Saturday, May 21, 2011

Garden 2011

Planting carrots.






The 2011 garden started back in February, when I cleaned up the sunroom and started organizing seeds.  Then I started the tomatoes and green peppers in pop bottle greenhouses on February 8th.

That was all I started inside this year, and honestly, I kind of neglected them.

Plastic went on the greenhouse on April 19th, and I started tracking the temperature on April 22nd.

April 22- Greenhouse current 93, low 26, high 95
April 23- Greenhouse current 48, low 30, high 99. 8 inches of fresh snow.
April 24- Greenhouse current 87, low 27, high 109
April 25- Greenhouse current 107, low 31, high 111
April 26- Greenhouse current 55, low 28, high 111
April 27- Greenhouse current 41, low 32, high 60. and it's raining!
April 29- Greenhouse current 100, low 28, high 108
April 30- Greenhouse current 108, low 25, high 117
May 1 - Greenhouse current 65, low 44, high 111. Repairs due to heavy wind. 
May 3 - Greenhouse current 96, low 32, high 115.
May 4 - Greenhouse current 108, low 25, high 115.
May 5 - Greenhouse current 100, low 24, high 121.
May 8 - Greenhouse curent 109, low 27, high 126.
May 10- Greenhouse current 94, low 28, high 123.
May 11- Greenhouse current 115, low 42, high 122. 


May 12- Greenhouse current 94, low 46, high 117. 
May 13- Greenhouse current 64, low 55, high 88.  Rain.
May 14- Greenhouse current 105, low 45, high 107.
May 15-  Greenhouse current 100, low 27, high 105.
May 16- Greenhouse current 68, low 24, high 113.  Freeze.
May 17- Greenhouse current 113, low 27, high 113.
May 19- Greenhouse current 102, low 42, high 122.
May 20- Greenhouse current 109, low 44, high 122.


April 25- Started  Pumpkins, cucumbers, sunflowers, swiss chard, lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower.






Tomatoes, transplanted, still inside.
May 3- Crickets chirping last night. Frogs croaking today. Sunflowers sprouting. It must be spring!  Started Zucchini, straightneck squash, onions, chives.

May 4- Started dill weed.

May 5- Husband offered to plow the garden.  I rototilled the greenhouse.  #2 offered to help, but couldn't go deep enough.  It took 3 hours to do it myself.  Told husband to go ahead and plow.  Anything, so long as I don't have to rototill it myself.  He showed remarkable restraint, and didn't plow under the asparagus, strawberries, rhubarb or mint.  Started Cabbage, mixed herbs-4 cinnamon basil, 3 english thyme, 3 echinacea, 4 sweet marjoram, 3 oregano, 3 parsley, 5 stevia, and corn x 2 trays.  Planted peas outside. 
Discing the garden.




May 8- Cauliflower, broccoli, pumpkins, and swiss chard have sprouted. 


May 10- Flowers- multiple assorted seeds in each pot. 'Cause let's face reality. I'm not going to remember what they're supposed to be anyway.  Planted carrots outside.  12 packets of seeds for 4 rows.

May 11- Cucumbers are up.  Moved greenpeppers and tomatoes out to greenhouse.

May 12- Onions have sprouted.  Started celery. Finished last bit of peas. Chives sprouted. Started a pot with very old, dry garlic that we didn't eat this winter. I doubt any will grow.

May 13- The long white squash are the first to push their lid off. 
Long White Squash



May 14- Started Romaine, parsnips, root parsley.

May 15- Disaster in the greenhouse. A plant stand fell over in the wind. The mixed herbs and cabbage are extremely well mixed.  Cucumbers and pumpkins knocked out of their pots.  One tray of corn spilled, dill spilled.  Peppers and tomatoes in bad shape from the cold.


May 16- Another cold night.  2 tomatoes survived. It looks like the cukes, pumpkins and squash are done.
Golden Hubbard Squash- after the freeze.
 May 17- At least the cauliflower likes the cold.  Added seed to the pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes- all sweetie tomato seeds. Started 5 pots of cherokee purple tomatoes, a heritage variety that's supposed to ripen in 72 days. Fingers crossed. Planted the last of my alpine strawberry seeds.
Cauliflower



May 19- New squash seed. Golden Health- which look like golden hubbard in the picture, but don't say anything about pies- by McKenzie. What a rip off- 10 seeds in the package! And sunburst hybrid. Not much choice left at the stores.  Straightneck squash sprouting. Walmart & Home Depot both lost a lot of plants in the freeze. No tomatoes! I did get two replacement peppers. 


May 20- Corn sprouting.  Planted spinach and beets outside.  Home Hardware has no tomatoes.  S-i-l asked yesterday.  Apparently I'm not the only one looking.  Come on Cherokees!  3 Starfires from the second set of starts- still inside- are ready for their first transplant.  


Learning experience so far-  keep the delicates in the house til June!  Keep the semi-delicates in a greenhouse stand in the greenhouse.  Put all plant stands back to back in the centre of the greenhouse.

To be continued...












2 comments:

  1. How are you able to track the highs and lows? You must have something that saves the record for you. And, those are inside the plastic greenhouse in the winter? I am amazed at the highs, if so.

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  2. I have a digital thermometer which keeps the high and low for the day, so the high and low is actually for the day before. I should be tracking the outside temperatures as well, for comparison.

    It's not winter, but our night time lows were about 14F when I started, and only around 38F now. The plastic multiplies the heat and traps it inside. I have 3 5 gallon pails of water inside as well, which helps to keep the temperatures up over night- water takes longer to cool off than the air.

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