

The kale was pretty badly damaged. Each plant had only a few leaves before the hail, and some of them had been completely torn off. The cabbage fared somewhat better than the kale, perhaps because it was larger and had sturdier stems. The two broccoli plants didn't look good; one was very badly damaged (and would soon die).

The strawberries did all right. There was damage, yes, and some plants would soon be reduced to only a couple of leaves each. But for the most part, the strawberries looked only slightly the worse for wear.

The heroes of the night were the potatoes. I'm not sure whether the house had somehow protected them, or if their foliage was dense enough that the damage was less stark, but they actually didn't look all that different from the previous day. They would rebound within a couple of days, and would soon be overflowing their trainer tires.

Now, on to the other updates. The day after the hail, I planted the remaining solanaceae, in addition to a few varieties of fabaceae, and two pumpkin seeds. First, I put in the beans. I planned to use a three-legged trellis (similar to the ones we're using for the peas) for the one pole variety we have, so I planted those seeds in three groups of six, each group in a circle around a stick to mark where a leg of the trellis would go. I planted ten seeds of each of the two bush varieties.

Next to the beans, I planted the tomatoes. Although I had plenty of seedlings, I only planted five cherry plants, four slicing plants, and five paste plants. The remainder of the seedlings will go to ReSource - apparently their garden didn't do so well with the hail. Unfortunately, the leftover seedlings aren't doing very well in the coldframe (which is where I put them after transplanting their brethren). I think it must be too hot in there. I shall take them to ReSource soon.

In the middle bed, next to the onions, I planted the eggplant. I put in nine Black Beauty and two Swallow - the Swallow were all that remained of the many eggplant babies Ben and I got from Drew. I have several Black Beauties left over, as well, which are also going to go to ReSource ASAP.

Next, adjacent to the eggplant, I planted the peppers. First, I put in six Gourmet. Next were six Sweet Bullnose, then six Early Jalapeño. Finally, I put in one Sweet Chocolate, one Santa Fe, and one Thai Hot, all three from Drew. I have some leftovers from the first three varieties, which, again, are going to ReSource.

Finally, I put in about twenty broccoli plants, all Di Cicco. There aren't any healthy-looking leftovers of these, so I don't think ReSource will be getting any, unfortunately.

After all that, I sawed off some more tubing for netting hoops, stuck some rebar along the bed where I'd planted the beans and tomatoes, bent the tubing from one rebar to the next, and stretched the netting over it. Then, I staked it down. If it hails again, the tomatoes, beans, and zucchini will be protected, but the peppers, eggplants, and onions won't be - yet.

I went to ReSource a couple of days ago, and got some more tubing for hoops. One of the next things on my To-Do List will be to make hoops for the section of the garden that has in it the onions, eggplants, peppers, and melons, and then to stretch the net over them. Unfortunately, I think the broccoli, potatoes, strawberries, kale, and cabbage will have to go unprotected the whole season - so hopefully, we won't get any more big hails.

Well, that's all for now. As always, thanks for reading!

WOG out.

WOG and the Giant Pea Stalk

Well, they're not giant. not yet, anyway. But they could be! Because, ladies and gentlemen, yesterday was a great day for WOG. Yesterday, I erected two trellises (trelli?) for the peas to climb.

This was a greater ordeal than it may seem at first. The peas, you see, were under the netting system that is currently shielding the onions, carrots, beets, and cucumbers from the menaces we know as cats. Hail, too, but we haven't really had any yet. What I had to do was to cut the netting at the borders between the peas, the onions, and the beets. This wasn't particularly difficult, except that it had to be done without losing tension in the net - that made it a little more challenging. However, I accomplished that task eventually, and the peas were out in the open air! Then, I had to actually make the trellis.

You may recall that Anne Marie and I had previously acquired some wooden floor trim from ReSource, for the purpose of constructing trellises for various crops. I used three long pieces to make two trellises. This required measuring their approximate lengths by means of comparison with other objects (there was a tape measure available, but I was just too lazy to go and get it. Plus, that wouldn't have been as fun). Then, I sawed each piece in half using a hand saw. Not too difficult. I gathered the six halves into two groups of three - the three tallest in one group, the three shortest in the other. The taller group was for the more spread-out pea plants. I chose the tall group for that purpose so that the trellis stakes would be sure to have enough space to reach all the peas and still meet in the middle. I stuck the stakes into the garden bed and tied them securely together at the top, using pieces of Anne Marie's green garden twine (essentially, one long roll of twistie-tie). I repeated the process with the shorter group, and voilá! Two simple pea trellises. The peas should be happy - they'd been trying to attach themselves to the netting and climb up that, but I wouldn't let them. Now, they can climb all their little pea hearts desire.

You may be wondering how I'll protect the peas from our little friend, Joseph, who so dearly loves to fall on the onions. Well, the bittersweet truth is that Joseph, his brother and sisters, and his mom are all going back to Quebec for the summer - they're leaving within the next couple of weeks. This is bad news because we'll all miss them, but good news for the garden. By the time they get back, most of our crops will be harvested and therefore beyond important harm.

For this reason, I think I will uncover the onions. The netting is simply squashing their leaves, which is definitely not what we want. Also, sadly, some of the red onions have started to bolt. This is not good, because it takes energy away from the bulb, which means the bulb shrinks instead of growing in size. Usually, onions bolt because there has been a sudden drop in temperature. That hasn't really occurred; although we have had several cooler days, they weren't cold enough to induce bolting. Plus, only the red onions are bolting, as far as I saw. So, I did some research, and according to this garden forum, red onions grown from sets are more likely to bolt. Aha! I looked into the subject a little more, and this site said that: in biennial crops, such as onions, "unsettled" spring weather conditions can cause bolting. Well, we've sure had those. The same site also said that red onions seem to be more prone to bolting than are white or brown onions. This also seems to be the case, so far. Finally, the site recommends direct seeding instead of the use of sets, and then covering the seeds with something to keep them insulated against extreme temperatures. If using sets, they should be heat-treated sets; apparently, treating with high temperatures helps suppress the formation of a flower stalk. My Google search also brought up a Texas A&M University resource, which supports the other sites' claims that temperature fluctuations are a primary cause of bolting. It also says - unfortunately - that once onions have bolted, the process cannot be reversed. The best thing to do is eat them. Looks like we'll be having some red onions a bit early! Hopefully they won't have the same mold as the other ones did.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Frustrating Fertilizer and the Cucurbit Kickoff

Well, before I get to any updates today, I will share with you the most frustrating garden-related event of recent weeks.  On May 17, I posted an update and a To-Do List. On the To-Do List was to order fertilizer, which I did promptly after posting that list. The name of the company from which I ordered my fertilizer will remain undisclosed, for reasons which will soon become apparent. However, this company offered a very reasonably priced 50 lb bag of organic alfalfa meal, which is exactly the stuff I wanted. In addition, this company is a small business fairly close to Fort Collins, which is a big bonus. I ordered a bag of fertilizer without further ado and awaited its arrival.

Ten days later, I received a rather brusque email from one of the company's employees. This email stated several things. First, it said that the company had never received my order, due to a glitch in their ordering technology. For this, the employee apologized sincerely. Next, the email said that the shipping price the site had given me was inaccurate - the upshot was that my total price would be almost twice what it was before. No apologies or offers of discounts for my trouble were attached to this information, although what had happened could be interpreted as false advertising. Finally, the employee offered me the opportunity to refund my order, if I so desired - or I could continue with my previous order, at the real price.

I decided that I would refund my order and went back to the website to see what the real shipping prices were for other products so that I could find a suitable replacement product. Sadly, the prices were still the same as when I had placed my first order! I wondered how many other customers were having the same issues as I. I added to my email a query about the price of a smaller quantity of alfalfa meal and the attached shipping. The employee replied with the prices, and eventually I decided on two 5 lb boxes of alfalfa meal. That's one-fifth of the amount I originally ordered, and it came for a higher price than what I originally ordered. Through this whole process, the employee was less than cordial, and did not approach apologetic, even though what should have been a quick, simple process had now turned into a bit of an ordeal. In light of the employee's lack of courtesy, I am in the process of writing a letter to our local Better Business Bureau.

Now, on to happier news. Yesterday we had gorgeous weather, and it seems as though the weather here has finally turned for the warmer (knock on wood), so I went ahead and planted most of the remaining crops. The first order of business was to extend the netting to cover at least some of the things I planted, but the net would have to turn a corner. The last time we tried that it didn't work well at all, so I cut the net, pulled it over a new hoop, and staked it down. Then I stretched the cut end of the net over the other net, at a 90-degree angle - thus turning the corner - added another hoop, and staked it down again. In the midst of this, I planted another row each of carrots and beets, four cucumber seeds, and two lemon cucumber seeds. Then I staked down the net and continued to plant elsewhere in the garden, according to the garden plan I created on Mother Earth News's website back in April (you can see the garden plans on our Facebook page).

In addition to the carrots, beets, and cucumbers, I planted four zucchini, six yellow squash, four butternut squash, three watermelon, three cantaloupe, and two melons of a variety called Tigger - I'm very excited for the last type in particular! After I planted all this, I did some light research to see when we can expect to see baby squash and melons. It looks like if this weather holds up, they'll all have sprouted within a week! Then, I transplanted our two kale plants and three of our broccoli plants, plus the three cabbage (two green, one red) that I got from the Starter Barter about a month ago. I'm stoked, to say the least.

On Friday, I transplanted the peppers into individual containers, and they are positively thriving. Next up are the eggplant, which are still somewhat puny. I'll be transplanting the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant pretty soon here, but I want them to get a bit stronger first - after transplanting the tomatoes, we put them in the coldframe, and then we had a couple of cold nights. Three cherry tomatoes didn't make it, and most of the other plants wound up with chilling injury. I brought them back to the apartment to make sure they would be warm enough from here on out. After what happened to the tomatoes, I didn't put the peppers in the coldframe at all, but brought them back to the apartment as well for more windowsill time.

I have thinned the beets to one plant per cluster. I also bought six 3-ft-long pieces of rebar yesterday. When we start stacking additional tires on the ones the potatoes are in, I'll stick two pieces of rebar in each bottom tire to hold the stack up straight. The next tasks on the list are to remove the netting from the peas, put up the trellises for the peas, set up an anti-child barrier, and get more hoop materials from ReSource so that I can extend the netting over the squash, zucchini, and melons. As always, I shall continue to weed to keep those dastardly garden demons under control.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

WOG out.

The Summer Begins in Earnest! ...and in Fort Collins

I hope that title made you at least smile. My dad used to say, "It's raining in earnest! And in Maryland." It would make me and my brother crack up.

Anyway, on to the tasks at hand. There are many! They are plentiful. They can not wait! And yet, they have waited, because I've been busy and then out of town. But now that I've returned from my brief visit home, the garden takes first priority.

It's amazing how many weeds can appear in a mere five days. That's all I was gone for - five days! - but the weeds took advantage of it and were waiting for me when I returned. It's almost as if they knew... So. First garden task is weeding. Ben and I did some of that yesterday, and removed the largest ones, but we mostly just skimmed the garden looking for the big bad guys. Today, I shall expend a greater effort scouring the soil for little weedy menaces. Also, I asked Ben to just leave some pretty darn big dandelions yesterday; I'd rather get them with a trowel to make sure I get the whole dang taproot!

Next, I shall remove the netting from over the peas, which, by the way, grew most vigorously in my absence! One of them is starting to twine its tender tendrils around the netting. This I will not allow, because as the pea grows, it will be forced to either come through the netting or grow up and over the arch that the netting forms as it follows the hoops - this will not only make harvest difficult, but it will also block light from the other peas. the netting must be removed from the peas now or never, because the longer I leave it, the more peas will attach themselves to it.

After I remove the netting, I'll need to set up trellises for the peas to climb on. Some will be able to climb on the fence, but the fence isn't up yet - maybe Anne Marie and I will spray paint some fence pieces today and then attach them, but she has some other obligations, so that might have to wait another day. Sadly, the swingset is right next to the peas and onions, and of course this is the play area of choice for Louis' children, including the infamous Joseph. We shall have to devise a way to keep him off of that side of the swingset, lest he fall on the unprotected peas and destroy the crop. I'm thinking some kind of gate; maybe I can create a barrier using the netting from the peas, or something.

I also need to transplant some of the seedlings from their containers in the coldframe into the garden. Chief among these are the cabbages, kale, broccoli (the ones in the apartment as well), and fennel. The fennel may go in Ben's herb garden; not sure yet. I'll be referring to my Mother Earth News Vegetable Garden Planner for placement of these crops (see new album on our Facebook page!).

Speaking of transplants, I need to put the eggplant and peppers in some individual containers. They're getting crowded too, and even though it'll soon be time to put them in the garden, I want them to get a little stronger and grow some more roots in individual containers.

The beets, as I have mentioned previously, have sprouted in clusters (this is supposed to happen). This is great, because it means they're healthy, and it looks really cool - however, I'll need to thin each cluster down to one plant so that plant will form a nice-looking root instead of a lumpy conglomeration of the roots of all its siblings. This is a fairly urgent task, because the beet seedlings are getting rather large.

So, our To-Do List this week is as follows:
1. Weed!
2. Thin beet seedlings.
3. Take netting off peas.
4. Put up trellises for peas.
5. Construct anti-child barrier to prevent entry into pea area.
6. Start fence latticework for peas to climb on.
7. Transplant seedlings into garden.
8. Transplant eggplant and peppers into individual containers.
9. Plant most of the cucurbits.
- the following are continued from the previous post -
10. Plant more carrots and beets.
11. Extend hoop-and-netting system.

Now for some updates:
The carrots have finally sent up some true leaves! This is very exciting, because these seedlings have been up for over a week with no tangible sign of true leafage.

The beets and peas, as mentioned above, are looking fabulous.

The remaining onions look pretty darn good. There is one red onion that I need to keep an eye on - the leaves are looking a tad wilty, and it seems to be significantly smaller than most of its buddies. Hopefully it's not another case of mold, but I guess we'll see.

The potatoes have finally sent out some real leaves! The Colorado Rose ones have, anyway. The mystery white ones that we got from the Food Co-op haven't sent any real leaves out from their buds yet, as far as I can tell.

The strawberries are looking dang fine. One that had come back from the dead is dead yet again. But who knows? Maybe it'll come back again! I'm hoping for some fruit out of those guys in the next few weeks.

The raspberries are looking fantastic! I can hardly tell which were the ones I'd transplanted anymore, because they have made such a comeback from their transplanting ordeal. I don't expect fruit from those little guys this season, but they're looking really healthy - and I guess you never know. The plants that Anne Marie already had have bloomed a little, so it looks like we'll definitely get a small harvest from them (not surprising - Ben told me he got a good deal of fruit out of them last July).

That's all for now! More updates later. Thanks for your patience as I've come and gone from the blog these last few weeks, and as always, thanks for reading!

WOG out.

Quick Update and WOG To-Do List

I apologize for my recent chronic absence - the Internet at our apartment has officially gone kablooie (like that word? That's a Calvin and Hobbes special, right there!), so I have to come to WOG to do anything online. Also, Chris (my boyfriend) graduated from CSU this past weekend and his mom was in town for that, so I was somewhat distracted from my gardening and related duties. However, now that finals week is over and the summer is stretching before us, there is much more time to spend on said duties! But I'll get to those in a moment. First, a speedy update of WOG happenings.

The raspberries, peas, and beets are all looking fantastic. I recently learned that beets come up in clusters of 2-5 plants, because that's how many embryos there are per seed. I think I learned that from this book, but I can't remember exactly. Either way, the beets are indeed coming up in clusters, and the seedlings look quite healthy. There are still only a few carrots coming up, but I am confident that more will emerge shortly. The remaining onions look quite healthy, except for the ones that got crushed by our friend Louis' two-year-old son, Joseph - those lost a few leaves each, but hopefully the bulbs will continue to grow vigorously. The potatoes haven't really grown at all, but the leaves are still there. Perhaps the seed potatoes have been expending their energy on sending down roots. The seedlings in the coldframe are looking pretty happy. Two of the three garden huckleberry plants that we got at the Starter Barter have died (probably from cold, in spite of our efforts to keep them warm), but the surviving one will be nice and tough. Amazingly, the strawberries that looked dead have sent up new leaves - hopefully, they will continue to recover.

A less encouraging situation has been underway at the apartment - the seedlings there have not been very happy lately. I had been watering all of them daily, but the paste tomatoes began to wilt. After some light research and asking around for opinions, the consensus was that they had been getting too much water. I let the soil of all the seedlings dry out for a few days and watered them all again, and they started to look a little better. I waited a couple of days again to water, and this morning I still hadn't. When I looked at the tomatoes this morning, though, I knew I had to water them - not only were the paste tomatoes wilty, but so were the cherry and slicing varieties! I gave them and the rest of the seedlings a nice drink, and employed my willpower to restrain myself from watering too much. Hopefully when I get home later, they will have perked up some.

Now, on to the To-Do List:
1. Keep weeding! - Bindweed and kochia have shown up and are probably here to stay - but weeding will sure help.
2. Transplant tomatoes into larger containers. - They are surely running out of root space, all crowded into their flat.
3. Plant more carrots and beets. - That way, we'll have a steady-ish supply of both.
4. Buy some fertilizer. - We don't want any nutrient deficiencies!
5. Get more mulch. - Some of the pathways still aren't covered.
6. Paint and put up the rest of the fence. - This will help keep out munchkins such as the aforementioned Joseph, as well as provide some support for peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, melons, and pumpkins.
7. Extend the hoop-and-netting system. - We'll need to do this anyway to cover the crops we'll put in later, and the sooner we protect the onions' leaves from Joseph and company, the better.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

WOG out.

Prince Charles FTW

Even the Prince of Wales is on the sustainable farming bandwagon! Thanks for the link, Anne Marie!

http://washingtonpostlive.com/conferences/food/archive

Enjoy.

WOG out.

The Not-So-Steady March of the Seasons - and Afflicted Alliaceae

Well, we have now had our first truly hot weather of the year in Fort Collins. The temperature has reached the 80s both yesterday and today, after weeks of indecision on the part of Mother Nature. The plants, of course, were surprised - Anne Marie has been extremely helpful, keeping the garden soil moist so nothing would get too hot. I think the strawberries in particular were shocked; several of them have wilted in the past couple of days, in spite of Anne Marie's watering efforts (supplemented by my own). The peas and onions seem unaffected by the shift in the weather - the same goes for the seedlings over in the area of the beets and carrots. Everything in the coldframe is at a slightly greater risk of heat stress (and water stress) than the plants that are actually in the garden, because the babies in the coldframe have access to a very limited volume of soil, which can hold a very limited volume of water. We have been paying particular attention to the seedlings in the coldframe, which include several broccoli, two kale, one fennel, several peppers of different varieties, one wonderberry, one garden huckleberry, two green cabbages, one red cabbage, and a few eggplant.

While we're on the subject of transplants, the broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers in the apartment windowsills are all looking fabulous. They don't seem to mind that I started them late - hopefully this will continue all season and we'll get some good yields from them - and they have all produced true leaves or are about to do so. They all love it in the curtain-greenhouses, and the broccoli look a lot more comfortable now that they're not so crowded. I've been watering them daily, and they have responded with lovely green leaves and rapid growth. Yay! We'll be transplanting them into the garden before we know it.

Speaking of crops in the garden, I am now entirely convinced that the mystery seedlings in the general area of the beets and carrots are, in fact, beets. I studied the seedlings closely and then looked up pictures of beet seedlings, and they were a perfect match. In other words, we have some beets! Hooray! I have also been keeping a keen eye on some other seedlings in the same area of the garden, and I now believe they are carrot seedlings, based on their location and on the pictures I found online. Double hooray! There are only two or three carrots up so far, but I expect to see more before long.

Alas, the updates this week are not all happy ones. The onions seem to be plagued with disease. The other day, I pulled up three more moldy red onions and one yellow onion that appeared to have the same blue mold that's afflicting the red onions. I hope we don't lose all the onions, but if this trend continues, we will. We are now down to nine red onions and I think about 26 yellow onions. The good news is that the remaining onions all have very healthy leaves. Some of the leaves have been damaged - I suspect this is a result of cats playing on the netting. I am considering removing the netting from the onions to remove the cats' temptation to play on it. The leaves of several of the plants are poking through the slanted end of the netting anyway - and I doubt that the cats will try to eat the leaves, because I've read that they don't like the taste or smell of onions, garlic, etc. I'll have to contemplate this further before making any sudden moves.

Even in light of the diseased onions, the big news this week is that I finally got some potatoes in the ground! The sad part of this is that I never actually called any auto shops - Alpine Tire Center responded to my post on their Facebook wall, and said that we could come talk to Mark or Jeff about getting some tires. So, on Friday, Anne Marie and Ben and I drove Mrs. Teaberry over there, found Jeff, and loaded up on free tires. They had a very large pile of old tires that they get recycled, but they have to pay by the tire for that service. Anne Marie didn't want to have to store any tires, so we only got three - each would form the first layer of a potato tire stack. We brought them back to WOG and rinsed them off with the hose. Then Ben and I moved them to the potato section of the garden and I arranged them there. Then I dug out a large circle of soil for each tire and buried each halfway in the soil. Then I cut the seed potatoes into sections with several eyes each, and planted several sections in each tire. I have five seed potato sections of the Colorado Rose variety that we bought from Abundant Life Seeds and nine of a mystery brown-skinned, white-fleshed variety that I got from the Fort Collins Food Co-Op - we had intended to eat these, but we left them too long and they sprouted. So, we figured there was no reason not to plant them!

Before we stack more tires on top of the first layer, we'll have to get some white paint, a little bit of paint of various colors, some tall rebar stakes, and some straw. After we rinse the next tires, we'll paint them white so they reflect the sun and don't get too hot for the taters. Then, we'll use the other colors paint designs them so they're not too boring and/or ugly. I'd like to get the rebar stakes so that the top tires won't blow over even in storms. The straw is on the advice of our friend Louis, who has tried the tire method and has found that soil inside the tire gets pretty heavy and that using soil can make it difficult to find all of the tubers. He recommends that we use straw instead, at least in the inner part of the tire (not in the center).

Well, that's all the updates for now. I promise to update more frequently once school is out - finals next week! Wish me luck! And as always, thanks for reading.

WOG out.

More Updates, and the Sad Tale of Several Onions

I went over to WOG this morning, and made the usual rounds. Watered the babies in the bedroom - it's still too cold to put them out; hopefully it will warm up soon. I also watered the strawberries and raspberries. The raspberries are looking good, and so are most of the strawberries. Sadly, some of the strawberries are severely wilted - possibly because of inadequate or damaged roots - and may die. But on the bright side, their brethren will fill in the gaps within the next couple of seasons, if any do die.

The peas are coming in strong, more every time I look. This is fantastic news - I adore peas. The only problem is figuring out when to remove the anti-cat netting, and how. And when I do, how will we keep the beets and carrots protected? Ah, well. I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The biggest news of the day is more onion issues. I gently dug out three wilty-looking red onions to see how their bulbs were doing, and discovered blue mold spots on all of them. This is not good! I did some research, and it turns out this is a soil-borne disease, and can exist in the soil on decaying plant matter - I find this unlikely, since we bought fresh soil - but it can also be introduced by infected onion sets. In my humble opinion, this is most likely what happened. I suppose I have only myself to blame - I bought cheap onion sets from a roadside stand, and didn't inspect them all that thoroughly. Well, live and learn, as they say. Next year, maybe we'll be able to start the onions from seed and avoid that whole problem. Or we could save seed from one of these onions, if any of them actually make it that far. I have hope, however! Almost all of the remaining onions are vigorous, with long, bright green leaves.

I also did some weed scouting today. I refuse to get behind on weeding! It was worth looking, too - I was able to pretty much sweep the weed seedlings (I find it fun to call them "weedlings") out of the soil, since they were pretty much all still at the white thread stage. There were a lot of them! And now we're already ahead of the game, in terms of weedlings. I'll have to make a habit of this, in addition to watering and scouting for diseases.

Well, that's all for today! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Updates Galore

Only a few updates this week.

On Tuesday, I went to WOG to water and check up on things (as I usually do) and was watering the pea patch, when I noticed that some seedlings were coming up! We have baby peas!! This was especially exciting because we'd more or less given up on the peas as a lost cause - they had been in the ground for a few weeks, with no sign of life, and peas should be relatively quick to sprout. As mentioned in a previous post, we think the problem was that they weren't getting enough water. Well, we remedied that, and the result was some babies! So now we're trying to do a much better job of watering everything daily, or almost daily.

This strategy seems to have worked well, because either some beets or some carrots are also coming up. I think the leaves are more beetlike than carrotlike, but I suppose we won't really know for sure for a while, because the cats messed up the row markers a while back and I had to guess the exact location of each row. Hopefully the other crop, whichever it is, will come up soon as well. The remaining onions, the ones that didn't have Fusarium, are looking swell - only a few red onions are a little puny, and hopefully they'll catch up.

The raspberries look great. I think all of them have new leaves on them now. Hooray! We'll have plenty of delicious berries in a couple of months :) The strawberries look excellent, too - most of the blossoms have opened, I think, which is great news for yield. Of course, we'll only be getting a few berries out of them, but I bet they'll be scrumptious. And next year we'll have plenty of strawberries to go around.

The babies that are still in the coldframe are looking all right. Some of the eggplants and peppers are clearly stressed, probably because it's been chilly recently. We brought them into the house yesterday, because it was supposed to be cold last night (and it was).

The babies in the apartment are looking spectacular. On Chris' recommendation, I put them in the windowsills of the bedroom (it gets the best light, generally), and have just left them there, watering about every other day. I wrapped the curtains around the other side so that the white fabric would reflect some light back down on the babies, as well as create a little greenhouse-like microclimate in each window. This has helped reduce some of the etiolation that was going on, especially with the tomatoes.

The baby broccoli in the windows desperately need to be transplanted into individual pots. I haven't done so yet because I've been worried about the cold weather. The plan was to do that today, but the high is still only going to be about 47. I could transplant them and put them in the WOG house bedroom, but I'm concerned that the cats might bother them. I will wait it out for a couple more days and hope the weather improves.

I still have yet to contact either local autobody to see if they can donate a few tires to us for potato-growing purposes. I need to get on that and get those babies in the ground soon!

Yesterday, Chris and I went to the Starter Barter in Avogadro's Number restaurant. Most of what people had to offer were tomatoes, and I didn't buy any of them, because I think WOG's neighbor plans to give us some of his starts that he's not going to use - plus, we've sprouted our own, and I want to see how they turn out. We did buy two more hot pepper plants from Drew - one Ancho and one Santa Fe. They are looking good, and hopefully they'll stay that way. We also got two green cabbage plants and one red cabbage plant, as well as five garden huckleberry plants and one wonderberry plant. I do enjoy experimenting with new crops! Hopefully they turn out well. I wonder where we'll put them all - space will be a little tight! But we'll manage, and we can always give some seedlings away.

All in all, this week has been somewhat eventful and vastly encouraging, since the peas and either beets or carrots started to come up. I can't wait to put more plants in the garden! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Oooooh, Genetics

I have a triploid tomato seedling. It has three cotyledon leaves - the tomato is a dicot, so most tomatoes have two cotyledon leaves - but it appears to be vigorous and healthy. I am almost entirely certain that the third leaf is an additional cotyledon leaf, and not a true leaf; all three leaves are of similar size, and the seedling really isn't old enough to have any true leaves opening up yet.

I'm not sure what the consequences of not culling this plant would be. If we're saving seeds, I'd have to mark the plant so we didn't try and grow any seeds from it next year - in general, seeds from triploid plants are sterile, because they have an extra set of chromosomes, which makes fertilization of their egg cells difficult. In fact, seedless watermelons are seedless because they are triploid. So this tomato plant's fruits might not have any real seeds at all. On the flip side, if we did just mark the plant and keep it as an experimental gig, we would probably have to isolate it from the other tomatoes so that its (possibly viable) pollen wouldn't fertilize any of the other plants' eggs. But then there's the chance that it would produce a whole bunch of really delicious tomatoes! Oh, decisions, decisions.

So, I went to that grand vault of information, the Internet. Turns out tomatoes have been known to produce triploid progeny, and that they often do rather well. I suppose what I'll do for now is to leave the plant alone and see how it does.

The rest of the tomatoes are coming up in earnest! There are many seedlings in both the slicing section and the paste section of the tomato flat. And there are lots of jalapenos coming up, as well as a few Sweet Bullnose bell peppers (still no signs of life from the Gourmet bell peppers, but they shouldn't be far behind). The eggplant, not to be outdone, are stretching sleepily out of the soil. I'm so excited for all of these little babies! All of them are a tad etiolated, because there's really nowhere in the apartment that gets great direct sunlight, but I think/hope they'll all do great anyway.

Yesterday, I went over to Westmore to check on the progress of the plants that aren't in my immediate proximity. Most of the strawberries look swell, but some of them haven't perked up all the way yet. However, they should do so soon - they've been getting plenty of water, thanks to Anne Marie, me, and the surprising amount of rain we've been getting recently. All five transplanted raspberries look great, as do the remaining onions. No sign of the peas, beets, or carrots yet, but hopefully they'll poke their little leafy heads out soon.

Well, those are all the updates I have for now. Stay tuned - this is the busy season! Hopefully there will be a lot more happening soon.

WOG out.

Seedlings!!

The last time I posted, there wasn't any evidence of life from the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers that I seeded. On Monday the 18th, I brought the three flats that I'd seeded to the apartment so they'd stay warm.

On Monday, there were two tomato seedlings. Now - as you may already know if you read our Facebook page - they're popping up left and right! Every day since then, there have been new sprouts. As of this morning, we are the proud parents of no fewer than eleven cherry tomato seedlings, three paste tomato seedlings, one jalapeño pepper seedling, and one eggplant seedling. Very exciting! I sure hope more come up soon. It would be a bummer to only have one eggplant and one pepper - I want some bell peppers, too! So hopefully they will be along in the near future.

The raspberries are looking great! I think they've been loving all the rain we've been getting recently, supplemented by my frequent watering. The strawberries look happy as well, although they haven't quite perked up yet. But they will! I have faith.

As far as I can tell, it was just that one onion that was infected with Fusarium, or whatever it was. I'm keeping a close watch on the others, but hopefully the fungus was isolated and will remain so.

The peas still haven't sprouted yet! I spoke with our friend Karen yesterday - Karen co-manages the student organic garden on campus, SusDev (short for sustainable development), so she knows a great deal about growing veggies. I asked her what she thought about our pea predicament, and she said that because some of them have been uncovered, they might have dried out too much to germinate. She said it's very hard for peas to do without water for any period of time, really - so we need to do a better job of keeping them consistently moist. To help our poor little peas, I used a little of the soil that was left over even after the herb garden was piled up, and covered the exposed pea seeds so they wouldn't dry out as quickly. Then I watered them well and left them to it.

That's all the updating to be done for now! All good news, I might add - always a plus :) We're headed in the right direction! As always, thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Mulchberries, Anyone?

Today was a pretty big day in the garden. When I arrived at Westmore this morning, our friend Louis and his family were there. Louis is a PhD candidate at CSU, and he knows a lot about agriculture. We talked about potatoes with him - he suggested growing the potatoes in old tires. Sounds weird, right? But apparently it really works. What you do is lay an old tire down flat in the garden and cover/fill it about halfway with dirt. Then plant four or five seed potatoes in the soil inside the tire. When the potato seedlings are strong, cover them almost entirely with more soil and stack another tire on top of the first one. Repeat once more, so that you wind up with a stack of three tires. This method reportedly produces significantly higher yields than traditional ways of growing potatoes, as well as keeping the tubers in a confined space for a very easy harvest. We have our seed potatoes, but unfortunately, we're fresh out of tires. We would like to call around to local auto bodies and see if we can have any of their old ones - we found two, Hawker Automotive and Alpine Tire Center - but both of them were closed by the time we discovered them this afternoon. So, that will be a project for a different day.

After Louis and company departed, Anne Marie and I drove the pickup to the Fort Collins Recycling Center to shovel some free mulch into the truck. Sadly, they were fresh out of mulch, so we meandered down to Fort Collins' Spring Creek Community Gardens and loaded up some of their free mulch, then lugged it back to Westmore and spread it on the paths in the garden for weed control. We'll have to go back later for more, though, because we didn't quite have enough to cover all the paths.

Meanwhile, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger kitties, continued to find new ways to get under/through the netting that's over the peas, onions, carrots, and beets. I used some of Anne Marie's garden twine (basically a  spool of twisty-tie) to mend the feline-formed rips by "sewing" the edges together, and then I stuck some more of her garden stakes through the net into the soil to (hopefully) secure the netting more effectively. I had to remove some of the onions from the soil and replant them, because the cats have been pushing on the net over the onions and chewing on the leaves, thereby not only damaging the plants, but also dislodging them. The good news is that in replanting the onions, I got a very good look at their roots, which appear to be quite healthy. One onion actually had dead-looking roots, and the leaves looked a little wilty. However, that plant did have some new leaves pushing through, and there appeared to be either new roots or a white fungus pushing their way through the onion's basal plate. According to a CSU Extension Factsheet on Soil-Borne Diseases of Onion, this fungus could very likely be Fusarium Basal Rot. I'll have to keep an eye on that one.

Later, I made my way to Sue-of-the-Raspberries's house for some free strawberry transplants. As with the raspberries, the strawberries were very healthy - the reason Sue was giving us strawberries in the first place was that they had reproduced to the point that she and her husband Steve just had too dang many! I wound up with three small cardboard boxfuls of Small Fruit Sue's gorgeous strawberry plants (many of which had buds already - yay!) and drove them back to Westmore to transplant them. I had several extra, because as I planted them, I was giving them plenty of space to spread. It will only take a year or two for them to put out enough stolons/runners to fill up their entire bed. So, I planted probably twenty-five or so strawberry plants, watered them well, and that was that. Sue also told me about an event called the Starter Barter, coming up next weekend in Fort Collins. Thanks again to Sue and Steve for all their help and willingness to share their plants!

In other news, I checked on the babies (a.k.a.: transplants) and the raspberries, and all are doing well. There's still no sign of life from the eggplant, tomatoes, or peppers that I planted, but the broccoli, fennel, kale, peppers, and eggplant that I transplanted (as well as the broccoli I seeded) are all doing swell. The peas, carrots, and beets have not yet sprouted, but hopefully they will soon.

As I've mentioned previously, I have been researching organic methods of cat repellent, to keep those cute little fluffy nuisances out of the garden. The cheapest one we've seen is sprinkling cayenne pepper around the edge of the garden to form a border, a force field if you will. Or if you won't. So there! Hahaha... Well, Anne Marie said she'd give that a shot, so hopefully the cats will respect the cayenne.

In addition, my search for a quick-release organic fertilizer has come to a close. My academic adviser had told me a couple of weeks ago that he recommends alfalfa meal as a sustainable, organic, quick-release fertilizer - that sounded great, only I couldn't find a locally-owned business that sold it. The other day, though, I remembered that at a conference I attended in February, I had picked up a pamphlet from a business called S T Organics, LLC, up in Hereford, CO. I looked them up online, and lo and behold, they sell alfalfa meal for a pretty dang good price! Problem solved.

Updates on the potato tires to be coming soon! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Weather Woes and General Updates

As those of you in Fort Collins know, today it is snowing. A lot. Actually, it might be done for the day, but we accumulated at least two or three inches. Naturally, my first concern was the coldframe and the poor little babies it contains. Last time we had weather this cold, the pepper and eggplant transplants kicked the bucket! Now we have more peppers and eggplants, and again, cold weather. I needed to get those suckers inside a house. So I rolled out of bed around 8 this morning and headed over to Westmore to grab them and bring them back to my apartment, where they might be threatened by Kaly, Chris' cat, but would probably be fine. When I got there, Anne Marie had just finished taking them as well as the broccoli, kale, and fennel seedlings into her house. I was quite relieved! And proud of her for doing so (I would have called and asked her to take them in, but I didn't want to wake her up). So that was taken care of.

Then her son, Ben, notified me that some of the pea seeds had been displaced from the soil. Ack! I didn't know how this could be possible - just two days ago, I had more firmly secured the netting so that we could be sure the cats couldn't reach the peas, onions, beets, or carrots. Now, to be fair, the peas could have been out of the soil when I was doing that, but I hadn't seen any. But this morning, I took a closer look at the netting and found two sizable tears in it. There's a good chance these have been allowing the kitties access to exactly where we don't want them. I couldn't do anything about the netting just then, because I didn't have the time. Plus, I'm not really sure what I can do - I suppose I can mend the rips, but what if the cats just make the holes bigger? We'll have to keep trying and see.

I also checked on the raspberries, and they seem to be doing fine still. They've gotten plenty of water the past few days, so that's good. I hope they all survive - it would be great to have some extra raspberries this season! And in the following seasons, as well. 

In other news, I've been looking for some reliable cat repellents, for obvious reasons. The one I liked the best is a motion-sensing noise-maker, that emits a high-frequency sound when the sensor is triggered. The frequency is too high for humans to hear, which is great. Also, these things would mean a one-time installation and that's it. They're battery-operated, which is quite convenient. The problem is that they're about fifty bucks apiece, and we'd need two to adequately cover the garden. We'll need to discuss them more, but these gadgets probably won't be the method we end up using. 

There are also scents that I've read cats don't like, such as certain herbs, as well as citrus peel. There's this one plant that some web sites have suggested, called rue - but it also causes rashes on human skin when touched. Not ideal. We could mix up a powder of flour, cayenne pepper, and some other stuff, but that would require multiple applications, at least until they get the point - kind of a hassle. There are plenty of sprays and things out there, but we're looking for an organic solution. Right now, the cayenne powder method seems the most feasible. Updates on this later. 

In addition, we're looking for a sustainable, organic quick-release fertilizer. The best bet so far is alfalfa meal, which clearly doesn't come from animal products, can be produced locally, and is organic. The problem is that I haven't yet found anywhere that sells it. Amazon.com does, I've found, but only in small quantities, and I'd prefer to buy locally anyway. If you know of somewhere in Colorado that sells this stuff, please let me know!

Well, those are all the updates I have for now. Thanks for reading!

WOG out.

Root Crops

Today was somewhat underwhelming after the extensive activity of yesterday – however, this was fine, since I was pretty tired from moving all the soil around.

The most exciting event of today was planting the first rows of beets and carrots, one row of each. These crops are planted in succession, about one batch per week, because each plant only produces one crop, the root. If we planted them all at once, the entire crop would also be ready at once, which would mean we’d be trying to eat a whole lot of carrots and beets at the same time! Thus, we plant in succession.

I had drawn up a sketch of a garden plan, the main purpose of which was to outline where each crop would go. That pretty much went out the window, partly because the beds weren’t quite as I expected, partly because it’s easier to plant near the existing netting row cover so that I can simply stretch the same piece to include the newcomers, and partly because I’m not sure where the garden plan sketch is. But no big deal; if I find it, I can edit it so it’s a more accurate representation.

Anyway, the beet and carrot planting today occurred next to the peas, up on the north side of the garden - I chose here because there was already netting in place over the peas and onions, so I could just unwind the big roll of netting some more and continue what was there. The planting itself was easy enough, in spite of Katara’s persistent desire to be the center of attention and/or play with my hands. But after the seeds were in the soil, the anti-cat netting was more than a little reluctant to stretch over the newly planted section of the garden. After much adjustment, I finally got it over the carrots and beets and the hoop I'd added and secured the whole contraption. I hope the cats will be effectively kept out.

The broccoli is still looking good, as are the kale, the one remaining fennel, the more recent pepper transplants, and the raspberries. The tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers I seeded last weekend still aren’t up, probably because it’s been too chilly for them. Even in the coldframe, the temperatures get fairly low at night and don’t get all that warm during the day – it’ll be at least a week, I think, before they start stirring. However, once they do emerge, they’ll be worth the wait! As always, thanks for reading.

WOG out. 

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo! SOIL!

The title of this post, by the way, was supposed to read as though someone was blowing the charge call. Don't know if that worked or not. Anyway...

As you may know, depending on whether or not you've been religiously following Westmore's progress, we picked up half a cubic yard of soil from Weitzel's last weekend and spread it in part of the garden to use as a gauge for how much soil we'd need total. And so we could plant peas and onions (see: Peas and Onions and Cats, Oh My!)

So yesterday, 4 more cubic yards of soil were delivered to Westmore's back driveway. For those of you who don't know, 4 cubic yards is a LOT. My job today was to get the soil from the driveway into the garden beds. By myself. Using only a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Hooooooo boy.

Well, I got to Westmore around 8:30 this morning, and gaped at the daunting pile of soil that faced me. It was so daunting, in fact, that I turned around and left. Just kidding. I didn't work on the soil right away, though. First, I transplanted five baby raspberry plants in among the raspberries that are already at Westmore. It wasn't hard work, but it did take some time. They needed to go in the soil right away, according to our helpful friend Sue, from whom we had gotten the babies. Thus, that was priority #1 for the day. I got them tucked in and well-watered before turning to the soil.

I had learned from unloading the first half of a cubic yard of soil last weekend that good soil is pretty dang heavy. Today, it didn't help that the entire pile was at ground level (as opposed to being in the bed of a pickup, as it was last week), so it was extra work to lift each shovelful up and into the wheelbarrow. Of course, I did it anyway. Chris showed up a couple of hours in and helped a lot with moving the soil around. Many wheelbarrowfuls later, the garden beds were complete, and the soil pile was almost gone. Anne Marie and Ben will be using the leftover soil to make an herb garden tomorrow in the front yard.

In other news, the broccoli that I seeded last week sprouted yesterday! The little seedlings are so cute and delicate. I feel like a proud momma! I can't wait for the eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers that I also seeded last week to sprout - that'll be a few more days though, at least. The onions that we planted last Saturday are looking good; some of them got displaced when they got caught in the deer netting, but I took a look at the bases of their little bulbs, and most of them had roots starting! This is an excellent sign. The peas that I planted next to the onions aren't up yet, but they should be soon. I suspect they're not really enthusiastic about germinating, because the cats have been disturbing that bed. To remedy this issue, we bought some deer netting to stretch over the bed and plastic tubing to support the netting. At first, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger cats, were simply more attracted to the netting as a jungle gym (see: Sad Seedlings and Cat Hammocks). Yesterday, I added another hoop to support the net better and keep the kitties off the bed, and so far that seems to be doing the trick.

Also yesterday, Sue-of-the-Raspberries offered to give us some transplants to replace the ones we lost to the cold weather last weekend. I had contacted Drew to see if he had any more extras to give us, but he'd already given them away to someone else. I got to Sue's house yesterday to find that Drew had given his remaining extra seedlings to her! She offered me whatever I wanted of what was left, so I took twelve eggplant seedlings, six broccoli seedlings, and twelve hot pepper seedlings. They're all in the coldframe and they look great so far - if their good health continues, we'll have plenty of babies to stick in the soil when the time comes. Sue also offered us some strawberries, so hopefully we can go get those soon and plant them in the near future. More updates to come soon. As always, thanks for reading!

WOG out.

Sad Seedlings and Cat Hammocks

Well, my last post was only two days ago, but some significant stuff has happened since then.

On Sunday, Anne Marie's son Ben and I went over to Drew's place. I had spoken with Drew on Saturday, and he mentioned that he had a lot of extra seedlings: eggplants, peppers, kale, and some other things. He was just going to throw them out, so he offered them to us, if we would be willing to come get some. Well, who the heck were we to pass up an offer like that?! Ben and I hopped in my SUV on Sunday, in spite of the nasty, cold weather - rain/snow and temperatures in the 30s - and drove over to Drew's with some small containers, soil, and a camera. We carefully transplanted twelve peppers, twelve eggplants, six broccoli, three kale, and three fennel seedlings of many different varieties and drove them back to Westmore to put them in the coldframe.

Well, that's where I went wrong. I should have realized that it was going to get too darn cold in there for those little guys to make it. I should have taken them inside the house or the garage, or my SUV - something! - to protect them from the chilly weather. The thermometer in the coldframe read barely above 40° Fahrenheit, far too cold for any warm season crop like peppers or eggplant. Ben and I just thought it had dropped sharply when we opened the lid, but apparently not. Of course, it could be that even that low a temperature didn't kill the plants; perhaps it dropped even lower in the night and that's what killed them. Or maybe it wasn't temperature at all, but some egregious transplanting error that I committed. I doubt this, though, not due to arrogance, but because of which plants survived. Brassicas, including broccoli and kale, are cool season crops, and much more tolerant of low temperatures than are warm season crops like the ones that perished. We will never know for sure, but I do know that the next time a day gets that cold, I'm bringing the flats inside! Boy, I really hope the crops I seeded last Friday are still all right. In the span of two days, they experienced temperatures from over 100° to below 50° - that's tough to take. Well, I guess we'll find out soon whether they'll be coming up or not.

On to the good news! On Sunday, after Ben and I had transplanted the doomed seedlings, Anne Marie and Ben and I made our way to Home Depot for anti-deer/anti-cat/anti-hail plastic mesh (not very local, I know, but we didn't know where else to get this deer netting stuff). We also bought some short rebar stakes to hold the supports for the netting in place. While we were at it, we impulsively bought some wax bean seeds (yum!) and a mix of wildflower seeds for one of Anne Marie's flower gardens.

Today, I went to ReSource Fort Collins to get some stiff plastic tubing hoops to use as supports for the mesh - it wouldn't do much good to place it directly on the plants, now would it? I was expecting them to be really cheap, but to my delight, our trusty ReSource pal Nick directed me to a dumpster in the back and said I could have all the tubing I wanted for free! I do love ReSource. There were some sturdy wooden stairs next to the dumpster for the comfort and convenience of dumpster divers, so I hopped on up the stairs and - lo and behold - found yards and yards of tubing right in front of me! I borrowed a saw from some ReSource volunteers and sawed myself six lengths of plastic tubing to use for hoops. I stuffed them into my trusty ol' rusty ol' SUV, Monster, and drove them over to Westmore.

Anne Marie and I then sawed them down more exactly, pounded some rebar stakes into the ground, stuck the hoops on the stakes, stretched the mesh over them, and secured the netting with some garden stakes that Anne Marie had lying around. Not too shabby! And the onions and peas are now much better protected from any playful advances by the kitties. However, Katara the cat quickly discovered that she could clamber up onto the mesh and just float there. We may need to add another hoop and thus prevent such ventures... But it works for now! The onion sets still look spiffy, by the way - I'm sure they and the peas will appreciate the nice drink I gave them this evening.

As always, thanks for reading!

WOG out.

Peas and Onions and Cats, Oh My!

Yesterday, as you may know, the weather was drop-dead gorgeous in Fort Collins. The garden just called to us to get tons done - definitely a good thing, because we still need to play catch-up! Here's what happened:

I got to Westmore around noon, after having grappled with some errands. Unfortunately, Anne Marie had left the glass door lid on our coldframe all morning (my fault; I didn't warn her how hot it would get) and it was at least 100ºF in there. We quickly took off the lid and moved the entire thing into the partial shade of a tree in her front yard, where we hoped the breeze and the shade would cool it down. But then we needed something on top of the coldframe to keep those darn cats out. The best we could do was to unroll some decorative wire garden fences and drape them over the coldframe - but those pesky cats still got in. We just had to hope they would leave the flats and the seeds in them alone.

Next, we borrowed Doug's Ranger pickup truck and drove it down to Weitzel's to get our first batch of garden soil. Mr. Doug Weitzel and his wife, Audrey, run this operation with at least one of their sons, and have for years and years. They are some of the nicest people around, and they have great organic soil to boot. Mr. Weitzel told us in detail about how they cure their cattle manure compost for a minimum of two years, turning it and watering it thoroughly once a month - this process produces enough heat to kill any weed seeds that have been hanging out in the poo - all this before that manure compost ever comes near the soil loading facility! And I certainly believed him; no weeds in sight when we went to get our soil. Granted, it's still early even for weeds, but I'll bet that place is weed-free all season long.

We weren't after the manure, though. Mr. Weitzel has an organic topsoil/compost mix that is great for gardens, and this is what we bought. This stuff is shaken down over a screen of about a square inch to remove rocks, twigs, etc, and it looked, felt, and smelled great. We got a half yard, which is about all the Ranger would handle, and lugged it back to Westmore to unload it. Many wheelbarrowfuls later, all that was left in the bed of the truck was dust - Ben and I swept it out with some brooms onto a tarp to get as much as we possibly could - and the load of soil was in the garden! The good news is that yesterday's soil saga will not be repeated using the truck. It was mostly to gauge how much more soil we'd need, and it looks like we're going to need about 3 1/2 to 4 more yards (according to Chris' calculations). That'll all be delivered in one of Weitzel's dump trucks, and we can work from there. Hopefully, this will happen in the next week or so and we can really get the garden underway.

Then, we made our way to Old Town and ACE Hardware for some real plant tags and a thermometer for the coldframe. We also stopped by ReSource Fort Collins and bought a screen door to put over the coldframe as an anti-cat measure. Anti-cat Tip #1: Cover it up! We later drove by a roadside stand that said there were locally grown onion sets for sale. We had previously thought we wouldn't be able to do onions because we were going to get too late a start, but here was this nice guy with local sets for sale for a REALLY good price! We couldn't pass that up. So we bought 45 sets: 30 yellow and 15 red - all for just $3. It was great. When we got back to Westmore, we were itching to plant something in the soil we had just gotten. So we planted all the onions and both types of peas!

Of course, the cats (Katara and Oatmeal) loved the new soil and wanted to be around people, so it took some extra effort to fend them off while trying to get the sets and seeds into the soil. Then we watered the whole dang garden, and the cats seemed to like the moist soil less than they liked the dry soil. Anti-cat tip #2: Make it wet!



Today, Anne Marie and I are heading to Home Depot for some deer netting, which we'll drape over some hoops above the planted area to keep the cats out even when the soil is dry. Hopefully they won't try to climb on it...yeah right. But the netting provides protection against hail as well, so we were going to use it anyway. If any readers have good anti-cat garden tips, please comment and let me know! Thanks! Don't forget to check out our Facebook Page - you can see pictures there, among other things :) And as always, thanks for reading!

WOG out

Bookcase + Sliding Shower Door = ?

Well, I finally did it. Yesterday, I seeded eight varieties of seven crops into three flats and put them all into a makeshift coldframe.

What is a coldframe? you may ask. Well, it's more or less a tiny greenhouse. A lot of people use them over the winter to grow fresh salad greens and such - it's a basic structure to provide season extension. We're using it to keep it warm enough for the crops I seeded - the soil is not warm enough for them yet, and the nights still get too cold for them to be outside, but they needed to be seeded now or we'd miss the boat! We were going to use some space in the true greenhouse of Anne Marie's friend Drew, but it was so crowded in there already that we didn't want to take up more of his space. Hence, a coldframe.

To build our coldframe for cheap, we went to ReSource Fort Collins and, with the help of our good friend BigFoot, bought a large used Ikea-style bookcase and a sliding glass shower door that fit over the front of the bookcase, in addition to some old moulding trim, which is going to be used to make some trellises for peas, beans, sunflowers, and tomatoes. The bookcase shelves and the accompanying support pegs were removable, except for one shelf. We had to saw that out of there, which proved to be fairly easy. Then we laid the bookcase down on its back (the cats loved that, of course, and had to explore).

Then, the seeding began. One at a time, I filled each of the flats with potting soil and wet it down very well. Then I double-checked which crops needed to be started, and seeded broccoli, eggplant, two varieties of bell peppers, hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, paste tomatoes, and slicing tomatoes. I hadn't really thought ahead very well, so I had to make some crop variety markers out of strips of a corrugated cardboard box. They'll absorb water and rot pretty quickly, so the plan is to buy some real markers today and replace the cardboard ones ASAP.

When everything was seeded, I arranged the flats in the bookcase/coldframe and placed the shower door on top. It was actually a little small...but I used my public school critical thinking and problem solving skills, and grabbed one of the shelves we'd taken out of the bookcase earlier. I stuck the shelf in the bookcase near one of the ends and replaced the shower door...and voilà! A fully functional coldframe. :)

Here's hoping the plants actually grow!

WOG out

Seeding Tomatoes and Peppers

Well, we're behind schedule (if you know me, this shouldn't really surprise you). Tomato and pepper seeds should have been cozily tucked into their flats around March 15th (about 8 weeks before Fort Collins' official last frost date) and they still haven't been. In fact, we don't even have the pepper seeds, because we didn't get around to ordering them until last Wednesday.

Plan B was to seed at least the tomatoes this past Saturday, the 26th, but that didn't happen either because the hothouse we're using was not available. Soooooo now we're hoping to seed the tomatoes today, but I don't know whether the hothouse will be available or not. The alternative is to seed them and keep them in the apartment I share with Chris for now, but I'm not sure whether Kaly (Chris' cat) would want to use the flats as a litterbox. Although the extra nitrogen could potentially be beneficial, I'm not going to take a chance on whether she would disturb the seeds as they're trying to germinate, or eat the seedlings once they emerge. The upshot is that we're just going to continue to be behind schedule unless Drew (the man with the hothouse) can fit us in today.

Let me be clear that we're very grateful that Drew is letting us use his hothouse! Especially since we have none and since a lot of the crops we're growing should be started indoors and then transplanted. Plus, tomatoes are generally so vigorous that two weeks' delay won't be a huge setback, if we're lucky. Here's hoping the same holds true of the peppers.

I can't wait to start growing things!

WOG out.

Acknowledgements

I figure I should probably give a few people some credit, since there's no way I will be able to do this by myself. So, I'd like to thank:

My parents and my brother, for supporting me and at least pretending to be interested when I ramble about farming.

Marie, for always listening and for being a wonderful best friend.

Chris, my boyfriend, for helping me balance my wild ideas with a gentle dose of reality, and for all his support and help.

Anne Marie, my dear friend, for coming up with the idea for WOG and for providing most of the resources!

Ben, for being so creative and enthusiastic about the whole process.

Rod and Amy, for giving us so much advice, and a tour of their fantastic garden, and for believing that we can do this.
Drew, for offering to let us use his hothouse to start our seeds, and for giving us so many of his extra seedlings.
Sue, for giving us raspberry transplants and more seedlings.

Brice, for understanding when I need to ramble and dream about farming! and for his advice early on (and I'm sure we'll need him the whole way through).

Frank, for being a great adviser and source of information, and for supporting me in this project.

David, for his help with the rototiller.

Bigfoot and Nick, for their enthusiasm, help, and support at ReSource Fort Collins.

And to anyone who reads this blog, for taking the time to do so!

I'm sure I'll have many more thanks to dole out later in the season, so this is just for starters. Stay tuned!

WOG out.