Were they in direct sun, how long were they out there, and had you started hardening them off before today or was it the first day?
They were outside for ~7 hours, they werenāt in shade but it was cloudy intermittently. Iāve been hardening them off for about 7 days already.
Hmmm, in that case maybe it was the wind? Wind can be hard on little baby plants. I was thinking maybe shock, but if you had been consistently lengthening the amount of time for 7 days already, they should have been good to go. In the photo the soil doesnāt appear to be particularly dry either, though maybe they did dry out quite a lot because of the wind (
) .
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Thanks for the input. They werenāt super dry or just watered. I guess Iāll baby them for the next couple dayās and hope for the best!
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Potatoes! Iām gonna transplant them. I know itās not ideal. I am SICK OF HILLING POTATOES. I thought it would be a fun, easy experiment, but noooo, potatoes need maintenance. I unwittingly placed them in the sunniest part of our shady yard, and I want to put a higher value crop there.
I donāt care if I cut into a potato accidentally in the digging process, or if the plants are less vigorous after being transplanted. 6 potato plants is more than I need. 3 are in a bucket in the shade and still growing faster than I can shovel dirt on them.
Biggest issue is figuring out what else to put there. I grew complementary plants alongside them, and something like bell peppers wonāt get along with all the neighbors.
Iām also considering planting corn/beans/squash in the shady, weedy side yard, in the hopes that the squash leaves will be a natural weed barrier. Even if nothing much grows, well, the seeds were free and plentiful.
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Garden Tour
I have been so focused on food that I forgot about flowers. Hereās one:
I took a bunch of pictures both to remember where things are at now and to show an overview of the yard, not just pictures of individual sprouts. Will spoiler and split up into multiple posts since there are A LOT of pictures.
Big picture
This is a gorgeous yard. So much shade from all the pretty trees makes it hard to grow vegetables.
View from the deck, with lovely views of the hot tub, tea house, the native palm of the Pacific Northwest, plum tree, homegrown trellis, and dirty kneeling mat piled on a broken Adirondack chair picked up from the side of the road.
To the right - rosemary and lavender bushes, random green plants that are a pain in the ass to dig out of the ground, a fig tree, a scattered tomato cage holding no tomatoes, and an unused composter. Ahhh bliss.
The pond and birdbath, with a guest appearance by the newly functional composter. I spotted a crow in the birdbath yesterday and got all excited. Then she started hopping around in my vegetables, eating my snow peas and pecking off my TP roll tomato cages, and I FUHREAKED OUT.
To the right of the pond is a camellia tree, so pretty in bloom, and a new fence:
Then some bamboo, the hot tub, and the tea house which is currently serving as a garden shed.
To the left of the pond: the plum, a slowly composting pile of weeds waiting for our compost bin to have room again, and our fake Adirondack chairs on the deck, gathered from BN:
Next to the deck is the outdoor dining area, with hops growing up a trellis thing.
The path to the side yard. This area was covered in tit-high blackberry plants that I yanked out of the ground. My shoulders hurt just looking at it. Iām thinking of either throwing potatoes in there or a bunch of compost material and dirt to let the tree stumps decompose the rest of the way.
The rainwater collector:
The shady side yard that used to have waist-high weeds. This is where I might try squash to keep the weeds down. Fig tree peeking out of the back.
The front fig!
On the other side of the driveway, some kind of flowering bush and a red bushy smoke monster tree. Thereās a raised bed somewhere in here. It, ah, doesnāt get a lot of light.
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That is a truly gorgeous backyard.
Second basil seedling today!
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Thanks for sharing the garden tour, that was fantastic.
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Itās quite possible I may have actually rooted a blueberry cutting in my propagation tubes.
And I converted surplus quince, into quince jelly over the last two days.
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I have 3 dwarf blueberry bushes. Last year (when we had the -50 polar vortex), 2 of them didnāt flower, and a third did flower but a bad storm knocked off all the blossoms. So I didnāt get any berries. This year, none of the 3 have flowered, though they have leaves. I have been acidifying their soil properly and they bore in the past. But, if they havenāt flowered in 2 years, thatās probably it, right? Iām thinking I should just pull them and use that space for something that will produce.
Iām going to sow some carrot seeds in the community bed today. Itās late for it, but itās been so Ass Cold that they likely wouldnāt have germinated anyway. Iām also going to take @lhamoās suggestion and sow a bunch of arugula in there - easy care, sprouts fast, will make the bed look like itās being used (since this year that bedās really just a placeholder so I can keep my grandfathered spot in my REAL community garden when it reopens in 2021. I have to make it look like the plotās not abandoned, but since I donāt feel safe taking public transport there, it is an hourās walk there and back and I just canāt do that more than a couple times a week)
My landlord tore out a dead bush out of the backyard and Iām now eyeing that spot wondering how many tomato bags I can stick in that spot, it gets full sun.
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So Instagram linking is working again? 
Oh, nice jelly also. 
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We get pretty intense hail storms here. I know any basil outdoors usually doesnāt survive it, and other things definitely suffer.
Any advice on hail cloth/hail netting? Where can I get it for reasonable $? How to prop it up & secure it? How to figure out how much I need for a patch of a given size?
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I decided to get a 15.5 qt canner after measuring the space between my stove and my microwave ā 15.5 inches, which might barely give me enough room for one more size up. However that would inhibit me from easily putting on or taking off the lid without sliding the canner precariously partially off the stove or taking it off entirely, which just sounds no bueno. So 15.5 it is! I figure if I get really into it in the future, Iāll invest in a giant one and a detached burner, but thatās really overkill for now.
I might order it earlier than I expected, because they are on a backorder and expected not to be in for like a month or more, and Iām expecting tomatoes in like July.
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I was thinking about getting some sort of canner but Iām still working on figuring out garden things and I donāt have enough brain space right now. Iām thinking it might be a next year thing. Iād be interested to hear about your canning adventures!
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Iāve tried composting twice so far with Daleks (like a big black bin), and both times itās too dry and not composting properly. I now have mice in it. Local gardening FB group says to slightly bury the bottom of the compost bin and keep it moist, so I need to put it near my house so I remember to water it.
Any other recommendations? Should I give up on the Daleks and try a spinny one?
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We use the Dalek kind but are in a humid climate. I find we only need to add water when we add a lot of garden waste or grass clippings. Otherwise 1/3 shredded paper and 2/3 food scraps seems to be a pretty sweet spot for moisture for us. We do also bury the base a bit. We got a second one recently and put it much closer to the house and tap though, because everything is easier that way.
Maybe a worm farm as an alternative? Ours is always too wet despite never adding water. Probably because the toddler has a watermelon addiction.
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I had rats in mine. I folded and attached a fine wire mesh to the bottom. Seems to have stopped them. I add water to my compost to keep it moist. Also a strong focus on carbon:nitrogen ratios and regular turning with fork. I use the big black ones.
Iāve heard horror stories about the spin ones.
My next compost move might be a second bin? To really let the first age once full?
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What is the horror of the spin ones? Iāve had mine for just over a year and no issues yet, but I might just be lucky for nowā¦
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Iāve noticed climate makes a difference to which method works best for me (Midwest vs wet part of PNW). Maybe your being in a drier area is better for the tumbler?
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Toddler garden update:
Planting seeds and seedlings continues to be the gardening activity of choice, which means we grow far too much in a small space. The neighbours have benefited from Pikeletās chili growing success at least and we have another round coming on at the moment even as the weather cools.
She has two chili plants (Iām trying to advocate for the removal of the smaller one which has aphids and drops all itās fruit), three shelling peas, one snow pea, an eggplant, a few carrots, a zinnia, two types of salvias, and some cucamelons growing over the trellis from a separate container. The peas are a bit stunted but otherwise itās producing better than Iād expect.
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