I worked outside all day today while Amber and Bryson were visiting family. First thing I noticed was that two plants I thought were dead are coming back to life. This made my day. The first is my Brandywine tomato that I started from seed, and over watered. It looked like a brown stick last week, and now there are little green buds forming on it.
The other amazing resurrection is my patio blueberry plant that endured being chewed up and left bare-rooted in the sunshine for a full day.
This is the other, non-adulterated, blueberry plant. It is growing nicely. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put it on the patio as long as the four-legged plant killers are roaming freely.
I’ve been pissing off my worms by allowing the sun to shine directly on their home. I need to build a roof, but I figured this super-insulation will help until I have the time for that. The worm lady at the Live Green Expo recommended I place the worm box directly on the ground, which will help keep it cool and allow native worms a path to enter the box, so I did that too. She didn’t think red wigglers would be able to tolerate the heat once the temperature got above 80 degrees, but “The Worm Dude” that sold me the worms said they will survive as long as you aren’t cooking their home in the sun. I took out some of the worms for an inside box. Amber will surely be thrilled.
One of my broccoli plants has this red rust looking stuff on it… not sure what it is. By the way, if anyone wants some fresh broccoli, come and get a head. I don’t think we can eat what we have right now.
The dogs love Brandon.
I planted a few more tomato plants directly from seed. I suspect that they will take too long, but I’m trying it anyway.
I planted 4 “New Zealand Spinach”, which is not spinach at all, but it is a green that grows in the summer heat and tastes like spinach. They were some funky seeds.
The mystery plants. I planted a bunch of pepper seeds a few weeks ago. In the process of taking them out of the seed starter and into the garage under the grow light, they all got mixed up, so I have no idea what I have. 2 of them looked like tomato plants, 12 were peppers. The peppers got very droopy as soon as I brought them outdoors. They perked up after I planted and watered them. I hope they do OK, they are very small still.
This is the main garden area looking NW. Notice all my new soaker hose. I ran 2 1/4″ soaker hoses in each bed, on the “one foot marks”. I’m not sure it will water everything enough, but it takes forever to get drippers installed on every last plant. Getting all the soaker hoses took me all afternoon.
An this is looking SE.
I finished the critter protection on the short fence. There are a few areas where they can probably still fit under the tall fence, so I’ll be attacking that problem later.
I also replanted some cucumber and cantaloupe that never sprouted, and planted a few marigold flowers in strategic locations in both gardens. I didn’t have time to get a bird net installed over the strawberries.
