How much longer till I can pick lettuce?

Winter Buttercrunch Lettuce

Lettuce is coming along just fine.  I'm hoping in just a couple more weeks I can start picking some!


Everything else is coming along reasonably well.  This kale, and if you look closely, you can see that the onions have sprouted.

This is Red Romain and onions. 

More kale.

I planted the squash today.  I put some open-topped plastic jugs around them for some wind protection until they complete harden off.

I also brought out the tomato seedlings to harden off.  I want to get them planted next week.

And here are the winter sowing jugs.  Some sprouted, and some didn't.  I'm keeping track of which ones didn't sprout, and I'll adjust accordingly next year.

The poor cucumbers did indeed not survive, so I replanted seeds.  I had lemon cucumber seeds on hand.  I ordered some more Brown Russian cucumber seeds from Cook's Garden, and I'll get those planted this week.

I also ordered TunLCovers.   I'm very disappointed with the hoops and fabric arrangement I was trying to use.  Everything just pulls out of the soil, in part because the soil in my raised beds is so friable. I even tried Earth Staples, but.....nothing held them in.  We'll see if the TunLCovers work any better.

The Veggies Are Coming! The Veggies Are Coming!

Although the temperatures have dropped again, it was a bright, sunshiny weekend, and I was able to get outside a bit.  Still battling the last dregs of the respiratory garbage, but doing MUCH better.  So while I can't work as LONG as I want before I wear out, at least I CAN  do something.

The garden has been under cover to protect the seedlings from the cold.  Most of the past week has been cold and grey and generally unpleasant, so in celebration of the sunshine, I took the cover off for most of yesterday and let the garden soak up the warmth and sun.

I already have my bean/tomato tower in place.  I'm thinking about wrapping the bottom of it in bubble wrap so I can at least get some tomato plants in the ground.  I'm thinking I'll do cherry tomatoes on two sides, and beans on the other two.

One thing I did discover is that I did one job TOO well -- The cucumber plants I had plastic bottle cloches over were NOT happy.  From the look of them, I suspect they got a bit too warm, so I took the cloches off, and we'll see if they recover.  If not, well, cucumber seeds sprout quickly, so all is good.

My daughter Brigitte is currently a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Debrecen, Hungary, and apparently they don't have a lot of veggies available.  I'm not sure if that is "it isn't in season" thing (which would be typical of most of Eastern Europe), or if it is a general statement on their cuisine.  So the next pictures are for my veggie-starved girl.

This is a kale seedling.  It is starting to develop second leaves.

This is Red Romaine lettuce.  I'm not always a fan of the dark red lettuces, despite their wonderful nutritional value.  To me they taste bitter.  But.....when mixed with other things, it's OK, and it's good for us.

This is some of the lettuce I planted last time -- this is Tennis Ball Buttercrunch.  It makes small, loose-leaf head of yummy buttercrunch lettuce.  I also planted baby romaine, but forgot to take a picture of that.  

The lettuce is interspersed with carrots, but I'm not sure they have sprouted yet.

And the winter sowing jugs are doing great! These are all flowers.

I'm also starting to prep the side 4 X 4 bed, which will be all peppers, and such.  I'm going to use cloches, etc., so I can put them out soon, and I'll intersperse root crops that will be harvested before the peppers start producing.  Radishes and carrots, and maybe beets.

Garden Cover Salvage Job

Those strong winds last night came in with a cold front.  High of 19 degrees this afternoon, which means everything is frozen solid again.  But I was able to come home a bit early this afternoon, and the sun was shining, so I bundled up and went out to salvage the garden cover and change out the hoops.

Each of the tall hoops was comprised of two smaller segments with connectors.  I pulled out the segment that was the more mangled and bent from the wind, stashed the connectors in a container, and installed the remaining segment as a low hoop.  The hoops are pretty low because the bed is 4 feet across.

I suppose I could also change this up in the future, and do two hoops in sequence, each covering two feet of the bed, if I need a bit more height.  Something like this:

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To make my life easier, I took the two sections of heavy garden fabric inside, and used my sewing machine to seam them together.  It was much easier to drape the fabric over the lower-height hoops (duh), and I used the binder clips again to hold them on the hoops.

I had enough fabric to go part-way up the cucumber trellis, so I should be able to protect the young cuke plants through the vulnerable period fairly easily, once I plant them [which will not be for at least another week or two, I suspect.  I also have a huge swath of lighter weight protective fabric, once I don't need the warmth of the heavier fabric.

I should also note that the cucumber trellis was solid as a rock, and didn't even budge in the high winds.  It is actually attached to the end board on the frame, and the supports are sunk over a foot into the ground.  Once the ground warms up and is wetter and looser, I may need to add some additional supports, but I'm hoping not.

I also removed all the water tube cloches, which are frozen solid again (they are MUCH easier to move when then are frozen, by the way).  Last week, in a fit of optimism and in the spirit of experimentation, I actually planted one of the cauliflower seedlings (1 small true leaf), just to see what would happen.  I hadn't really looked at the forecast for the week, but....

It APPEARS the seedling survived, and after I removed the frozen water tube cloche, I got some hot water and warmed up the soil around it enough to install a plastic bottle cloche instead.

This weekend, I'm headed down to my parents' home in Southern Illinois.  They are far enough south they are usually 2-3 weeks ahead of us in spring, and 2-3 weeks later in the fall/winter.  My dad's birthday was yesterday, and I bought him an elevated raised bed on caster wheels so they can grow some lettuce and whatever else they want.  Dad has a MASSIVE fern bed, but at 78 and with back problems, it's getting harder for him to get down on his knees to work the soil.  Dad worked all though high school and college at a greenhouse, and I know he loves gardening.  I'm hoping this makes it a bit easier for him.  I'm taking a variety of seeds with me, some low hoops, some garden fabric, and anything else I can think of.  I want to put a trellis in it too so they can have cucumbers.  I'll try to remember to take pictures.

Speaking of cucumbers, one of our favorite varieties is Brown Russian . A Ukranian heirloom variety, It has been one of the most reliable varieties for us, with a high germination rate and bumper crops.  The flavor is fantastic, and it is one of the few varieties that doesn't make me burp.  I have seeds from the 2012 growing season, and I accidentally left them in the garage over the winter.  I found the seed packet, brought it inside, and thought, what the heck!  I'll try starting some in the germinator.  Within 4 days, the seeds had germinated, producing strong and hearty seedlings.  So if like cucumbers, check out Brown Russian.  The only place I've ever seen it is on The Cook's Garden website, a place I've ordered a number of things from, and always been satisfied.

That's all for now!

The best laid plans......

So......this is what happens when there are 35 mph winds:

HMMMM....

I got to thinking about it, and realized that I don't NEED the high hoops right now.  If I'm worried about protecting young plants, I just need something lower to support the fabric (assuming it hasn't blown away before I get home).

So I will disassemble the high hoops -- a high hoop is made up of 2 low hoops -- install the low hoops, and go from there.  I am also going to sew the 2 pieces of heavy garden fabric together to make life a little easier.

More later.......

Is that a covered wagon in your backyard?

Another gorgeous day in East Central IL -- aren't we lucky it fell on a weekend?

So....I had big plans for today:

1. find a way to mark the grid in the garden
2. plant whatever I am scheduled to plant
3. set up the tall hoops and put the heavier garden fabric on it.
4. set up the cucumber frame

I started the day at our local Menard's.  For those of you who don't know what Menard's is, it's a regional everything-you-could-possibly-need-for-your-home kind of place.  One of the biggest Menard's stores on the planet is 10 minutes from my house.

I went looking primarily for two things:  figure out some way to mark the square foot grid on my garden, and see if I could find what I wanted/needed for my dad's birthday present.  Not much luck on Dad's present, so I suspect I'll be placing an order with Gardener's Supply Company this evening.  I was more successful with my grid.

If you are not familiar with the Square Foot Gardening system, I highly recommend it.  Once I learned about it, I found out that a lot of people I know have used this system for years.  If you have a minimum amount of space, and want to maximize what you can produce from it, SFG is the way to.  But the key is to have a grid demarcating all your 1 foot squares, and I have struggled to find a good yet cost-effective way to do that for the last 3 years.  

I tried paracord.  The birds attacked, and harvested strands for their nests.  I swear they even untied my knots.  I priced plastic strips, wood strips, etc., but most of what I could find that was not cost-prohibitive didn't come in 8 foot lengths.

On a mission I was, and with an open mind about ANY possibility.  I looked at the cutting line for weed wackers.  Inexpensive, but not easy to work with.  After all, I was going to have to tie it around the screws I already had in the frame of my bed, and I just didn't see that being pleasant.  

What I eventually found was clear tubing, about 1/2 inch in diameter.  Based on everything else around it on the shelves, it was obviously intended for a number of uses, all of which involved water.  It reminded me of surgical tubing.  And I found zip ties of every size.

The end result:

 

Side note here:  You probably noticed my lovely green water-filled cloche-thingys.  One of my ideas that I suspect is not going to work.  I've used these before, but always after the weather was warmer.  The daytime sun and warmth warms up the water, and then the heat radiates all night as temperatures cool, therefore keeping a warmer microclimate inside the cloche.  As I have learned already, that is NOT what happens when the temperature is still getting below freezing on a regular basis.  You get the OPPOSITE effect -- the microclimate stays colder.  So I may just lift those out and set them to the side to use later when it's more appropriate.

Once I had my grid in place, I could do a little planting.  In the squares next to my green tube things, I have planted Spanish onions, Red Romaine lettuce, and a dwarf curly variety of kale.  Each square has an onions interspersed with greens.  The top square is onions and Red Romaine, the next is onions and kale, and so on.  Onions take a lot longer to mature, so by the time they are starting to really get big, the greens will have been harvested already.  

I have this cool tool that makes evenly spaced holes for planting:

I also planted 2 squares of EZ Cut green lettuce from The Cook's Garden on the opposite end of the bed.  We'll see how it does.

I spent the rest of the time setting up my hoops and garden fabric.  I learned the hard way last year that squash and cucumber plants which don't have any protection early on get infested with beetles.  Unfortunately, one doesn't find out they are infested until after the vines stop producing and die.

Here are the hoops:

I added a length of the tubing along the top, and attached it to each hoop with zip ties just to add a bit more structure and stabilization.

Then it was time for the fabric.  I tried to just use spring clothespins to hold the fabric on the hoops, but they weren't strong enough to hold the fabric in place against the wind.  HMM.....what to do, what to do.  I scavenged the garage to see if there was anything useful, and then I had a brilliant idea -- binder clips!  I had an entire box of binder clips in my office, and they'd been sitting on a shelf for several years.  Obviously they were not needed for anything else.

There isn't much that can't be fixed with binder clips and zip ties:

Last thing for the day:  set up the cucumber trellis.  The lemon cukes can be planted in another couple weeks, so might as well get it set up.

I guess it does it look like a covered wagon...

And....we're done for the day!!