Sunday, May 2, 2010

Teepees and sowing


As I said, this weekend was great for gardening.  After unloading the cow compost from the minivan, I made a teepee from bamboo harvested from a friend's yard.  I amended the soil with the great compost and planted it with green bean seeds that Alyssa saved from her garden last year and Red Noodle Yard Long pole beans.  Since I expect those to take about 90 days to mature, inside that I planted radishes and kohlrabi.  In another part of the front yard I built a less elaborate teepee and planted it with lima beans from the bulk bins at the local market.  Inside of that, I put beets.  This second teepee will probably need some horizontal twine around it to help support the limas.  I grew some last year and found they needed some horizontal support as well as vertical string.  The bean seeds I had soaked in warm water overnight, hoping this will hasten sprouting.

In the back yard, I had a grand time planting three types of lettuces, radish, beets, carrots, celeriac, kohlrabi and turnips.  In my large herb pots, I added some garlic chive and dill seeds.  Those dill seeds are about 9 years old, so I won't hold my breath on them.  I planted a Texas Taragon plant that I bought on a whim because its blooms were so pretty.  I'm sure it will taste great, too.  In a pot, to reduce invasiveness, I planted a lemon balm plant that I also purchased on a whim.  It smells lovely.  Upon researching the invasiveness of lemon balm last night on the computer, I also discovered that I should separate my spearmint and peppermint plants into different pots so that they don't eventually end up tasting alike.  Not that I could really tell you the difference now.  But while I was out there potting, I pulled some of each mint from their communal pot and started separate pots for each.

Regarding my cottage cheese container project, I believe I have lost one of the 16 tomato seedlings due to drying out or rough watering technique or something like that.  For me and my self-sprouted tomatoes, this is a pretty low mortality rate.  I'll continue to be vigilant.

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