Ugh. You know, I really wish they’d told me about this before I put in my tomatoes. At least they aren’t all in yet (but they REALLY want to be, they are getting tall.)
The entire yard, other than my raised bed and a little empty space, is bushes, some of which are pretty tall. I have no idea how you tarp that. The bushes aren’t mine, though.
It sounds like there’s really nothing I can do to protect them, so I guess I will just start over with new plants if they get destroyed. That sucks, though, I raised these from seed so that’s 2 months of work down the shitter.
Maybe they can do a tarp up front? I have no idea - but it wouldn’t hurt to talk to the roofers when they arrive to see how they can accommodate? Usually they arrive and hoist the shingles up prior to starting the removal. At that time you could ask and also see where the tarp could be set up. You also have time to put them into pots or move them - which I understand would suck since you just put them out - but it is an option.
Yeah, I may have to move them, which would suck because that means buying more soil, which is hard to get home without a car. One place delivers but the delivery cost is $20 and I’ve already paid that twice this year to get plants I needed. I may have to just do it, though. Ugh. The garden center is also VERY poor at social distancing. It’s just too small.
I don’t think they even have a roofer lined up, so once they do maybe they’ll let me talk directly to them and find out what would be best. I can’t be the only one in this situation. It would make WAY more sense to do the tarp out front. Much more space, poor sun so there are just a few bushes out there and 1 pot of flowers (not mine) that could be moved.
After more thought and counting up how many garden bags I had left, I replanted everything in the raised bed (5 tomatoes) into garden bags, and just scooped out the soil out of the raised bed that the tomatoes were already in, to fill the bags. I snapped off a branch off of one but they seem no worse for wear. I have more peace of mind knowing that I can move them if I need to. Better safe than sorry and now I can cross that off of my list of anxieties. Things grew fine in the bags last year. This seems like the best choice from a list of meh and bad choices.
Made and put collars around 11 new squash plants (!) that have sprouted since yesterday afternoon. Expect I may have to do 4 more - it’s looking like we’ll have 100% germination rate from the farmer’s coop seeds. Think I’ll make another hill and plant exactly two seeds in a couple weeks just to get some succession going.
My collars (designed to stay around the base and keep the vine borers which travel just under the surface from getting to the vines) are made from flimsy plastic this year, because I found some old water bottles I could cut up. That combined with my fairly rocky soil means I wasn’t really able to push them down into the ground the way I like to, so I’ll go out and do that after the next little rain.
More peas coming up all over, too, and maybe the corn will be tall enough to support them if they turn out to be vine type.
I threw some more seed in the community garden bed today and planted another tomato. The two tomatoes I put there already look good. And I think I have a couple of carrot sprouts. Maybe. The sprouts that I thought were probably arugula are most definitely arugula. Hooray!
Seeds planted today: Bright Lights chard, Scarlet Charlotte chard, Spicy Salad Mix, and 4 kinds of basil. Maybe nothing will come up, but maybe something will, and I’ve got all this free seed, I may as well use it. I put seed markers in - DIYed from blank mailing labels and our overabundance of wooden chopsticks from getting Thai takeout. So, at least it LOOKS like the bed is being used, which is the goal…
Also sighted in the community garden: a bunny. Booooo.
My FIL dropped off a cherry tomato in a pot last week that has been nibbled every night by possums but my babies haven’t been touched despite being completely exposed.
Pikelet and I put some baby nasturtiums in today too. I cannot grow nasturtiums past tiny seedlings without them getting eaten to the ground. The tomato success so far has made me so optimistic!
Edit: the capsicum is flowering, but also it’s been unseasonably cold here and the eggplant that flowered too dropped all the blossoms after they closed so I’m not too optimistic about getting winter capsicums.
I have pea envy! As of the first week of March, which is pea planting time here, I still thought I would be traveling for most of June (pea harvesting time). Now I regret not planting them.
My bell pepper is also starting to flower. It seems way too early, and the wise thing might be to pinch off the flowers and make the plant focus on growing leaves. Buuut BELL PEPPERS! What if I kill these flowers and ZERO MORE FLOWERS GROW???
We built an in-ground hugelkulture bed, which, uh, might defeat the purpose of hugulkulture? We don’t have any soil to spare, so we (aka htbf) dug out a trench so we could use that dirt for the top layer.
Basically we built a tree grave an in-ground composter.
Hoe planted more crowder peas today after soaking them yesterday.
My soil is shit, though. My mom posted pics of their gardens today and it looks 2-3 weeks further along than mine despite them not getting it planted until a couple weeks after I did. Though their climate is quite a bit warmer, so maybe that’s it. Their garden is also ~10x the size of mine - they cleared several acres for a garden spot when they bought the place 50 years ago, and we’re unwilling to cut like that (but they had scrubby pine in that area and we’re all climax forest).,
I follow several gardeners on instagram and all of their gardens seem a lot more advanced than mine, despite me following seed packet instructions and planting as early as I could, in fresh good soil from the garden store with lots of lovely stuff mixed in
I finished moving my stuff from my last house yesterday, and I grabbed a honeysuckle vine on the way out. Going to try rooting it and planting it out front. Love coming home and smelling honeysuckle, and it’s like bringing a piece of the old house with me. HTbF suggested building an arch trellis over the front steps.
The potatoes won’t stop growing despite my best efforts. I rewarded their tenacity by smothering them in dirt. We might actually build little wooden backstops for them, because all the piles are so high the dirt won’t stay up.
Harvested strawberries from a volunteer garden! Got 1 berry two days ago, and 2 yesterday. Eager to see whether the yield will continue increasing by +1 or doubling. If the latter, can’t wait for my 536 million berries a month from now.
Depending on your tolerance to being squicked out you can eat it, they don’t leave behind any residue that can harm humans. Just wash it well.I would probably eat it (especially if my entire crop was affected and I wanted to eat some of it!).
