First picture is from 7/2/09. We picked our first cucumber that day - very tasty! Have picked 4 more since. Also picked our first few (3!) blueberries that day. Second picture is from today, 7/5. Picked 2 carrots today to thin, only 3 or 4 inches long. Tons of tomatoes now, all green - won't be long.

June 18, 2009

Seems like lots of growth since the last post. Been raining a ton, but also some decent sunny days like today. Lima beans are taller than the stakes now. Tomatoes are getting up there - especially the beefsteak. Harvested some lettuce the other evening and ate for dinner tonight - pretty bitter, not sure why. Cucmbers (see second picture) have gotten large enough that they have fallen over and started acting more like vines, as has watermelon. Blueberries look very close to turning blue! Tomatoes in the front patch don't seem to be growing as well. I am excited to ammend the soil and have better growth next year. I also want to double or triple the size. The maintenance has not been very hard. Its the initial sod-breaking, tilling, planting that is tougher.

This shot is from last weekend - Sunday June 7. We've had crazy thunderstorms several evenings this week, combined with sunny days. I just went out to check on the garden and it has already grown a ton in the few days since this picture. My gardening neighbor gave me one of her extra zucchini plants that I planted in the back patch on the right.

I hooked up the rain barrel (finally) this past Saturday and in just one of the storms, the barrel was filled to the brim. Can't wait to use it - now of course I want more rain barrels. That was one storm, water from just one of our 4 or 5 downspouts. It would be awesome to capture all of that!

Sunday afternoon, found that a 4" long rat snake had gotten caught in the deer netting and died (I think I unknowingly ran over it with my push mower!)

Stagnant Peppers

Gave up on the peppers I had started from seed. They literally had not grown higher than 1". So we bought a watermelon vine and a red pepper plant from Radical Roots. Put those in the ground last night. Also noticed the lima beans have started to wrap around their poles. Progress! The compost pile has shrunk by about a third since I turned it last week.

Monday May 26

Rain last night - some heavy storms. Was able to turn the compost bin for the first time in a long while yesterday as well.

Memorial Day Weekend Update

Here is the latest from the garden.

Cucumbers never came in, so we broke down and bought a few from Kmart today that we just panted. Pitiful, I know . Mesclun is coming in pretty well - probably need to thin it. Lima beans are doing great. Thinned the carrots out this morning. Peppers are struggling - still only about an inch high. Tomatoes are doing better - especially beefsteak seem to be doing the best - they are about 6 inches high. Others are only 3-5 inches. Fertilized again yesterday. Been using an organic fertilizer for all applications so far, but decided today with the cucumber transplants to use some Osmocote that I had in the shed from prior years.

Weather: has not rained a ton this past week, so I watered 2 or 3 days. I used water from the rain barrel for one of those. Still need to hook the rain barrel up to the downspout, so I only had a few inches in there - whatever has rained in its open top. It got down to 33 degrees two mornings this week. That doesn't help I am sure.

Put the tomato cages in today. Also move the blueberry bush to the inside of the fence. Still haven't planted that thing! Also still need to come up with some kind of gate.

Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version.

Ok, by popular demand, here are some updated photos. First shows the entire garden. All tomotoes in the back plot. In the front plot, from left, carrots, lettuce, lima beans, then cucumbers in 4 hills across the front and more tomotoes in the back.

In the bottom photo, you can see the 3 lima bean plants more clearly. Those things are growing like crazy!

Rain, Rain

It literally rained almost every day last week. Friday was the one exception. Got straw down last week as mulch. Put 3 lima bean plants in on Saturday that my daughter brought home from pre-school. They are growing like crazy. Tomatoes are all doing pretty well. I fertalized them a few weeks ago, but they aren't growing as fast as I'd like. Peppers are even worse - nearly the same size as when I put them in the ground. Carrots have started to show themselves. Lettuce is up. No sign of the cucumbers. Thinned the lettuce in the pot pretty hard today. I think it was way too dense.

PRECIPITATION (IN)
TODAY 0.13
MONTH TO DATE 3.19
SINCE MAR 1 8.52
SINCE JAN 1 10.59
.

It has now been raining for the last 3 days pretty much straight. Mostly light steady rain. Hopefully my plaints don't drown!

Rainfall

Ok, found some rainfall data. From the Charlottesville airport:

PRECIPITATION (IN)
 YESTERDAY        0.03
 MONTH TO DATE    0.04
 SINCE MAR 1      5.37
 SINCE JAN 1      7.44  

So apparently not as much rain yesterday as I might have hoped. Maybe it rained after midnight, though, and that doesn't show up here?

Everything Planted

Busy day yesterday. Got the back parcel planted and added one more tomato to the front parcel since I had run out of mesclun seeds so don't need as much space for them as I thought. Tomoato totals: 10 tomato plants - 3 better boy, 3 beefsteak, 2 cherry and 2 of my son's from school - no idea what those are!.

I also put down some straw as mulch. And I got the deer netting up on the posts. Actually went up really easily. Just stapled it to the posts and used landscaping fabric staples to anchor it to the ground. I've got the ground staples every 2 or 3 feet, so hopefully that is enough to keep the rabbits out. Still need to make a gate of some sort.

Got some rain last night. I don't have a rain gauge so can't tell how much. Tried to find a website online that shows historical rainfall for our area but quick search produced no results. I'll try more later. Having a garden does make you much more in tune to the weather and stragely makes you really appreciate rainy days.

Survived the night

All the veggies appear to have survived the night without being eaten. Need to get that deer netting up soon though!

In the ground!

Got the front parcel planted:

• 2 rows of carrots - I plan to intersperse 2 rows in between in a few weeks to stagger things
  
• a patch of mesclun (ran out of seeds and didn't get as much planted as I had wanted - more later?)
  
• 4 hills of cucumbers (tried to transplant 2 that I'd planted inside earlier - not sure if they'll make it)
  
• 2 transplanted peppers - actually 2 or 3 in each spot - we'll see which ones take and remove the others. Last year when we transplanted, several things totally died, so see if we can keep at least one alive in each spot.
  
• 2 of my son's tomatoes from school - not sure what type they are - we'll see.

I didn't get the deer netting up yet because I could not find my stapler. Hopefully nothing gets eaten tonight!

Posts In

Here is a shot this morning showing the current status.

First post

First post to first blog! This blog will follow our labors with our first serious attempt at a vegetable garden in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had a few tomato plants 2 years ago and they were pretty successful. Tried a slightly larger garden last year, but was mostly a failure. I think we had too little light reaching the plants. We've moved the located this year to a full sun spot, but no longer protected by the existing fencing as were the prior 2 locations, so we'll have to fence this in. At this point, the new garden is prepped and pretty much ready to be planted - hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Forecast calls for rain later in the week, so I'd like to have everything in by then.

Time line so far:

• 3/19/09 - started seeds indoors: tomato, pepper, cucumber (can you start cucumber indoors?)
• 3/29/09 - a few tomatoes have sprouted. planted mesclun mix in pot on deck
• 4/11/09 - most tomatoes are up now. one cucumbers just starting to emerge. no sign of peppers
• 4/25/09 - garden tilled - cut sod, added peat moss and manure from lowe's. layout is 2 patches, each 3'6" wide and 15' long. had planned to make them 30' long, but when i laid it out, looked overwhelming, so decided to halve it. So total we have just over 100 sf of garden.
  
• 4/27/09 - set 2x2 stakes around perimeter. will attach deer netting 6' high all around. not sure if these stakes will hold.