The BT Garden thread - 2011 (Page 2)

My lettuces are doing great too - both the seedlings and the ones I planted from seed.  Sorry to hear you have bug issues.  We have had bucket loads of rain.  I only planted spinach from seed and it is growing so slowly that I don't know if I will have edible spinach this year.  So disappointed because I like spinach more than lettuce.  Broccoli has small heads but I am afraid it is going to go to flower before it is big enough to eat.  No cauli heads appearing.

Herbs are doing great.  Except for lavender which I planted in the ground, everything is in pots on the deck.  Seedlings are growing like crazy - red basil, lemon balm, peppermint, chocolate mint, spearmint, rosemary and parsley.  Sweet basil is growing from seed and is slow but I think it will be OK.  Cilantro growing from seed is also slow but I put it outside recently and am hoping all this rain doesn't kill it off.  I have oregano growing from seed but I don't remember which of my seedlings it is!  They all look the same when they are about 1/2 inch tall!

So I read a gardening tip and decided to go with it.  Get a bag of top soil and cut a big hole in the top.  You can either use it for sprouting seeds inside, which is what I have done and I have it sitting on a small table in our sunroom, or you can plant say a tomato seedling, or other annuals, cut slits in the bottom, then put the whole bag outside on the ground where you want to grow and eventually have a garden.  At the end of the growing season, pull out the bag.  You have a ready made garden bed for the following growing season.  The bag will take care of the grass that was underneath, you will have soil mixed with organic stuff from the dead annuals.  You can obviously only do this with plants that don't have deep root systems.  I am told it works well with tomatoes and annual herbs.

Square Foot Gardening FTW!!!!  2 types of tomatoes, zuchinni, watermelon, spinach, romain, mesculun (sp?), green bells, red bells, poblanos, cilantro, italian parsley, cucumbers, and basil.  All in a 4 x 4 square.

AWESOME!

Just made probably half a gallon of pesto using herbs out of our garden.

Finally picked my first squash yesterday! It looks like tomatoes will be coming in in about two weeks as well.

Any chance you would be willing to share your jalapeno garlic hot sauce recipe?  That sounds awesome!

Gotta brag on my tomatoes: the pic below was taken 6/22, so it has grown even more since then, but this is my beefmaster tomato standing at 6'8"!  As you can see, the others aren't exactly slackers, either!  We've picked 8 tomatoes off a different plant already and have more that will be ready in a day or so, plus have harvested zuchinni and cukes and peppers, too!  Love it! 

(tomato.jpg)

As usual I was about a month late getting seeds in, so everything is just now sprouting.  In my defense, our last frost date is usually Memorial Day and our lilacs are still blooming.

However, I LOVE arugula -- just found out this year that it's a perennial!! So I planted another 4 square feet of it. 

And this fall I have to remember to do a late seeding of greens because what didn't sprout last fall sprouted this spring.  Much nicer than going out in the cold wet weather to get seeds in the ground.

ride_like_u_stole_it - 2011-05-09 9:30 AM I have down-sized my garden significantly, but I think it's much cooler than the truck-patch I used to try to keep. I'm down to 16x25 from 42x180

Here's part of the split rail fence I buitl last year. It's entirely made of black locust wich is difficult to split, but will last for decades.



Here's the garden gate (also black locust)



Here's the plants all set. Tomatoes (20 plants) Brandywines, Cherokee Purples, and one I forget the name of, but it will produce green-ish when ripe fruit, Bell Peppers (4), Anaheim green chilis (4), Cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, basil, cilantro, 2 kinds of parsley, rosemary, thyme, Swiss chard, and marigolds. I already have a strong stand of sage, mint, and oregano.





Here's the dry-laid fieldstone patio I also built last year. It's 12x18 and contains about 150 stones that weigh up to 250 pounds. It overlooks the garden. I built the stone wall a couple of years ago. The only power equipment used was my pick-up truck to move the stones out of the woods.

Some women drool over the BT Men's thread and some women (like me) see craftsmanship/work like this and get all wistful.

Beautiful work, Dave. Got an older brother?

ride_like_u_stole_it - 2011-07-03 4:32 PM Thanks Renee,No brother, though.Made squash zuccinni corn fritters with shrimp for dinner tonight.

Now yer jus' gloating.

Have the link/URL of where picture is saved (but not on your local computer hard disk), ex. taken from above -
http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/photos/get-photo.asp?photoid=134691

When you create your post (or reply) and you are using the HTML editing feature, you'll see the button bar above the message area (below the Subject line).
Click on the little tree icon (Insert/edit image, it's to the right of the little anchor icon).
In the General tab, to the right of the "Image URL" field, paste your link/URL.
Click Insert.