April 25, 2009 Pea Support

It is beautiful this weekend, it's pushing 90 and lots of sun!

I installed my support for the peas today. We found a three-sided tomato cage that I stretched out and put a six foot post at either end to give it a little extra support. The peas aren't big enough to start climbing, but I bet with the nice weather this weekend (and the rest of the week) they'll be there soon. I'm still not certain if the pole beans will out grow the cage (it's about 4 1/2 feet tall). Any suggestions if this system will work? How tall do pole bens tend to be?

The lettuce has really started to take off too. I noticed that several of them are noticeably bigger even after just a couple of days. I may be able harvest a little in a week or two. The second planting is starting to take as well. The second set seems to be growing quicker than the first. Perhaps now it is a little more appropriate fro them to be out and in the ground than the first planting. You can see in some of the pictures that a few from the first planting didn't make it.

Since it's going to be hot and dry for a few days I wanted to figure out how I'm going to water the garden. It's been kinda nice having so much rain that this is the first time I had to worry about water! There is an array of spigots attached to a post near the barn, and one of them is connect to the hose that runs along the north side of my plot. All the hoses run underground so it took a little trial and error until we figured out which lever works what hose. The hose that runs along my plot is connected to a second hose at the far end that goes all the way to the trees in the orchard. I disconnected that and used it to water my portion, but the hose is in bad shape. It leaks pretty bad at the connection and more importantly it's a pain to disconnect and then reconnect every time I need to water. I'd like to put together some kind of automated system, or at least replace the hose and have a splitter where the connection is now.... I'll look into that soon.

In other news: the grape vines are starting to bud. They look like they're going to put on quite a show when they open up!

April 23, 2009 Is That A Bat In Your Poop?

I took advantage of the nice afternoon and spent some time in the garden. The bag of bat crap is now out of my trunk and into my dirt. I decided to just dump it where I don't have anything growing yet and spread it out as much as possible. So the tomatoes and zucchini I hope will get a little extra boost when I plant them in a few weeks.

I did have to sift out some debris that got sucked up along with the guano but that was expected. What I didn't expect was to have a dried out bat come with the guano. I don't know if he was dead before or after he was vacuumed up, but he sure wasn't flapping around in the bag when I picked it up! I toyed with the idea of chopping him up with the shovel and raking him in the with his own feces, but decided to instead flick him in the trees up by the road. I don't think I'm hardcore enough to use whole animal carcasses as fertilizer yet! It sounds like a bad idea.

I yanked out another hundred or so weeds in the areas with plants growing - they had gotten especially bad near the lettuce. I also raked out a bunch more in the areas that are empty. The lettuce is still looking good. The radishes are getting bigger and the peas are about two inches tall. Everything is growing fast!


The NWS has issued a frost advisory for tonight, but I'm not going to worry it. It's suppose to be in the 80's this weekend!

April 21, 2009 Misty Morning

Nothing doing with the guano yet. But I thought I'd share this pic I took this morning of the mist rolling over the hills. I took a quick walk through the orchard before the rain came in this afternoon and everything seems to be doing good. The lettuce finally seems to have started to take - it's starting to grow fast!

...Just after I posted the above pic, I looked out the window and noticed this:

April 20, 2009 Local Super Poo!

I received a crazy message today while at work: "Hey Dave, do you want any of this bat shit?" To which I replied, "Absolutely!" Chef Rob Boone down at Northbrook Marketplace was doing some spring cleaning up in the old barn and collected for me a couple pounds of some magical super poo.

The site Bat Guano Products has some details about the make up of guano on their home page (note the 500lb minimum order- that's a big pile of bat crap!). After a little checking on the Google, it sounds like it has a ton of both Phosphorus and Nitrogen and is an all round amazing organic fertilizer. A thread from the Helpful Gardener details some of the benefits of such potent poo. The one post even says: "It was so highly prized by the Incas that there was a penalty of DEATH! for anyone found killing a bat." I'll have to have snopes.com check that out, but if the Incas were willing to kill over it, then it must be magical. (True: according to a BBC page cited by Wikipedia)

It's raining pretty good outside right now and I'm a little sleepy from Chef Rob's amazing BBQ brisket, so the bag of bat crap is going to stay in the trunk of my car for at least a day before I figure out how best to use it. If I get off work early enough tomorrow I''ll try and get it out in the garden before I head down to south Philly to watch the Flyers beat up on the Pens. I think most of it will end up directly in the soil, and the rest in the compost pile. The BBC page linked above says that it is a great compost activator.

It also seems that there are also some precautions I need to be aware of when handling it. I read that you shouldn't handle the guano with bare hands and should avoid breathing it in in excess - both life lessons I learned long ago regarding ANY kind of excrement. I'll comply.

Thanks again Rob!

April 16, 2009 After the Rain

It's been a little cold and raining non-stop for the last few days. But the next few days are forecast to be warm and sunny. I think that finally the cold nights are behind us and the threat of frost is past. The Farmer's Market will be opening in a two weeks and that's when I'll really get down to business with the planting! Right now it looks like I'm just growing dirt.

I finally got around to the weeds this afternoon. Too many for one day, but I put a good dent in them! I left the section with the carrots alone because I can't tell what (if any of them) are carrots. But anything growing close to the peas, lettuce, and radishes got taken out.

The peas are growing fast. Only 12 of them have come up and only in one row. I'm not sure what happened but it'll still be enough for the two of us.

I need to start thinking about how to support them and soon! I had originally planned on some complicated rig but I think that I won't have the time to design, buy, and put it all together before they're needed. I'm likely going to settle for a bamboo tripod and save the engineering for the beans. There will be more of a need for something more complicated for the numbers I have planned for the beans.

Other than that the radishes are all coming in fine. The secondary leaves are just showing. Most of the lettuce seems to have survived. Only three of the Merlot Red Leaf didn't make it. I can't tell if it was varmints or weather, but I'm going to blame the weather for now... I'll drive myself crazy trying to outwit 'dem varmints. Although there is a ground hog hole within the orchard fence that I found and a chunky one living under the woodpile. So I probably will have to put a second wire low to the ground when I start to plant more.

April 9, 2009 Morning Frost and Peas

The frost certainly came in overnight as forecasted. Everything in the shadow of the barn were all frosted, luckily the garden is not in the shadow and everything was thawed out early this morning. It looks like the lettuce and everything else made it through just fine.

The frost unfortunately didn't kill off any of the little two-leaf weeds growing everywhere. So I got out there and raked up/hand picked a whole bunch of them. Picking them out on my hands and knees I noticed that some of them weren't weeds - the peas have started to sprout! There were four of them just starting to poke through the soil. I'm sure the rest will follow soon!

April 7, 2009 The Coming Frost

The sky looked pretty grim on the ride home from work today and shortly after I got back it began to flurry a bit. So I took that as a sign and decided to try and protect the lettuce from tonight's frost.

Like McGuyver I used what I had on hand and rigged up a trash bag frost protector. I hope it doesn't blow away!

I'm almost positive these aren't weeds... which means the radishes have started to come up. All the seeds but one or two have popped up. It's been about nine days since I sowed them which means I still have another three weeks or so before I get my first vegetables out of the garden. Not bad! I'll probably sow another square next week.

(This one is for you Matty) Before the wind storm on Saturday this was a little above ground pool that sat on the patio. It used to be right side up and near the black pump there in the background. I don't think we'll be doing much swimming this summer....

We've already had more bad wind storms here in the last three months than the two previous years in the borough. And I'm sure it won't be the last strong winds to rip though. I should probably make sure the beans, peas, cucumbers, and tomatoes have some extra protection.

I liked this photo so I thought I'd post it. You can see the garden through the window, well if it was clean you could. The shovel and other tools are kept just to the left of the window...

April 6, 2009 Storms Cont.

I just finished checking the garden during a break in the rain. There have been lots of growth, but unfortunately it has all been in the weeds. There are hundreds of little two-leaf weeds growing everywhere. I'll need to spend a few hours pulling them all out while they're still little. I'm not sure when I'll get to that if the forecast is accurate!

The orchard is starting to bloom. The farm seems to be a week or so behind the trees in town. But there ares some full branches on the one tree that are looking good!

April 6, 2009 Morning Storm

More storms keeping me out of the garden. But I'll have to do something in the next few days about the projected night time temperatures of 30 degrees... I gambled that there woudn't be any frosty nights, but looks like I was wrong.

April 3, 2009 More Rain

We've had a lot of rain over the last couple of days. Another large thunderstorm just rolled through, although not as impressive as the last it dumped a lot more rain.

Everything is looking green again and the trees are just beginning to bloom. Not much to report in the garden yet, none of the seeds have started to sprout. At least the lettuce hasn't been eaten by anything yet!