Char's Gardening"As the Garden Grows, so does the Gardener"

I thought I would show you my winter garden, since I haven’t posted a picture in quite some time.  Even though the deer came by and ate it down after I first planted it, I am very pleased with the results.  I’ve been using the protective cover I built, to keep out the deer, and it’s been working great.  The cover is light weight enough for me to remove whenever I need to work in the beds.

One of the best things about square foot gardening is after harvesting one veggie, the seeds for the next veggie can go right in it’s place.  All I do is add a little fresh soil, compost would be best but my compost is not ready yet,  to the square   Here in zone 8b, it is time to plant cauliflower, celery, peas, and potatoes.  I hope to build a few more beds before spring.

It has come to my attention since beginning to blog a few months ago, that there seems to be a movement amongst gardeners to plant heirloom vegetables as opposed to hybrids.  I can not say that I fully understand all the pro’s and con’s, but from what I do understand, it seems like a good idea.  My newer seeds are heirloom seeds, however, early in the spring of 2010 I purchased some hybrid pepper seeds from Gurneys.  They were Gurney’s Sonora II Hybrid Pepper Seeds (hot peppers) and Gurney’s Giant II Hybrid Pepper Seeds (bell peppers).  I must tell you, that I have never been harvesting peppers in late October before.  But,then again, I don’t think I have ever paid much attention to my garden past August. Is my pepper success due to the seeds, the gardener, or both that I do not know.  I’ve seen some great looking gardens out there in the blogosphere and I’m wondering what varieties of heirloom peppers have you planted that preform this well?

Since I have all these peppers, I am always looking for recipes to use them in.  This weekend it was chili.  I use my sister in laws recipe, and insert whatever I have fresh from the garden.  Head over to  Greenish Thumb for some other great garden to table ideas.

The past two weeks have been so busy for me, that I haven’t even had time, until today, to plant my much anticipated fall garden.  I transplanted my fall seedlings and everything else got directly sown into the garden.  As you can see my second summer crop is doing very well, I have tiny cucumbers and zapallo squash, and blooms on my tomatoes, beans, and winter squash.

Fall Garden

Our weather here is still hot with the highs in the upper 80′s to low 90′s and lows around 70.  When I ordered my seeds from Heirloom Seeds I got a sheet specifically telling me that lettuce won’t germinate in hot weather.  I went ahead and planted my lettuce today but am a little worried it’s still too hot.  Hopefully, they will germinate.  But I figure, what’s to lose, each seed pack comes with hundreds of seeds, enough to last me years in my square foot garden.

While in the garden I noticed I have a helper, no this time it’s not my dog Kahlo, but an insect eating helper.  Non other then a Praying Mantis.  Hopefully, I didn’t scare him off by taking his picture because I sure could use his help.   Do they eat caterpillars?  I hope so.

Praying Mantis

Then much to my dismay in my butterfly garden I found this.

Green Lynx Spider eating Bumble Bee

I have been adding flowers to my garden that attract bees.  I have convinced myself the reason my zucchini and summer squash, in my first summer garden, didn’t produce much fruit was due to a lack of bees.  So to see that the Green Lynx Spider got this bee made me sad.

I thought I would give a little update on how my garden is growing.  In my post What I Did This Weekend I built raised beds for my square foot garden.  It’s been about three weeks and I am quite pleased with the results.  The big tomato plants I bought, the rest were started from seeds.

I know, there is a lot of open space in my beds.  This is because I am anxiously awaiting the time to finally plant my first fall crop.  Most of my fall seedlings have grown enough to place in pots.  I have moved them outside onto my potting bench with a shade cloth curtain in front to protect them from the hot sun.   My plan is to start more fall seeds in about 2 weeks in hopes of having a continuous fall crop.

I am pleased to say I survived to tell the story of getting my square foot garden beds ready for planting.  I originally thought I would build one trellis bed and one 4 x 8 bed, in hindsight I think I should have stuck to the plan.  But, being the good American I am, if 1 is good 2 is better.   I decided to forgo the original plan and build two trellis beds and two 4 x 8 beds.  These beds were in the overall plan, see the original sketch here.  But deciding to do this over one weekend in the hottest part of the year maybe wasn’t so smart, but I figured, what the heck, I can do it.  I purchased my supplies Friday afternoon so that Saturday morning I would be ready to get to work.  I placed a few flags indicating where the beds would go and I was ready.

I was so proud of myself I thought I had all the kinks worked out.  I had a plan for where each bed would go and had purchases all my materials.  But when I finished mapping out all the beds and put a line level across the area I realized I had a 15 inch differential from top to bottom. (you can hardly see the pink string with a line level in this picture)

What to do??  Raise the lower part of the beds with more wood or dig the higher part down in order to level the beds.  I had planned to raise the beds 10 inches.  However,  if I left the top of the beds 10 inches then the lower part of the front left hand bed would end up being 17 inches off the ground.  Not only would that require a lot of dirt to fill it but I didn’t think I would like the way it looked.  My only other option was to dig the top part of the bed down, this I knew would be a lot of work but it had to be done.  So Saturday morning I started cutting wood and building the boxes.

All the boxes are built and put in place.

Next my helper and I removed the sod and leveled the boxes.

Finally the two 4 x 8 boxes were ready for dirt.  I would mix my own blend of dirt based on Mel Bartholomews directions from Square Foot Gardening.

Here is a picture of what it looked like after all the mixing was done.

Sunday all that was left was to level the two trellis beds, mix more dirt, and fill all the boxes.  I placed the soil from my old garden in the bottom of the beds and then approximately 4 to 5 inches of the good stuff on the top.

After this was done I took the trellis from the old garden and reused it.  If you notice in the first picture the PVC was white so I painted it with green plastic paint. I wired the plastic fence to the poles and finally I was finished.  Wow, what a weekend!!  After all the hard work next comes the fun part, planting…

Below I have a sketch of what I will be planting in my new square foot garden.  Some seeds will be planted ASAP and others in September.  By the end of the weekend I hope to have two beds ready for seeds, in hopes that the seeds I ordered have arrived.  Thankfully, I have a few extra squares as I am doing some seed exchanging with Mimi from gardening in the boroughs of nyc.  I will need some extra space for these plants, which are not in the sketch. Planting veggies at this time of year seems so foreign to me, but I am very excited about it.  The frost date for my area is Nov. 20 giving me 17 weeks, which should be enough for all the veggies.  As I have never done this I am curious, how will the plants do as the weather cools?  Will I get the same yield as I did with my regular garden?  I will keep you posted.

Garden layout