Post-Debbie Blooming

Tropical Storm Debbie dumps much-needed rain on west coast Florida.  

Last weekend instead of gardening in St. Petersburg I visited a bunch of farms and gardens in California.  While I was away, Tropical Storm Debbie poured rain and blew 40-mile-an-hour sustained winds on my sprouts. 

Winter squash flower.

The tomatoes and some of the squash were slight uprooted when the water flooded the pots at the same time the winds pulled their plant bodies to the north, but I have re-set those plants.  The weather calmed and cooled and dried and this week we have blooms!

Cucumber bloom.

All of my squash and cucumber, which have been building flowers for two weeks, finally let it rip and began creating the nectar containers to attract bees and wasps and butterflies whose own persistent gathering of sugars also dusts the pollen from one flower to the next, causing these beautiful yellow blooms to mature into fruit: zucchini, and yellow squash, and cucumber.

Summer squash flower.  These are edible, too.

I cannot complain about the weather this summer.  So far, the heat has been tempered by both storms and unusually cool weather.  The rains have been regular and the night mild.  It's not a fair experiment if conditions are so different they do not reflect a summer norm.  But I'll take it.

In all, I lost three plants in the storm, one tomatilla that snapped in the wind, one tomato that did the same and one of the parsley plants recovered from Lakewood.  I have to watch the squash carefully as they absorb almost as much water as I can give them, drying out their pots almost every sunny day.  The remainder seem still to be working through the rain water from last week.

I shifted all the mature squash to the shelves and the repurposed rain barrels.  As the plants take on their mature shape and size, I will place them appropriately around the the garden space.  They have grown so much in just four weeks.

Until next week.

Direct questions to The Gardener.

While Debbie Poured and Tore at My Garden

I visited farms in California. (Oh, and learned about this really cool new presentation tool):



More on my backyard garden on Saturday.

Garden Planted

This pallet in the yard where the stump once smoldered and a pine once stood is no longer the center of the action.

Left here are the remaining spices (two kinds of dill, parsley, and cilantro), four peppers already transplanted and four tomatoes already transplanted.

Everything has been transplanted and moved to the back pasture where it will be arranged and left to mature.

Me and the kids did most of this on Monday and Tuesday:

Now on Saturday, after a heavy downpour on Friday afternoon, the plants continue to flourish.  Here, the winter squash puts out its third mature leaf with many more behind it.

The squash have grown the largest leaves the fastest.  These are some of the last transplanted eggplants and peppers, both of which have grown slower all along.

The tomatilla, the the second column from the right, have also put on quite a bit of size quite rapidly.  Two of them seem to have been knocked over by the rains, but are already righting themselves again.

I am impressed with the robust development in all of the tomatoes.  For the time being, I think this combination of sunlight and shade is perfect for them.  You can see a bit of stoutness taking shape at the base as the plant prepares to send its shoots.

This tomato and this tomatilla were planted at the same time.  Their cotyledon are indistinguishable, but they quickly diverge in morphology with the first leaf.  One will produce a yellow tomato, the other will produce a green tomatilla (I hope).

These are nascent zucchini flowers.  

Under the eaves of the carport-ch, the lettuce can't decide if it would rather be cool or needs more sun; I'm afraid more sun will kill it, but it isn't growing with the same vigor as the others...

According to my calculations, if all goes well, I might see some leaf and a young squash or two in about a month...  It's a good thing I don't need this food to survive.

Until next week.

Direct questions to The Gardener.

Transplants galore!

What a busy week with the sprouts.  So much growth in so little time.  But before that, an explanation.  

This desert rose sprout is the ultimate cause of this little experiment.  Six weeks ago a friend gave me some seeds, which I decided to plant, which sprouted into this tiny little beauty.  But the desert rose is a slow growing plant.  One and half inches tall after six weeks.  It may never get taller than two feet.  I realized that a few more seeds and pots and I could have a backyard garden this summer (or so I hope).  And so the experiment...

Two concerns in summer Florida.  


1.  The sun itself is scorching.  Over the next eight to ten weeks, too much direct sunlight will burn the plants (although I'm hypothesizing that they will need some direct sunlight)  


2.  The heat, and especially soil that gets too hot, will prevent root growth and even kill plants.  Having everything in black pots is of course a HUGE problem in this regard.  This week I started bigger plans for plants and started the process of moving sprouts from the started pots to their final homes.

I brought a shelf that has held stuff on our front porch into the back and will place four plants atop that.  In this photo I have tomatoes.  These are the five transplants from Lakewood, all of which are infested with some kind of leaf mite that doesn't kill them but also doesn't seem to leave them any energy to grow.

These are the same sprouts pictured last week.  You can see that the squash and beans in particular have grown a great deal.  The tomatoes, eggplants, and tomatillos have grown as well, but not nearly as much.  Dill, cilantro, and peppers grow even slower.  All of the squash, the cucumber, the beans, two of the tomatoes, and the tomatillo have been moved to larger pots, transplanted hopefully for the last time this summer.

The soil I am using comes mostly from our compost, which you can see picture here.  For the past three years we have been turning our household food waste and the smaller pieces of our yard waste into soil, piling it together, watering it occasionally, and turning it infrequently.  We got a lot of soil after all this time (although nothing in comparison to the volume of waste I remember dumping into the compost pile in that time).  I was surprised when I dug into the soil the other day and found masses of roots...

But when I stepped back and looked up I realized that we had been feeding the neighbor's cabbage palm for the whole time.  It's roots came up into the soils we built and, no doubt, stole some of our nutrients!  Curse you neighbor's cabbage palm!

The transplant operation involved digging soil, washing out the roots, and then mixing is up as dry as possible in the wheel barrow.  I layered some oak leaves on the bottom of the pots, dumped in six to eight hand trowels of dirt, pulled the sprouts from their started pots, gently pulled apart the roots, and gave each of them their own individual home.

Here you see the winter squash and cucumber.  Eight plants in all, four per starter pot.  The morning was delightfully cool and mild until about 9:30.

By the end of the day, about 1/3 of the started plants had been transplanted into individual 2.5 gallon pots.  Some of them, I am afraid, may desire more root space, but we'll assess the plants as they grow and see if they need one more transplant.

The cucumbers, which I expect to cascade over the top of this shelf and eventually down to the gravel below.

I had jump started the project yesterday, transplanting eight squash plants.  This morning I decided the pallets would be placed out here at the end of the backyard gravel driveway.  Eight pots plus five tomatoes from Lakewood.

By the evening, 23 new individual plants.  We have beans, squash, tomatoes, and tomatillos. This location gets morning sun and evening sun directly, and is shaded through the hottest part of the day.  We'll monitor progress and see how it works.

Many more transplants to go, but the most crowded plants are now ready to make roots and start growing us some edible fruit.

Direct questions to The Gardener.

Tending to the Little Ones

The weather cooperated divinely this week.  Rains and overcast alternated with sunny cool all week.  The little sprouts are popping up through the soil and churning out new leaves.  The arrival of sprouts is an occasion for reflection.

Underway!

In each of the starters, we placed two seeds each in four holes.  The seeds have all sprung, but in order to cultivate the best crop, only one of each sprout in each of the holes can survive.  Two together would weaken both of them.

Tomatoes sprouting 5/29/2012

Cucumber 5/29/2012

The need to cull the sprouts becomes a moment to considering the painful paradox that living presents us.  There is no mistaking the tough hold of life that is already animating the beans and squash and dill and eggplant.  The two-day old, two-leafed structure requires a firm pinch and solid tug to wrest its roots from their embrace of the soil.  Like velcro, many embedded connections, and then free.  I murmur encouraging words to the sacrifical sprout, "You did good.  It's not your fault.  Your grew well."  And then pluck it.  We must kill to live.

Sacrificial bean sprout

My undergraduate interns and students do not like to cull the sprouts at the Peace Patch Garden.  I will often find new rows of withering sprouts where the students tried desperately to save every seedling by replanting it in an open space in the bed.  The murder of the genius that springs from the seed is never done lightly and it always comes with a portion of shame.

Sprouts in front, transplants in back

With that shame, however, has also come a healthy crop of seedlings.  Everything save the new parsley, coriander, and acorn squash has sprung.  The transplants have stabilized, too.  Three of the four tomatoes appear to be headed to a healthy recovery, the nasturtiums are still hanging in the balance but look better, the two parsleys are looking fine, and, while we have not given up all hope for the scraggly okra plant (the leafless stalk visible againt the red tub), I have already imagined new uses for the pot where it rests.

Winter squash, tomatoes, cucumber, beans, and basil sprouts 6/1/2012

I will need much more space and many more three gallon pots before I'm done.  Corn, sunflower, and kohlrabi seeds went in today.  A visit to Gateway Organic Farm is impending in the next week or so as well.

Stay tuned!

Direct questions to The Gardener.