Fertilizer burn

Ooops. I guess buying the cheap fertilizer should have been a more obvious bad plan.

I bought a granulated 5-10-10 granulated fertilizer a few weeks ago and burned the string beans with it.

Elsewhere in the garden the NM anaheims are continuing to do well. Each plant has at least 4 peppers on it. There are a couple that are getting dangerously big enough to harvest. Patience, gardener, patience.

Meanwhile, my tomatoes confound me. The plant getting the least full sun & water is the biggest and healthiest looking. The plant getting the most sun & water & was the first to have the most blossom sets, but isn't doing so great otherwise. I did finally dig those poor cherry tomatoes out of the tiny plastic bin they were in. I didn't have a shady spot to put them in while they recovered from transplant. I hope they make it.

All the flowers have taken off , the zinnias have buds and the sunflowers are starting to form flowerheads.

4 of the corn stalks have ears and about half are tassleing? The cucumbers continue to deliver every week or so. I haven't figured out what to do with them all yet?

back to square one

The lettuce germination did not go as planned. The root talks poked through the paper toweling and couldn't be easily removed.

Will have to try again, but probably not for several weeks.

The pumpkin seeds have sprouted, and will be transplantable soon. The fennel seeds are doing nothing. I bought a fresh pack of seeds and will start them soon.

basil overgrowth

Fresh basil is on of summer's quintessential pleasures.

Last month the local grocery store had one gallon containers on sale, so I picked up a couple and dropped them into the ground next to one of the tomatoes for a little companion planting goodness. The tomato plant seems to approve, as it's got more flower clusters in bloom than all the other plants combined.

Last week's lovely, warm weather turned the basil into some decent sized shrubs. I was afraid the plants would flower and bolt, so I conducted a mass pruning earlier this week. Although a few leaves would find their way into my weekly caprese salad, it wasn't really doing much but taking up counter space. Apparently, I'd harvested close to 7 cups of basil.

The only real solution for that is pesto. Instead of the Italian pine nut version, I went with the nut-free French version called pistou. Unfortunately, I went a little heavy on the garlic (read: severe gastric distress quantities of garlic). This evening I went out and hacked off another 4-5 cups of leaves off the leggier plant and made a garlic-free version to mix into the pain inducing stuff. Since the top layer had turned a really unappetizing brown (from oxidation), I didn't add the last two tablespoons of oil, and instead poured them over the top to create an oxygen barrier. Let's hope that keeps everything green.

I'm considering freezing quarter cup servings of it in the little snack size ziploc baggies. That's an easy size to give away, or to take to Bettie May's cookoff come September.

Ziplock germination

I found a great seed germinating technique over at Uncle Tom's garden.

Sprinkle your seeds between two coffee filters, dampen and slide into labeled ziplocs. I don't have the appropriate kind of coffee filter, but I'm guessing that 2-ply paper towels that have been separated will provide the same effect. Currently I have 10 year old fennel seeds, the 4 recently purchased lettuce varieties, and 5 pumpkin seeds lounging on an end table in the living room.

3 of the 4 lettuces are growing squirrly white tails (roots). Soon I'll pack the plastic veggie bins that I've been saving with potting soil and poke them into dirt. I think I'll have to pick up some sort of copper flashing (a construction material) to rim the planned knot garden. Snails and slugs go crazy for tender lettuces.

Knot garden a go

I biked over to the nursery this morning and picked up 4 varieties of lettuce: red deer tongue, merlot, winter density and emerald oak. I couldn't find any frisee seeds. The pattern I'll use is a 3 foot square divided into four smaller squares in a window pane pattern overlaid with a 3 foot square set diagonal, like a diamond. The squares will be green, the diamond red. I hope it comes out okay, those seed packs weren't as cheap as I'd like. The instructions for sowing the nut garden indicated seed should be broadcast very densely.

I raked out a square of garden between the basil and the corn. There's still a fair amount of torn up cardboard that had been serving partly as mulch and partly as a barrier between the good soil and the bad. I'll keep it moist and keep turning it for the next week until the seeds have all germinated, but after that, any loose cardboard is going into the dumpster.

Lettuce knot garden

I'm all excited about doing a knot garden. But honestly, if I do it in herbs, it will have to wait until next year.

However, lettuce is a fall crop that I can start germinating any time now. I looked up various types of lettuces, and there would be plenty of different colored and textured greens to do this project with. I'd like to keep it simple, limit myself to straight lines and not more than 4 or 5 kinds of lettuce. A mix of cos heads, a mix of leaf lettuces and some fancy greens like curly endive (frisee) should look nice and keep me in greens for quite some time. There are some deeply colored reds available now including a very dark one called merlot. Rumor has it there is a black cultivar called Black velvet, but I'll believe it when I see a seed packet.

Knot gardens for herbs

Gardening is all about finding little unexpected things here and there. While I was looking for information on how to plant diagonal rows, I found tips on growing knot gardens with herbs. It's too late for this planting season, but I'd love to have a knot garden next year. I think a small dark thyme would look wonderful with something leafier like parsley. Dill might also make a nice contrast with its tall, misty blue foliage.