Monday, May 19, 2008

Impatiently Waiting to Plant My Warm Season Crops

This past weekend was a long weekend, what the holiday is for I have no idea but I do know that this is the time you are supposed to be able to plant out without the risk of frost. Unfortunitly this is not the case this year and it is to cold to plant my tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, zucchini, peppers & eggplants. I don't think that we will have frost over night but it is going to 3-5 Celsius at night and around 10-15 Celsius during the day so it is defiantly a little brisk.

The only other problem I have been having is getting to my vegetable garden. I have aerated, top dressed and over seeded the lawn so I have not really been able to walk on the lawn until the seed germinates and establishes. So needless to say it has been a bit of a balancing act to walk on the edge of the raised beds, some times succeeding and some times not and I am sure I look like a nut well attempting it.



This weekend I did manage to plant the second 1/3 row of radishes. The first 1/3 is growing well and the stems are start to plump up. I bought and planted a cell pack of romaine lettuce from Walmart. My original plan was to plant the romaine from seed in thirds but the first third I planted from seed is growing slowly so I think if I continued this method the weather would end up getting to hot and it would not do well. The Walmart romaine will be my first harvest and my seeded romaine can be my second harvest.



The peas, carrots, beets are growing very well. I have just thinned the carrots and I thinned the beets about a week ago. The only thing that is really not doing anything is my onions. I planted transplants and they have really not grown at all in the 2-3 weeks that they have been in, I am not sure if this is normal, maybe its been to cold?




The one group of plants that have really amazed me is all the brassicas. They have all grown at least 4 times there size within a few weeks. As shown in the photo above, my broccoli is almost 15" tall! The cabbage and brussels sprouts have also grown very fast.



My next project is to build some kind of trellises for my beans and cucumbers. I'm not sure weather I am going to go with the sqaure foot gardening method of using netting and electrical conduit, build them with cedar 1x1 or use spruce 2x2 with concrete-reinforcement wire with the latter being the longest lasting.

I will post again once I have built my trellises and planted all my warm season crops.

4 comments:

  1. Looking good! I'm getting pretty good at recognizing plants in my garden. Your broccoli is looking great! And those radishes will be ready in no time! Way to go!

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  2. Thanks. Things are really growing well, Yours are too.

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  3. Don't worry about the onions. They'll get going again once the temps rise a bit, which they will do soon!

    Your broccoli looks great. :)

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  4. knatolee - thanks for the reinsurance on the onions. I was wondering because we were in kitchener a few weeks ago and drove by a property with onions. There onions were almost 2' tall and were really thick, I guess I have onion envy.

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