wet wet

We are feeling soggy - after all the days of rain this week - and so are the beds - soggy, soggy. Ok, it's great that temperatures are cooler than normal (low 20's vs. mid-high 20's) and that the veggies are benefiting from all the rain/water, but so are the weeds - they are rampant.

Went this morning and weeded for about 1.5 hours - cleared some of the beds and made a slight dent in the weedy growth. The lettuces are just succulent - harvested some red radicchio, endive, chicorria... the spinach are all going to seed - let's hope the new seed bed comes through.

Lots of yummy crunchy radishes - red ones that is; the watermelon ones (white with red flesh) are not ready, nor are the beets.

Tomatoes need to be staked; they are gia-normous. most of the sunflowers have sprouted; and everything else is just growing, growing...

progress

After a couple of nice, hot days, the veggies are doing great! Here's the fingerling potato bed - these plants are about a foot high...


And these radishes are almost ready to harvest - yes, by this weekend - see those red tubers (ok, root balls?) under the leaves?


These are Elzy's transplanted spinach - they are stalky? not like the ones grown from seed...

Yes, these ones which have bigger crinkly leaves which are ready for picking - according to the packages, both are bloomsdale variety? Nah, can't be!

Here is a tomato bed - they are flowering so guess in about a month to 6 weeks there will be some scrumptious heritage varieties to pick!

almost ready to pick?

Hmm.. it's been almost 3 weeks (21 days) since seeding and some of the radishes must be almost ready to harvest?
There are some spinach (not just the transplanted ones) that look like they can be picked in the next couple of days!
Have seeded more spinach and radishes in empty beds as well as radished between some tomato beds - companion plants, eh?
Read an article that said the Iroquois planted corn, then beans and squash all together which worked very well. Unfortunately, the present corn bed is too narrow - next year maybe?

more seeds

Did a lot of weeding today - about 75% done but it took a while as those weeds were lush and plenty!

Have also seeded new sunflowers into the beds, and made over one for an early sweet yellow corn - so if these turn out yellow with patchy white (due to proximity to the original sowing), it should still taste sweet!

Also watered the lettuces and sprouts but left the tomatoes and potatoes alone as they are doing fine - more flowers on the tomatoes. A few of the hot peppers have flower buds too!

cooler weather

It's been cooler than normal for this time of the year - at wet, although with it being so windy at the patch the beds were dried out overnight. Did some more weeding this morning - needed to test out a swoe - it worked beautifully; I just pushed the blade into the soil and "swept" forward and back (push/pull) and cut the weeds off at the base. Quite effortless - especially if the soil is loose.

Oh yes, the mystery seedling yesterday is spinach.



The radish have started to come up...




Here's a tiny cucumber spout -




And bean plants.

What's that?

After more rain (lovely thunderstorm late evening yesterday...) those pesky weeds have cropped up again! OK, someone somewhere must love them, but -

More veggies have made their appearance finally! Spring onions,




and this one (see picture) which is a little quiz for rest of you to answer - so what is it?



And here's a fingerling potato leaf bud, up close (in macro).

a rain barrel

Yes, the real thing (not to slight Oma's container that was pressed into service) - picked one up dirt cheap from the city works centre - had to queue for about an hour since all the early birds (folks) didn't want to miss out on one. Mind you, show up 1.5 hours later and you didn't have to wait...

dropped it off at the patch (ok, in the chicrabbit pen for security, as rain barrels do cost a lot) this afternoon. Will finish assembly tomorrow or monday - no rush since it will likely rain again tuesday :)

Whacked all the weeds I could find in the beds so that will be good for next few days. Noticed some of the fingerling potato shoots have leaf buds! wowee! The cornlings are very noticeable as they are in 2 very visible rows; and more beans and snap peas sprang up. Don't think anything else has surfaced yet.

Also placed more tags (especially for the lettuce as there are so many kinds). Will need to get more tags made.

It started to rain again while PC, ToniB and I were discussing location of the rain barrel - PC was very helpful and instructed ToniB on where to place it as well as height of the "base" - they took off to the patch in the rain so PC could show ToniB what needed to be done while I sat in the car - and it really started to pour. One can hope ToniB will also fill the barrel up? First I have to finish assembly of it - as in tighten the spigot assembly (otherwise it may leak) and tighten down the screws on the lid - yep, first thing tomorrow, before ToniB gets going.

New water cooler

Oma's second container made it to the middle of the patch yesterday - the transplants must have sighed in relief! They received their water rations again. Wednesday (when it calls for rain) is a long way away...

More weeds got chopped up this morning but there's a nice crop of clover starting up. Let's make sure they are before we start pulling them up - could be veggie seedlings instead!

Oh no, a leak!

Elzy was right! The water container has a slow leak - yesterday when she pointed it out we said "nah", it was likely condensation...

They discovered the leak on a water barrel run this afternoon, so she and Mr. Z ended up giving the plants a good dousing (oh, and the seed beds too) as there was no point trucking (oops, it is a van - vanning) a less than empty barrel home... The leaky bucket (aka container) is toast as a water receptacle - it's going back back to garbage duty while Elzy calls up the back up - Oma's other container.

water brigade to the rescue

For the second day in a row, temperatures reached 28+ C - the top soil was parched with fissures opening up in the patch. Dry, dry. The transplanted veggies were in pretty good shape but we watered them all this evening to keep them going! The water container is almost empty - this calls for another barrel run (how about another few days of rain...).

Elzy observed the tomatoes seemed taller...

Tomorrow should be cooler - around 17C; the fingerling potatoes will go in bright and early.

Brilliant! (to Mr. Z's credit)

It was so hot today the heat (28+ Celcius) created cracks in the patch's pathways... the frissee lettuce looked like they were going the way of dehydrated salads - we had used up one of those large water jugs (the type at the water cooler stands you know) when we planted the tomatoes and peppers this afternoon and we were faced with a constant parade of those water jugs to the patch, plus perhaps raiding some one's water cooler stands - now that would not be good for office morale!

Mr. Z came up with the idea of letting gravity do the work - so this evening the water brigade came to the rescue of the transplants at the patch. Mr. Z ran a hose from a loaded 200+ litres water barrel (which sat strapped upright at the back of the van) down to a redundant plastic garbage container (courtesy of Oma - Elzy wanted to wash it out but was vetoed) set up in the patch (good thing the patch is lower than the driveway) and lo and behold, gravity caused the water to flow from barrel to container.

It took about 40 minutes to almost fill that up; in the meantime, the water crew went to work watering the plants. Then Mr. Z drained the barrel dry by watering directly from the hose.

We have made sure Oma can rest content her labours have not gone to waste. By this time (nightfall), the mosquitoes were having a feast (our legs & arms).

But, we do have enough water in the container for next few days... next time the water brigade comes out, it will be way earlier to deprive those pesky "zanzare" of their feast.

More seeding

Was at the patch bright and early this morning! Yesterday evening, we (Kat, Roiboos, and I) passed by to check on the transplanted Spinach and Lettuce - here they are, still doing ok...

This morning, decided to dig up the weeds and then proceeded to seed the dwarf sunflowers, fennel, squash, zucchini and melon. Oh, and the watermelon radish. It's going to be very warm this week but weather forecast calling for rain next week (timely).

We should be putting the potatoes, tomatoes into the ground in next day or 2....