I feel the same way...

Garden Post - Phase 3?

Well I put a good day's work in and for the most part beat the rain as we started early. I almost finished the watermelon trellis and got the beds mulched with cedar (heard it was good for keeping out some types of harmful bugs and doesn't keep any beneficial insects away, plus it should make the waterings last a bit longer by keeping the moisture in.)

Here are my helpers... they actually did a good job using the screw gun as well as hammering nails. I started the screws/nails most of the time but they were really getting the hang of it after the third frame went up.

I've probably explained this before but the trellis is for the melon vines to grow up. When the vines produce fruit and the melons get to about one pound then we are supposed to make little netting 'hammocks' big enough for the full grown 10 pound watermelons and tie them onto the wire mesh. This way the melons don't ripen on the ground and it avoids fungus growth as well as lopsided friut.

The individual frames were actually quite sturdy but I put the cross beams on as an after thought just in case.

The metal mesh is heavy gauge so I have no fear it will hold several 8-10 pound melons as long as they are somewhat evenly distributed... that of course presumes my plants will produce well.

The tomatoes are finally starting to develop thicker stalks and I am thinking they should do ok as long as the growing season is long enough... as I said before, I got them in the ground a bit later than I wanted.

The ridiculous cucumbers are skyrocketing! (that little green wire trellis is almost 4' tall.)

Now I'm going to take a break for the evening and for tomorrow as well (planning on enjoying some fireworks.) Monday I have the day off so I think I will tackle the canteloupe trellis then which will be the same design but with only two frames instead of three.

Delayed garden post

OK so I lied about getting this posted on Saturday... sue me.
So here is the almost completed garden!

Notice the lush ground cover of wild lilac and wild strawberry that I've chosen to landscape the backyard with that my backyard is mortally infested with. At the point at which I wish to spend $1000 in water bills and another few hundred for vegetation killer, seed, fertilizer, etc. I will kill the entire backyard and replant it with grass. In the meantime my kids get semi-sweet little wild strawberries in between mowings.

Here we have the cantaloupe bed with several sprouts. The melons got planted the latest and to be honest I think it might be too late for me to expect a very good harvest, but this is my first go around and next spring I can plant early now that I have a garden in which to plant. I have yet to build the melon trellises but I do have a design and a four day weekend right around the corner. The idea is to make a 2x4 frame with heavy gauge metal mesh stapled to the frame... this will allow me to grown melons vertically instead of in a huge flat area. You train the vines up the metal mesh and when the fruit gets to be a pound or two, you wrap it in a large fabric or netting sling big enough for the full sized fruit and then tie the 'hammock' to the mesh which should be strong enough to hold them (the cantaloupe and watermelons both should only be around 8 lbs per fruit as we used baby bush watermelon seeds).

The watermelons are a bit sluggish to germinate but the seed packet did say 7-10 days before they come up so I must be patient. A couple have sprouted as you can see.

Here we have the corn which is really flourishing! It looks incredibly crowded and I am still sort of going on faith that this type of planting pattern will work... I suppose though if it didn't there wouldn't be such a huge craze with the 'square-foot gardening' right now. Again patience is called for. Around the corn I have green beans... some are fairly mature plants but I have several brand new sprouts as well since many did not survive the transplanting from my early indoor crop.

On the top of this picture are the bell peppers which also seem to be doing pretty good and below that are carrots. To the left you can see one of the bigger green bean plants. I was recently told though that green beans don't do well in the hot weather and I planted them at just the wrong time for a good harvest... so I may end up replanting them at the end of August to see if I can get a good Fall harvest of beans if the Summer harvest stinks.

Here are the cucumber plants which are probably just behind the corn in terms of successful growth. Again these look to my eye very crowded but once again we are giving the square foot gardening idea a try. I don't really care for cucumbers myself but the family does.

Last and obviously not least (since they take up half of the garden) are the tommy toes... I mean tomatoes (curse you Stephen Fry). These are frankly my biggest concern, especially since I am the gardener and my employer wife expects me to produce a large yield of healthy big red tomatoes for her. Well the first try got eaten by rabbits since I planted them pre-fence. This batch seems to be doing OK though so there is at least hope... but still I got them in the ground rather later than what one might possibly consider as 'best practices'.

All in all though I think I did a pretty fair job for a rank amateur. When I get the melon trellis built I will post more pics and then as Summer progresses I will keep the blog updated with how things are growing and producing and what not.

More starwars stuff...

Tomorrow I will have an update on the garden with some pics... but I liked this:

Worldcup? meh... however...

This is a bloody cool little video (note they use the ORIGINAL footage rather than the special edition)...

Our Garden -- Phase 1

Well this is my first garden post and will likely be rather longish since I have a lot of photos documenting the progress thus far. Future posts will probably be shorter and at more frequent intervals.
This started out as a Mother's Day gift for my wife since she has always wanted a garden but already it has become a pretty cool family activity and as we move forward the kids as well as my wife and I will be pretty involved in maintaining our new garden.

Phase one -- tomatoes. Oh how many? I dunno... just plant them all. DOH! What do you mean tomatoes take up 4 square feet per plant?? Well I guess we'll be making a lot of salsa!

Yep these are all tomatoes... we're actually only going to use 14 of them and give the rest to friends who also garden... still that is a lot of freakin tomatoes though!

All the plants started bending towards the bay window in search of some better sunlight... so I gave them a table in the basement using grow lights.

Ahhh much better.

They straightened right up.

First green bean plant.

Cucumbers looking for something to climb. They will have a little trellis once I get them situated outside.

We read a little after the fact that both corn and bell peppers require warmer soil to start out so I built a germination station. This is one of those heat lamps they use for poultry incubators.

Jolly green bean giants (at least compared to everything else.)

The cornlings have arrived.

Building forms. (Thanks for the help Phil!)

Four yards of dirt is more than I imagined. I have plenty left over to build up around the foundation where we get water from time to time during heavy rain. If you are wondering, my daughter thought it looked like a mountain and carved a winding road into it.

A yard of mushroom compost, which by the way smells like the Lee's Summit City Dump... but the veggies supposedly love the stuff. The vermiculite is supposed to help the soil retain moisture.

About halfway through four yards.

Big bed is for veggies, medium bed is for melons (going to try growing watermelons and canteloup vertically... look for future posts on how and if I accomplish that) and the smallest bed (4x4) is for strawberries.

Sort of like a layer cake... made of dirt, vermiculite and rotting plant matter.

And MANY MANY thanks to my dad for the wonderful gift of a Honda tiller. Wow this thing works GREAT!

A good Memorial Day weekend's work completed!!! Now we let the mixture settle for a few days and planting commences. In the meantime we've been taking the seedlings outside for a couple hours each day to minimize the shock of transplanting. See you next time!

Happy Star Wars Day!!!!

Thirty-three years ago today a young boy (me) went to the Glenwood 4 theater on Metcalf avenue and had his 5 year old world rocked. Yes... opening day of Starwars Episode IV: A New Hope. The oddity that this was episode 4 didn't occur to me until sometime in the early 80's but what did occur to me was that Luke Skywalker was very very cool; A planet with two suns was very very cool and a 6'6" Sith Lord named Darth Vader was TOTALLY FREAKING COOL!!!

This is without a doubt the earliest vivid memory I have of childhood. Of course I have little snippet here and there of times before then but the day I saw Starwars is etched into my brain. I remember a line at least 5 people wide wrapping around this massively huge (to my 5 year old eyes) theater complex. My dad, my older brother and my older sister were with me on this momentous occasion and we waited... and waited... and waited... but FINALLY the ticket taker was before me and we entered a red carpeted lobby with a huge crystal chandelier. I don't know if I had ever been to this theater as a kid but I remember being somewhat in awe just of the lobby. The smell of popcorn (and real butter) filled the air and I had no idea really what I was about to see.

I still have some very clear impressions from that first viewing. I remember being a little scared but completely impressed by the massive size of the Imperial Star Destroyer as it approached the Princess's Corellian Corvette (of course I didn't know what the names of these ships were at the time nor did I know I would eventually know such trivialities as what TIE fighter stands for). I remember being almost tearful (but not knowing why) when Luke skywalker was looking out over the family moisure farm leaning on a bent knee over the edge of a creator at the twin sunset of Tattoine with John William's moving thematic orchestration playing "Luke's theme". I remember watching in absolute glee as the camera moved about the Mos Eisley Cantina and showed dozens of fantastic space creatures being generally weird. It took me about that long to really get my head around the film and stop oogling the coolness and start paying attention to the plot. OK so Luke has to be a Jedi whatever that is and now they have a ship to take them to the Jedi place. Yeah ok so he gets there in the second movie... I didn't know there was going to be even MORE of this joy in my life, I was only focussed on what happens next. The movie progressed like this with me (as I vaguely recall) literally on the edge of my seat. To make a long story short it was and still is the best movie I've ever seen. Yeah special effects have improved, yeah the acting upon reflection wasn't 'the best', but there is just something about a deepset childhood impression that is very difficult at times even as an adult to shake... and I can't shake the impression that STARWARS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!