Almost Summer

After a very cold weekend where temps dropped down to under 40 degrees at night, things started to look up on Memorial Day.  The weather was beautiful, sunny, hardly any wind and temperatures in the high 60's.  Today it was up to about 78 degrees and the forecast is for very hot and humid weather over the weekend.

I decided to take off the cover for the greenhouse as I am thinking it is now warm enough for all my crops to grow without worrying about very cold nights.  When the temperatures start to go up to 90, it gets up over 110 in the greenhouse, not very good for any of the crops.  So, off the cover came and all seems to be just fine.

Here are some photos of the garden showing the progress all the plants are making.  So far, the only problem I have had is some big, fat bunny is going around and having dinner on my dime.  He (or she) has eaten 3 of my tomato plants and when I placed a marigold in the same location, the rabbit ate that as well.  I think this rabbit is also eating some of my onions.  So, today I went out, thinking I would buy some red onion bulbs up at Agway.  Unfortunately, there were none left.  But, for $1.99 they had a six pack of red onion seedlings (about 140 of them, no exaggeration) that was just perfect for planting.

When I started my candy onion seedlings, I planted 1 or 2 seeds per small square.  Well that meant I had to have a lot of planting cells if I wanted say 120 seedlings.  Now, seeing how Agway did their onions, I will try doing a massive planting of seeds in the small containers.  To get 140 seedlings in a six pack was an eye opener for me.  I had seen this being done with carrots, but didn't think you could do it with onions...

So here are some photos..

This was a father and son project for Jackson (Derek and his Dad did a great job in setting up the new swing set.  Took about 8-10 hours, I would say.  Today Mom went out and got some baby swings.

This is the "kitchen" garden where we can just go out the back door and pick up some lettuce, parsley, and later on tomatoes, endive, kale and even some nice flowers.

On the left is broccoli, in the center I planted some lettuce to fill in before the potatoes take over.  I may plant some beans in between the two potato rows.  There is a sample red kidney bean planting in the back area between the two rows of potatoes.

A close up of the broccoli.  These are the plants I started under plastic outside in January.  One or two of them were attacked by that darn Wrabbit, but for the most part they are strong and sturdy.  Saw my first green broccoli caterpillar today

This is my main lettuce and kale bed on the ground.  There is some cilantro in the back area on the left.

So here is the greenhouse with all the plastic off.  I will leave it this way until the fall.  I need to do some wood support work, including making a support system to install a door.

My other crop of potatoes (Yukon gold on the far left and German Butterball next on the right.  The five rows of onions, with the new ones right there on the left in the walk area between the potatotes and onion.

This is my pea crop almost ready to get some flowers, with a row of tomato plants to the right.  Notice the support system I am experimenting with.  Those a 10 foot 1/2 inch emt pipes with 3/4 inch plastic tees used to hold the cross bars.  I used some self tapping screws to hold the bars in place.  

This is one of my oldest self made greenhouse areas that has not had a cover on it for years.  It now holds chives on the left (note purple flowers), lettuce, kohlrabi and watermelon in the back of the raised bed.

My horse manure pile that now has about a thousand worms of all sizes inside.  Amazing.

This is the area of the greenhouse that was covered.  Peas in the back are being picked (we had some tonight for dinner) while some nice cukes, peppers and lettuce are growing very well.  Compare these cukes to the ones in the next photo that have been outside with no covering.

As you can see, the cukes in the back left area is an area that was not covered is not doing nearly as well as previous plantings done in the greenhouse.