Gardening Progress

Hard to believe it was almost a month ago when I put the first tomato plants in the straw bales.  In the pic below you can see them under the screen that was there in case we needed to cover them quickly for frost protection.  Those are marigolds at the edge.  They compliment the tomatoes.  Insects that like tomatoes don't like marigolds.  Plus, they will just make the garden look prettier.

It's amazing how fast and almost imperceptibly the plants can grow.  The temps have dipped into the high thirties, and it can frost as late as May where we are, but for some reason I'm not worried about it.  We've got butterflies galore and the hummingbirds are back.  We have at least two pair and possibly three feeding in the back yard.  But here are the tomatoes as of today.

The tomatoes all have blossoms and are looking very healthy.  I keep gathering leaves from my own and the neighbor's yards to add to the walkways and the compost bins.  We eat fresh salad every day from four varieties: Head lettuce, Romaine, leaf lettuce, sorrel.  I also collect some sheep sorrel to go in there as well.

I also planted three varieties of bell pepper.  California Wonder, Red bell, and yellow bell.  But I confirmed with another farmer that I trust that pretty much all common bell pepper turns red if you just let it ripen all the way.  It's only the yellow and purple varieties that have been raised to give those specific colors when ripe.

That's red cabbage in the upper left.  I have three more like it elsewhere.  That's head lettuce to the right.  Those are pepper plants in the foreground.  The lettuce and cabbage got planted in the remains of last year's straw bales which were about 80% composted.  I raked them into piled rows and planted the cool weather veggies in them weeks before we set out the new bales.  The black you see at the top is a bed of soil with spinach on top of four straw bales.  Out of the pic to the left I planted radishes and nasturtium.

Planting in straw bales makes for nearly weed free gardening and high yield.  But if you are very serious about high yield, you will still need to check your plants every two or three days for suckers.  For the benefit of you newbies, suckers are not some kind of insect or pest.  They are unwanted growth on the plant itself.  I wish I could have gotten the focus better, but here is how you recognize suckers.

A sucker will occur in the joint of the plant where a leaf branch comes off the main stem of the vine.  Here is one just below a fruit stem that has blossoms on it.  You simply want to pinch that little sucker right out of there.  The reason they are called suckers is because they suck energy away from the fruit production, trying to spread the vine elsewhere.  As I stated in the post on grapes, plants will try to propagate themselves both asexually and sexually.  If you were to let a tomato vine run along the ground, it would put out roots wherever it touched the ground and keep spreading.

By pinching off the suckers, you cut off the plant hormone that signals for the plant to keep doing that, and instead signal the plant that it would be better to produce fruit with seed.

Little Bitty Suckers

I try to check for these little suckers every other day if possible and pinch them out while quite small.  The more you do it and get used to knowing what to look for, the easier it gets.

Sometimes, you will get suckers at the base of the plant.  They might even grow up looking like a smaller, separate plant.  Cut that thing out of there.  It will just pull more energy out of the plant that could go toward producing more fruit.  It usually won't produce more fruit itself, being shaded by the larger part of the plant.

While at the feed store the other day, I found out they had a few asparagus plants left, and I couldn't resist.  So along with buying some red seed potatoes, I got a four pack of asparagus and planted them yesterday as well.  I dug down really deep, about 16 inches and about a foot wide.  Then I went and scraped up a bunch of top soil from beneath the dogwoods and the other trees to fill the hole.

My little asparagus beds

They don't look like much in the photo, but a lot of work went into amending that soil to make it very rich.

To Do List Overload

Busy, busy, busy.

Wow, it can be hard to keep up with this blog during the high Holidays.  Here it is yom chamishi (Thursday) and I haven't posted since yom rishon (Sunday).  My apologies if you've come by every day looking for something new.  I'll try to do better, and it should get a lot better after this week.  You see, last night at sundown began the Holy week of Sukkot (Feast of Booths or Tabernacles) and we are expecting guests on Shabbat.  There has been so much to do in preparation.  Lots of cleaning and re-decorating and such.

Add to that the stuff that suddenly HAD to be done that wasn't planned for.  Like installing the new panel and dog door on the porch that also doubles as our Sukkah for the week.  Well, um, then Moxie couldn't quite comprehend the concept of a doggie door just yet and because she wanted in to the porch so badly, proceeded to tear through the screen on the other side of the door on the deck side.   Oh sure, I can chuckle about it now, but at the time I wanted to kill that dog.  So, I temporarily nailed scrap panels up all along that side of the porch to protect the remaining screen and went on to other things.

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Other things included dealing with the broody hen, "Pretty Face."  She needed a private nursery in which to set on the eggs.  Twyla blogged about this here.  -- Oh! A very cool thing is that, according to Sitemeter, Twyla's blog had a visitor from Lithuania.  Wow!

Anyway, I took the old corner cabinet that we had bought from the thrift store in the spring and had used for the original set of chicks as a temporary shelter before I built Arks I & II, and made this little nursery.  I already had all the materials left over; the screen, boards, paneling, and the foam board from the dehydrator project.  The only thing I had to buy was a pair of small brass hinges for the top door.  This whole project took about two hours out of the day.  On Tuesday night, well after dark I transferred the hen and the three eggs to the nursery.  It really is amazing how trance-like they are after dark.  But Moxie got too excited about what was going on.  After I had gone all the way back up to the porch, she raced back down the yard and stuck her nose up under the lid and stuck her head inside.  Not that I think she meant any harm, but she needed to learn very quickly that such behavior was not going to be tolerated.

It is also interesting to observe first-hand the patience and dedication of a broody hen.  You would think they would die of thirst and hunger for all the time they spend sitting on those eggs.  Fortunately in the hottest part of the day yesterday, I looked back down to the front yard from the porch to see the hen out getting water and scratching a bit.  She seems more than relieved to not have to share space with the other hens, even though they are in close proximity in their movable arks.

You probably noticed that the header of this blog has changed once again.  I want to keep it fresh and current with the season and what's going on at Beit Ben-David.  So, what you see up there is one of the little islands of crops in well decayed straw bales.  I set out cabbage, swiss chard, brussel sprouts (yes, I really do like them), romaine lettuce, butter crunch lettuce, and spinach.  I also planted a bunch of radishes in the back with more spinach. Then there are all the additional seedlings that are about a month behind the current plants that will need to be planted soon.

What has really eaten up a lot of time, and I do mean that in a good way, is the dramatic changes that we have done inside the house.  We have spent two pretty full days of just cleaning and re-decorating for this Holiday week.  And I was supposed to have moved the wood stove into position and installed the exhaust pipe by now.  May Adonai richly bless me to accomplish this before yom shishi (Friday) noon.  Other than having that done, the rest of the house is incredibly different and incredibly beautiful.  Twyla and I keep looking at it and each other and commenting on how great it is.  Of course, she gets most of the credit, being the real artist. I'm just the skilled handyman who can make it happen.  Not that I don't have a good sense for decorating, but I like what she does and she's so much better at it.

A view from the deck

Some of the trees are shedding their leaves now and it won't be long before I'll be struggling to keep up with gathering them for compost. I've still got screens to frame for the dehydrator.  There is always something to do and never enough time to do it.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll try to have a fresh post up for you tomorrow.

B'rakhot Adonai!

Moshe