2015 SFG in Brooks, Ga

Hi Yolos.  I finally caught up with your posts.  You have been busy!  Beautiful work as always.  Your garlic looks gorgeous.  Some of mine have quite thick stalks as well.  It should prove to be a good garlic year for us!

Oh, and I just noticed your lighting setup.  Wow, I love it!

I finally have something in one of my beds in addition to the dirt.  I planted the seeds for this lettuce on 2/14/15 and transplanted out in the garden today (5 per square).  This is my lettuce bed.  79 lettuce transplants (9 varieties), 5 Bok Choy, 4 Chinese Cabbage.

I finally figured out how to germinate lettuce.  This is my first planting of lettuce I started from seed.    Now if I can just figure out how to keep some of them from falling over.   I think it would have been better if I kept a fan blowing near them to strengthened their stem.

Yolos, your lettuce looks fantastic.  Very nice job.

Nice, Yolos

Yea, Yolos!

Yolos, I noticed something in your post after I saw Marie's last comment.  You mentioned that your are worried about your lettuce not standing well.  I think they will be fine. 

You made me remember something from my first year of attempting lettuce.  I planted them in seed starters and then put them in our kitchen window box.  I thought the lighting was good, but it was woefully inadequate.  As a result, my seedlings stretched and stretched trying to get some decent light.  They were a failure because they could not support themselves.

My experience was very extreme, and yours look great.  However, I just wanted to mention that their slight legginess could be from lighting.

Boy, all these seed starting chores sure take a lot of time.  Planting, potting up, watering, lowering and raising lights, hardening off.  But I will say, I have some real pretty and healthy tomatoes, peppers, egg plants, Borage, Cosmos, Dwarf French Marigolds, 4 Oclocks, Sunflowers, Nasturtiums, and sweet potato slips.  Also I have already planted out about 9 varieties of lettuce, bok choy, and Chinese cabbage which I started inside from seed.  I have saved a ton of money but it sure does consume my time.

Saves you money

AND

saves you from getting all those pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, & all the other ...cides in your body!

That may save you more money going to the doctor, meds, etc. 

AND

saves you time from sitting in a doctor's office or in the hospital.

It's worth it!

Actually, I forgot the real reason I first started growing my own transplants.  I get blight every year and the first few years I blamed Bonnie (maybe unfairly) for selling me tomato transplants that brought diseases into my garden.  So I decided to grow my own tomato from seed.  But I still got early blight so it was not Bonnie's fault.

Garden Update 03/28/15

My lettuce is growing real nice.  I had to cover it tonight to keep it from freezing cause the low temps tonight will be 28-30*F.


My leeks I planted back in the fall.  I just harvested them all because I will need this space this week.  I have never knowingly eaten a leek.  I sautéed them this evening in butter and they were heavenly.  I can't wait to sauté these leeks and some mushrooms and pour over some very tender steak. 


And finally my test cover crop of winter peas planted as a cover crop.  My plan was to turn these under as a green manure crop.  But it is so densely planted that there is no way to turn all this green growth under.  So I guess I will cut off about the top 3/4 of growth and use it in my compost pile and turn under the 1/4 as a green manure crop.  I could leave this alone for another couple of weeks and there would be much more to harvest but you are supposed to turn it under at least two weeks before you are going to plant your following crop.  Therefore, it has to be cut down this week if I want to plant corn by April 15.

Wow!  Your lettuce looks amazing.  And I am jealous of your leeks... ok, just showed my wife and she's jealous too.   I make a lentil stew that uses lots of leeks.  I've never tried them alone, but I can imagine they'd be delicious.

I know what you mean about fall/winter crops occupying prime spring real estate.  Our family will be dining on a lot of kale soon.

All of your stuff looks good.  I might try planting leeks next year.

NICE, Yolos! 

You're already so far ahead of me...  Much more than 80 miles calls for...

Wow, this really gets me excited for growing season!  I love your tidy layout.  Hopefully my lettuce will look like yours does now in a couple of weeks.

Yolos,  The winter pea planting is very interesting.  Thank you for sharing.

Freeze Damage - I am a little late posting this but I wanted my fellow Southern Gardeners to know what I experienced with the last freeze we had on 3/28/15.

Potatoes - They were planted on 3/9 and were all sprouted and looking good.  The weather was forecast to be 28 - 30* F last Saturday night so I covered them.  I put 2 layers of Agribon 19 laying right on top of the potatoes.  I usually use hoops but I knew this was probably the last freeze and I didn't want to go to all that trouble.  I don't know why, maybe I did not secure the sides well enough or maybe the temp dropped lower than predicted, but I had a lot of freeze damage.  About 10% of the plants were frozen all the way back, and an additional 40% ended up with blackened leaves but still had some green.  50% were virtually untouched.  All of the potatoes in this bed have regrown.  The only problem is some are 1 foot tall and some are two inches tall.  Makes it hard to hill up.

I also had about 15 potato plants in another area which I did not cover.  They all died back to the surface and about 75% of them have regrown.  I am waiting to see what happens to the rest.

English Shell Peas - I thought these could handle a freeze so I did not cover them.  I planted them on 3/9 and maybe they hadn't had time to acclimatize themselves to the weather.  All the peas survived but all except one variety suffered quite a bit of freeze damage.  The only variety that suffered no damage was Alaska.

Lettuce - I covered these with one layer of agribon 19 and one layer of 4 mil plastic on hoops.  They had no damage and no ill effects from the freezing weather.

Thank you for sharing the results of various crops/varieties and freeze protection.

Plant out Day - today I planted out six of my tomato transplants (Juliet, Goliath, BrandyBoy, Brandywine, Gilbertie, and Mountain Merit).  Also planted another round of transplants for flowers grown from seed - Borage, 4 oclocks, Nasturtium, Cosmos, Marigolds and Sunflowers. 

I still have backups for the tomatoes and flowers that I will have to plant next weekend.  Also have peppers, eggplants, and basil that need to be planted out. 

Here is a picture of my Brandy Boy.  What a good looking tomato plant.  Hope it can keep from getting early blight and hope it produces better than Brandywine and hope it tastes as good as Brandywine.

Thank for the info regarding the status of your crops after the hard freeze we hand.  I'm sorry to hear about your potatoes and peas!   I am glad the lettuce did so well though.

In the flower department, I am planting everything you are planting except nasturtiums.  I might change my mind on that because I'm remembering we like the blossoms in salads (the leaves are a bit too peppery for us).

That is one mighty handsome tomato picture!  I'm going to wait a while longer to plant my "test the waters" tomatoes.   Mine aren't as big as yours yet.

Thanks again for the update.

Well, I'm glad I didn't put anything out yet, then, Yolos!  If it was that bad in your area...  as it is, we lost a lot of the blueberry flowers...

Thanks for letting us know what happened in your area!

Yolos, I visited Pike in PTC today and I checked for their vegetable/fruit compost.  Evidently they are not carrying it any longer.  I've been using organic cotton compost from Swint's, but it's rather gummy.  Did buy your compost components this year?  If so, what did you us for your "green?"

Windmere - I made a bunch of compost last fall and put it in a hugh trash can.  It was 50% my compost (mostly leaves, grass, veggie waste) and about 50% bagged compost (earthworm castings, cow manure, chicken compost from swints, cotton compost from swints, and ??? a couple of other things I picked up over the summer).  I have a lot of homemade compost (browns are mostly leaves), plus a 4 x 4 of shredded leaves trying for some leaf mold. 

My cotton compost was not gummy.  Maybe yours got wet.  Open bag and allow to dry.

My English snap peas are blooming so it looks like I will at least get some peas before the weather gets too hot.  I would take pictures, but we have had nothing but rain and clouds for days.  The weather forecast shows the sun returning to this area next Tuesday.

yolos wrote:Windmere - I made a bunch of compost last fall and put it in a hugh trash can.  It was 50% my compost (mostly leaves, grass, veggie waste) and about 50% bagged compost (earthworm castings, cow manure, chicken compost from swints, cotton compost from swints, and ??? a couple of other things I picked up over the summer).  I have a lot of homemade compost (browns are mostly leaves), plus a 4 x 4 of shredded leaves trying for some leaf mold. 

My cotton compost was not gummy.  Maybe yours got wet.  Open bag and allow to dry.

Hi Yolos, thanks for reminding me about greens and browns.  It's been over two years now and I still get those mixed up!  Yeah, you were right about the cotton compost.  I mixed some into a 5 compost batch and the moisture was wicked up by the other 4 composts... it's just fine.

Sun gone till Tuesday??!!  Good grief!

Garden update - 05/03/15.

As always with most of us, some things in my garden are doing superbly and some were a bust. 
My lettuce was one of the superbly.  Lots of different varieties.  I am cutting the lettuce about 2 inches above the ground and most are regrowing.  I have  a few bare spots where I just cut some heads.  The Bok Choy bolted real early and I am leaving it flowering for the bees.  A couple of varieties look like they may be nearing the bolting stage but they are not bitter yet.

English Shell Peas - This bed has three varieties of peas.  On the left are the fastest growing and the first variety setting pods (Alaska).

A few smallish carrots planted last fall and just harvested.


One whole bed of flowers - Sunflowers, Four Oclock, Borage, Marigolds, Cosmos.  I have been fighting ants in this bed for two years.  I finally dumped some no, no on the bed.  The ants are now gone but I did not want to plant any vegetables in there this year.


Some more flowers.  Four different varieties of sunflowers planted in 1/2 whiskey barrels.  Last year I planted cosmos in one barrel and marigolds in the other barrel.  They dropped their seeds on the ground and they are sprouting everywhere.  I put a small fence around the volunteers to keep from trampling them.



One of my tomatoes with Borage planted on one side and Basil on the other side.  This is a test tomato for me this year - Goliath.  Already has tomatoes setting on.


And my potatoes all survived the freeze and are looking pretty.  Some are flowering.

And my first planting of rattlesnake beans are growing nicely.  I am ready to plant the second planting this week.

And my one failure so far this year.  I planted the corn and then we had weeks of rain and cold temps.  Hardly any germinated.  I will replant this week now that it is warmer.

Yolos, You really have a green thumb!