Garden update.. and a bagel for good measure.

Yep, here she is.. the almighty Earthbox. Stuffed with Jalapeno's, she's doing quite fine. The potato SmartPot also got rolled up a bit more and filled with some more medium.. not quite all the way up, but it's darned full now. The horseradish has taken over the whole right hand side of the herb garden area, and looks healthy enough since I've been pulling slugs off it on a nightly basis.. (sheesh!). Most of the peppers are all ding quite fine, with the exception of a Fatalii in the upper raised bed which kicked the bucket due to it being too cool for it out there when I planted it, hop house notwithstanding.. (Darn it, my father is going to laugh when he reads that.. ) but otherwise, the other peppers in that same bed are all doing just fine. The Tobasco in the Smartpot is a textbook specimen, too. Those things are doing nice across the board. In bad news, I've got a mole in the beds now that's giving me fits knocking things over and tilling up good garden beds.. I will stomp the life out of that thing with my foot if given the chance.

In even sadder news, we lost another chicken the other day. A large bobcat was seen with one of my Red colored birds in it's mouth, walking off across the yard.. broad daylight in the middle of the yard, too. That's the first bird I've lost to a predator in over two years now. I'm looking to add a couple more to the flock in the near future.. stay tuned for that. 

Earthbox Jalapenos

Horseradish

Sideways shot (sorry) of my Gardners Supply hanging planter with Roma tomato inside..

Potatoes!

Tobasco

Upper bed

Lower bed

And lastly, a home made sourdough bagel of the cinnamon rasin variety. Was delicious!

Updates.. Hops, tater's and stuff.

Everything is still slowly moving along now.. starting to pick up the pace, but still pretty slow. The cold night time temps is still holdin' us back I think. I think I see some flea beetles out there, but they're not hurting anything so far. Still no slugs, which was what was killing me last year. I'm keepin' an eye out fr them, though. Got the last Global Bucket project finished up finally and put a Roma in it the other day, and here she is on the deck, next to the EarthBox and the other bucket project..

Also filled and hung the new Revolution Hanging Planter from Gardners Supply. This is a spinoff of the Topsy Turvy, of course, but it's way better built with a zippered enclosure, steel coated wire surround and a self watering feature from the top from a one gallon reservoir. Curious to see how this goes, as I've never done the upside down thing before..

Revolution Planter

Cascades

The Smart Pot farm

Upper bed

Brussels Sprouts, arguably the strongest thing in the beds right now..

Lower bed

Potatoes...

Potatoes are starting to come up.. check it:

That didn't take long.. sprouted right up once we got some soil onto them. Nice.. the hops plants are both doing well now. I'm constantly untangling them every day to keep them somewhat on the trellis..

Cascades

Here's the little Fatalii I put out in the Smart Pot.. a bug did a little damage right there on the left side, but it'll make it. The yellow bit there was a bit of a cold snap that came along that I didn't see coming and failed to take precautions against. I was in NYC, so I was a bit far away to work on that part, though..

And finally, some Arugula poking up in the lower bed. Hard to see, but it's coming along too. Everything else is just a bit larger and doing quite fine. Better than last year, so far, I'd say. Much more orderly with the SFG method. So far, so good..

Arugula

Earthbox filled and Smart Pots up and running..

Took some time yesterday and the day before to fill the Earthbox up with the mix I'll be using this year for all my containers out of the beds. It's called ASB Greenworld Growers Mix, and it's a pretty standard Peat based mix, pH balanced to just slightly acidic and filled up with a bunch of Perlite too.

Jalapenos installed. That's gonna be a lot of growth in a small space..

So that's the mix, and there's the Earthbox. The Earthbox company says, seriously, to put in 6 Jalapenos in that thing.. so, that's what I did. Last year I just ran with two Hab's in the box and they grew like gangbusters... but they're saying I should have done six plants arranged like shown in the pic above. the only problem I see now is the slow release food I've put in there is good for three months, but these things will probably grow and produce well into the month of September. I might have to open the top and re-fert the thing in August some time. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I also filled up the #15 (15 gallon) fabric Smart Pot and installed the potatoes just under the soil. They're already chitted and wanting to grow.. it won't be long before they pop right out of there and reach for the sky. I got 5 of 'em in the big pot, per their instructions as well. In the photo below, you can see the #15 pot int he middle, surrounded by the smaller #7 pots, which will each be holding one chile peper plant. I've got one plant in each, except for the lower left pot right now, which is reserved for a Tobasco chile that's just not quite big enough to be outside just yet.

Potato in the middle, surrounded by chiles. 

Also, I finally located the horseradish plant that was missing for a while out back.. but here it is. Coming up strong in the herb garden area which I put down all that manure on last fall. That trick seems to have worked well.. the chives are growing like wildfire too. I'll probably put out some basil in a couple more weeks.. I should start some up today in the basement, I guess.

And finally, above, a pic of the upper bed as it now stands. Garlic is strong, Brussels Sprouts doing well, a bunch of Bell, Jalapeno, Hot Cherry chili's all in place.. starting to look like a garden, finally. :) My dad says that this stuff should not be here so early in the season, and that they're all going to die in a wicked cold snap.. but we'll show that old man how it's done. Clearly, he has not read Elliot Coleman's book, the Four Season Harvest. Read up, old man! It's time to learn some new tricks! ;-)

Bits and pieces.

Been a while since I've written.. things are still growing, no real setbacks. The potato project is actually coming along faster than I figured it would.. I got some organic potatoes to grow in the Smart Pots I got, and just left a few out.. and I'll be darned, they sprout really fast. Like, in just a few days fast. "Normal" sprayed potatoes would have looked god and stayed un-sprouted for considerably longer.. and I guess that's why they spray 'em. I have heard pros and cons for using organic potatoes for a 'seed' as opposed to ordering "seed potatoes" from a reputable gardening source. Disease, proper growth, is this thing you're planting *really* what it's labeled? Hybrid or no? But you know, it don't matter that much. The other 2/3rds of the bag of spuds was turned into the best whipped potatoes you'd ever laid eyes on and the Smart Pot can be used for something else if it doesn't work out just right.

The marigolds I put in tiny starter pots last week have already started to come up.. I'm pondering putting some of my peppers out into the raised beds this weekend

Here's some pics of things as they stand:

Cascades hops. Just a week since I last took their photo.. now have leaves!

Brussels Sprouts, survived the storm last night. 

Peas

Onions. Still clinging on! They loko so sad, though..

Dehydration..

Here's the new-to-me dehydrator my momma handed down to me.. it had some stuff that came with it, new in the bag.. from *1981* purchase date. Righteous! There in the last photo I took some apples and ran 'em through the blender real quick on the puree setting and let it rip for a bit till it turned into a paste.. you slap it on the teflon pages that come with this thing and leave it there til it's pretty good looking. I got 'em a bit too dry and they came out a bit too tough, but not too bad for 5 minutes work of involvement. 

Apple sauce fruit leather in progress..

I plan to try tossin' a few hops on these trays later on in the summer, and doing up some mad chili's in here to preserve those as well. All those chille's I had last year that got lost due to no good preservation method.. (sigh).

In other news..

Sa's scallions she put in the herb garden last year..

Cascades hops, just coming up.

German White garlic

The transplanted onions, three days later.

So, the onions are still alive, and look mostly OK. There's a couple in there that look a bit sad, but then again, I just yanked them and half their roots out of a tofu container and really ticked them off. This transplant was a bit more irritating to these plants than most of the others I've done. This is also the first time I've transplanted anything from under the lights indoors to the outdoor hoop house. We'll see how it goes..

Drats, killed 'em dead!

I had an extra Jalapeno that was taking up too much room and was also partially injured due to a previous accident here.. that, and a basil plant that was kicking around as well that wasn't getting any bigger in it's Dixie cup. Decided to see how 'hardy' those guys could be in the hoop house overnight. The answer: Not hardy enough. Both looked pretty much dead this morning when I took a glance at 'em. They were still standing tall last night at midnight when I got home from work, but this morning, all droopy and bent over. Pretty much killed. Heh! So much for *that* experiment.

That garlic is still looking pretty good, but still seeing only 4-6 shoots per square coming up from the 9 that were planted in each square. Hmm..

A little dirt pulled aside (dirt, or llama poo? Yikes!) from the top of the hops bed shows some green hop bustin' up action in the Cascades department. Interesting. With the 6-12" of snow predicted for this Friday, I just covered 'em back up with a pile of leaves and hope that works well enough to keep the new guys safe for this week.

All the tomatos from the propagator were transfered over to the 4 pak seedling trays, the Roma's and the Cherry's.. here's a pic of those in furious action. They're all lined up on the wet mat in the propagator still, but that's just temporary.

Roma and Cherry tomato seedlings.. 

The onions are doing well too.. they got ejected from the propagator's wet mat too, but they seem to be happy enough on their tofu trays. :)

Onion babies. Almost time for a haircut!

That's all.. gotta go prepare for the big storm now to set us back another few weeks. Drats..