Sitting here during a July 4th rain storm.

The garden is doing well. Putting down a weed barrier was well worth the cost. I have already harvested a nice batch of onions. Have pulled a few ripe cucumbers. The sugar snap peas are podding and the green beans are flowering. I am going to have a lot of tomatoes and peppers!

From June 12

From June 25

Beans and peas

Peppers

Tomatoes

hydroponics

 The tomatoes got totally out of control and never flowered. The Jalapeno plant produced some really HOT peppers but it wasn't consistent, or to my liking.

Starting over

 Garden updates, squirrels, and hydro learning curves

Cooked a batch of asparagus from the garden yesterday. It was really fresh and really good. If this weather keeps, there will be a lot more this next week.

A little ground squirrel has been night stalking my tomato and pepper seedlings. I have lost 7 tomato plants and 5 pepper plants in the battle. I patched every hole I could find in the garage and he still got in. Now using a loud radio at night and covering the plants with a thin painters plastic. For now he seems to have given up.

74 days with the hydro plants. The pepper has basically gone dormant, no growth for the last couple of weeks. The two tomatoes however continue to grow like crazy but I still haven't seen any flowering. I will probably have to do some more research on growing with hydro and lighting hours, pruning, etc..

Cucumber seedlings are ready for transplant and I have way more than I will need. It is amazing how much faster the seedlings grow with the heat mat under their tray.

Only one more month before taking the plants to the outdoor garden...

asparagus 4/13/24

asparagus 4/13/24

squirrel robbery

cucumbers 3 days after planting seeds

cucumbers and lettuce 7 days after planting

hydro plants day 74

hydro plants day 74

1 month until planting outdoors

all the plants are doing well

Seedlings and transplanting

 Day 21 & 22

I purchased some heating pads for the seedlings and my peppers are starting to sprout while a lot of the tomatoes are ready for transplanting.

I got a first good till on the outdoor garden yesterday and cleaned up the asparagus patch. Asparagus is already popping up.

Asparagus

Tilling the garden

lots of sprouts

finally getting pepper to sprout

some ready for transplant

a few tomatoes transplanted

Hydroponics

 Day 57

Another week and the tomato on the right, yellow pear, is still going crazy and needs pruned again. The pepper plant, jalapeno, and tomato on the left, red cherry, have been growing a little slower. I'm not sure that growing the pepper with the tomatoes was the best thing but I wanted to experiment. The jalapeno and yellow pear have about an 80 day cycle to harvest, while the cherry tomato should only be 50 to 65 days to harvest. As you can see, none of them are flowering yet.

Day 57 - Yellow pear tomato has grown up to the light again

Day 57 - Jalapeno is taking longer to recover from pruning

Day 57 - red cherry should be starting to flower

day 58 - Another pruning on the yellow pear

Day 58 - jalapeno is getting more light now

Hydroponics

 Day 50

I am experimenting a little more with aggressive pruning. They seem to recover so fast with new sprouts. I should have taken some before pictures but I got ahead of myself before I thought of it. The tomato plants had grown 6 inches above the light in a week.

I pruned nearly all of the leaves off the pepper plant two days ago and new sprouts are already coming back.

after pruning yesterday

after pruning yesterday

2 days after pruning

Seedlings

 Day 14

Still not much progress with the pepper plant seedlings. A few have germinated and I can see several others ready to pop up. I backed off on the watering and that seemed to help. I am noting that next season I will put peppers and tomatoes in separate containers. The tomatoes seem to like the water a bit more.