my garden update from WA

It has been a long time since I have had anything to show off- but the time has come- here are some of my early veggies- #1- potatoes in half barrels, #2-towers with butterhead lettuce & strawberries (background) and Chinese cabbages in barrel- #3- double raised beds with carrots & bok choi, #4 cinder blocks with lettuce, strawberries, chives & other stuff!. #5- some pretty butter lettuce in cinder blocks. I just put in 12 tomato transplants yesterday, and will begin peppers, cucumbers and pole beans soon.

Fantastic !

Wow, those look beautiful! Is that area still 7b? I ask because as borderline 8a/7b I thought it was too early to put out the tomatoes. What's your precipitation like?

I like the way you use the cinderblock too. Do they hold heat?

Turtle

Jo,
As always, I am completely enamored of how neat and tidy you manage to keep your wonderful garden.

So glad to see it still cranking out a wonderful bounty!

Turtle, I never concern myself with borderline zones or planting dates. At 79 years old and gardening for at least 50 of them, I do what my common sense tells me! I sprouted all of my veggies and pampered them through some bad weather in my little greenhouse. I felt the time was here so I put them in. If they don't survive I have backups- I always grow way too many for the neighborhood anyway! My baby bok choi is already making seed heads so it is warm!
Oh, and the cinder blocks grow some wonderful things- they do not get too hot, but hold enough heat that my cutting celery and parsley usually stay green all winter- but not this terrible one we just had!

This message was edited May 1, 2014 12:30 PM

Appreciate the insight Jo!

Here it is 90*F today, back to the 50s in a couple days. Yesterday was the first warm day we had, but my kale was bolting while it was still in the 40s& 50s. I remain confused, lol. It's great to have your pics to look at.

JoParrot , what a lovely neat garden .Lots of luck with everything.

Thanks for the compliments, everybody-- let's hope we all have better luck than most of us had lest year-

yeah, hopefully we will not have a total monsoon season here in VA this year, which contributed to cracked tomatoes and leaf disease. i too am growing lettuce, but they are no where NEAR how yours look, i direct seeded outside and they are just on their third or fourth true leaves. then again most of you guys are better equipped than i am, lol.

Jmc1987 - my lettuce are like yours.

I love the towering Tower of Pots! How do you support them?

The cinder-block-pots are also cool.

Too bad your baby Bok Choy is bolting so soon. I think when they say "baby", they MEAN "baby".

When I WANT to collect seeds from OP Bok Choy, they decide to be biennials. Fall crops, at least.

Rick, I got a 6' piece of re-bar and hammered it into the soil in a cinder block, then stacked the towers on it (there are 2 sets of towers -I had strawberries in it but there wasn't enough soil volume for them-they dried out really fast, so now I have the lettuce- after that I don't know what will go in) I applied Tanglefoot around the bottom to keep crawling insects out.

Hi JoParrot , where do you buy those cylinder blocks.? i did not think places will sell just a few blocks, when I move to this property I found a few in the yard I wish I could get some more.

Hi cytf. I'm not JoParrot, obviously, but I find them singly at home DIY stores. Jerry's, here, is my favorite, but also Lowe's. I try to avoid HD (Home Depot) but there probably wouldn't be a quality issue with their concrete blocks.
Good luck!

Jo, how's it going now?

Turtle

Hi all- the cinder blocks can be purchased by ones at Lowe's and any other place that has concrete products.
Turtle, I am in hog heaven at the moment since we have great weather- popping flowers and veggies in every day! I harvested my first lettuce over the weekend, and tomatoes are growing but it will be a long time before any get eaten! Take care everyone--

Wow Jo! Tomatoes already! Hog heaven indeed. :~)

I keep thinking I must be really late; hopefully I'll still have long enough to taste tomato goodness this year. I can always sneak off to Down to Earth or bimart.

My DH built me a cinder block raised bed several years ago and I love it. I love that it is easy to expand in length and I can always reach in easily. I wanted to plant in the blocks' holes too, but hubby was skeptical - I think I'll show him this thread. Lettuce would be perfect - or mache which is really small. I thought maybe marigolds too. Plus they are getting weedy and full anyway; I can't see what's the problem in his mind.

It's nice to see so much growing. we are in the cold spring near the foot of Lake Michigan. Was a bit warm, now in the low fifty and cloudy.

This message was edited May 16, 2014 8:17 PM

These were just taken- lettuce is at it's prime and strawberries are starting- carrots looking great, and I'll collect seeds from the Bok Choi.

>> and I'll collect seeds from the Bok Choi.

Cool! If you want to grow trays of microgreens all winter, "saved seeds" are the way to go.

>> cinder block raised bed ...
>> I love that it is easy to expand in length and I can always reach in easily.

I found that it was also easy to expand in width. One neighbor moved out, and it never was clear just where the property line was on that side (I live in a manufactured home park and technically we just rent the spaces.)

Anyway, the day they moved out, I widened the bed on their side by 12-18" just by moving the concrete pavers and hoeing the soil over to hold them up. Then I dumped a few wheelbarrows of soil to make up the depth.

As it turned out, i didn't need to rush or be sneaky. The guy who moved in has bad knees, NEVER gardens, and paid someone to uproot and discard anything that might want care, spray herbicide, then lay down plastic and bark. :-(

On the other side, one neighbor encouraged me to set up a narrow raised bed on her side of the sidewalk that separates our yards. She never gardened either, but grew up on a farm and liked to see others grow things, and preferred flowers to the clay & weeds that used to be there.

Just as I got some Lavatera and Salvia established, someone else moved in there and wanted everything removed right away. Oh, well. The paving blocks were easy to move and I recovered quite a few wheelbarrows of amended soil I had made from scratch and laid on top of her dead clay.

Now that strip is back to dead clay, mud, and a few weeds. None of the Salvia stood up to transplanting, but some of the Lavatera did.

My experience with thin concrete paving stones is that water diffuses right through them, and edges and corners can dry out fast. Now I usually line all corners and some edges with heavy plastic so the edges aren't lots drier than the middle of the bed.

MAYBE cinder block holes will need more water than the interior of your bed. Or you could line the cinder block holes with plastic below the soil line. (I use the plastic bags that mulch or compost comes in. Since it is below soil level, UV never reaches it and it seems to last for years.)

RC, I'm sure glad you took that 15", at least. The fact that people really do prefer dead clay to life, never, ever, ceases to blow my mind. I did not grow up farming, or gardening, or even having houseplants. And yet.....

I like the ideas about cinder block.

>> RC, I'm sure glad you took that 15", at least.

If only I had known how uninterested in growing things he was, I would have encroached on a circle around some bush and a lilac with one ambitious rose managing to survive our climate.

Then, hopefully, I could have pulled out the ##^*+### weeds that hide under that bush and then invade my beds that but up against it.

I keep bringing over cut flowers and asking if he'd like any. His most enthusiastic response so far was a shrug and "not really".

Bizarre!

Now that people at work know that I garden, previously "silent" guys buttonhole me at the coffee pot and become verbose about gardening.

One thing I think is funny is that everyone's modest. everyone points to someone ELSE and says "HE'S the REAL gardener!"

Indeed one guy sometimes brings in cutflowers for the department's secretary and they look better than professional. I think he is a Big name in the state Dahlia society, but forget what his name is!

RC maybe your neighbor is telling all his friends that the guy that lives next to him keeps bringing him flowers...hehe.

Hmm, you may have something there. He always seems to avoid me in the yard.

Maybe I should tell him that "BECKY said to give you these".

LOL. Yes Becky. Next time Laura. Next time....

Lol that might be worth a try. Let us know how it works.