May Day! May Day! May Day!

Well, no, there isn't anything terribly wrong. Its May 1st. And when you are home and sick on May 1, you might as well update your blog right?  It appears I have been remiss, but actually I have been quite busy in the garden. Its doing well, except that I had to rip out my 2 blueberry bushes. Seems termites have invaded the Giant's cave. Yes, we had to put all that nice poison in the ground to stop them. YAY! :( They used Termidor to do the dirty work. I know, directly connected to CCD, but what was I supposed to do? Baits could take a year, although that would be the next step. Yes, I'm anguishing about that, but I also don't want the cave getting eaten from the inside out.

OK on to lighter stuff.

I started this year with growing my tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins and sunflowers in my patio grow-house provided by The Wife. It worked fabulously! Assembled sometime in mid-February by the dynamic team of The Giant and The Littlest Giant 'helping'. My only critique is that the wood is quite soft (cedar) so be careful putting those screws in. You can easily strip the holes. Also, wingnut bolts that hold the top flaps open when you are hardening don't work at all. I just propped them open on the sill at that point anyway.

I got all my starter materials from our local nursery Campbell and Ferrara and there I essentially bought the entire Espoma Organic line; peat pots, starter soil, fertilizer, the works. Everything works great. Although I think that mow, the Plant Tone fertilizer doesn't have the kick that I wanted. Its only like 5-3-3. I think I will order my seabird guano from Home Harvest. That stuff is 13-12-2. That's some good shi.... well, you get the point.

All my seeds were from Johnny's Selected Seeds. I didn't think the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange seeds were particularly good last year. So if it wasn't left over, or if I didn't save from last  time, I bought from Johnny's.

The Patio Grow-house circa March 15

Peat pots in the Grow-house

Of course, I knew that when you plant when its in the 80's (yes early March was in the 80's) you suddenly get the frost the last week. Sure enough the last week in March and the first week in April came a few frosts. So, like any good gardener, I covered up.

The Grow house protected against the chill

Finally after hardening off the plants, and a week after the last frost, I prepared the soil.

The Littlest Giant and I prepping the beds

The Main Bed being prepped by The Littlest

View up the Driveway Bed with the Main bed behind.

As you can see, the Driveway Bed had lots of extra dirt and manure added this year, it just wasn't full enough. The Main Bed however didn't have a lot of additions. One because I didn't have that much time to get enough dirt for both (50 bags total) and second, since I am doing no-till this year, I didn't want to change too much. However, there were some depressions caused by the 3 Sisters mounds last year, so I had to fill in the gaps. The Littlest was helping fill the holes in that pic. Rented the pick-up from Home Depot this year. $19 for an hour, only took me 35 minutes. Worth every penny!

For the first time ever, the Master Plan for garden! Usually I sketch it out (which I have) but is more legible if I transpose it to something digital. I did that on Gridpapr. Got the public account. No $$$. ;)  Sow without further ado....

The Master Plan (not to scale). I have pumpkins and stuff in other places, but those are experimental at this point. 

The 3 Sisters, just flint corn at the moment

Mammoth sunflowers, with a 'volunteer' potato in the lower right corner

Tomatoes, part one, with the cherry tomato plant I grew indoors circa Dec '11

Closeup of the cherry tomatoes, just about to red. 

Tomatoes part 2. this has the bell pepper plant I stated with the cherry tomato plant

Carrots coming up next to the tomatoes

The Driveway Bed from the street. Is that a lion? ;)

The Main Bed from the 'bottom'. That steak is NOT a grave marker. 

Watermelon just coming up 

Evening Sunflowers coming up. No cucumbers yet. 

Parsnips planted last year. I suppose I should harvest them. Put peanuts in their place. 

Pole Beans coming up. That's what the gravestone pole was for. 

Bell Peppers with Cayenne's in the top right

Eggplants coming up. Its that bluish-greenish blur. 

Pumpkins, one of many plantings. 

Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch, err.. Potato patch. 

Horizontal of the Potato Patch

Water barrels on vacation. Had to be moved because of the Termite treatment. I'll put them back when I get some bricks laid in their original spot. 

 That's it for now. Fortunately the weather has gone back to wet and below normal temps for all of April, so that was a good thing. However, its supposed to be in the 80's again and wet for the next week. Lets see how that goes.