Fennel

Fennel that Carol bought for us at the Poplar Grove plant sale last weekend.

Seedling Transfer

We transfered some of our larger seedlings into bigger trays today. This is a mixture of tomatoes, eggplant and peppers sitting in front of the window now since we are running out of growlight space.

Moon Plant

Moon Plant seedling.

Container Garden March 30

A moon and stars heirloom watermelon planted in a self-watering container and a georgia streak heirloom tomato planted in an Earthbox.

Lettuce

Lettuce in the Earthbox on the front porch. The Earthboxes work really well.

Garden Started March 30

Today we planted: jetsonic tomatoes, volcano peppers, jalapenos, red velvet okra, patio tomatoes, tumbling tom tomatoes, beefmaster tomatoes, georgia streak heirloom tomatoes, potatoes, chinese lantern flowers, and onions in the ground at Granny and Brenda's. Everything is from seed except the jalapenos which are from the farmers market in Raleigh and the potatoes which are from the Framers Supply.

Jetsonic tomatoes, red onions and volcano pepper seedlings before we planted them this morning in the ground. These seeds have been growing under lights for about a month.

Red Velvet okra seedlings before we planted them this morning. The okra will be red until it is cooked then it will turn back green.

Success!

The aerogarden when we are getting ready to clean it out and change over to peppers from herbs. We bought a master gardeners kit so we can plant our own seed instead of doing prepackaged kits of seed combinations. We have been growing and using these herbs for about 3 months.

Stawberry.

A strawberry growing in one of the self watering containers on the front porch. We got this plant at Farmers Supply a couple of weeks ago.

Improvised Earthbox

We have three Earthboxes that my mom gave us with none of the necessary accoutrements, so we improvised our own. Or tried to. This is our first try and the best thing we could come up with. Chris made a frame out of pvc pipe and then stretched aluminum screen and plastic tree fencing over it. We hope the plastic fencing will add enough strength to hold the soil up and the screen will keep the soil from falling through into the bottom reservoir of water.

New Planter

This is a new planter we got at Progressive Gardens. It uses a sort of drip system for watering so you only have to put water in the top level and it drips down into the other levels through holes in the bottom. It can be hung or stacked on the ground and you can add as many levels as you want. Today I planted lettuce and strawberries, just to see how well it works out.

Aerogarden Tomato

Our tomatoes are starting to grow! We planted these on january 3. They are Golden Harvest yellow cherry tomatoes.

Grow Ball

This is the Grow Ball. We ordered it online but i can't remember where from. It is a soiless hydroponices sytem that works kind of like Chris' self-watering containers. The top is filled with a perlite/coco mix (the white and brown stuff) and the bottom is filled with water and nutrient solution. Right now i am trying a Patio tomato plant in it under a standard compact flourescent light. I plan to move it outside once it gets warm enough because it won't flower under this light.

Tomatoes, Peppers and Onions

These are the Jetsonic tomatoes we planted a few weeks ago! They have become so large we had to transplant them to larger trays. We also had to do this with our Volcano peppers and Rosa di Milano onions today because they were outgrowing the starter trays.

new seed starting setup

This is the new seed starting setup Chris made using Becky and Kenny's bookshelf and an example of the jiffy peat seed starters that we are using in this tray. We have currently growing here: turkish eggplant, black beauty eggplant, red velvet okra, georgia streak heriloom tomatoes, moon and stars heirloom watermelons and beefmaster tomatoes and rainbow cherry tomatoes.

seedlings

Here are some of our seedlings which just started to sprout. these are Red Velvet Okra and Rainbow Cherry tomatoes.

Kitchen Composter

This little guy works. Maggie bought it off the interweb for about $80. Holds about 3 gallons. We put all kinds of kitchen scraps in the unit including egg shells, avocado rinds, veggie scraps, etc. Instructions say to put handful of bokashi happy farmer powdered granules into the scraps and agitate with a spoon. This thing was full 1 month ago of big chunks of veggie scraps and a fortnight later, its really decomposing well. The spigot at the bottom is so you can drain any tea that forms in the bottom of the unit. Instructions say dilute 1 tbs. per gallon. Have drained but not added tea to any plants yet.

PVC Watering System

Kenny found a bunch of old pvc pipe waiting for the garbage truck to come and collect it. We grabbed it and took it down to the Willow Woods Garden for future use in a sprinkler system. The photo at the right shows what I have in mind for a low pressure irrigation system. Consulting with Jake on whether to use drip emitters or go with low volume sprinklers. More photos as the project develops.

Chris

Reanimation Beginning

This is the first day of weeding the garden. Brenda and I made a lot of progress with 2/3 of the area weeded. Will be adding some black cow manure in the next several days. Just wait until about 3 months from now. This garden is going to look amazing!

Chris

Earthbox Detail

These earthboxes are terrific. We acquired 5 of them. Only 2 have the internal hardware, so we are going to have to get created to come up with our own pieces for the guts. Ordering those parts online will be about $30 per unit, so can't see spending $100 on plastic parts. if you are not familiar, here is the concept. Plastic tub, with a plastic "screen" on the bottom, about 2/3 of the way down. This screen sits on a grid of plastic risers to keep it at a certain depth in the box. The plastic pipe in the top is the conduit for adding water to the unit. Water fills up the bottom reservoir up to the bottom of the plastic screen. A weep hole just underneath the logo sticker on the front prevents you from overwatering. The earthbox works by the wick method of pulling water up towards the top soil which is dry. The plants absorb the water/nutrient and as the soil dries out, water naturally wicks it way back up. Here is a another photo.

This is has lettuce growing.

Here is an update to the February 26th post. This is the seedling tray photographed March 6, 10 days later. The grodan on the far left houses patio hybrids just "planted" yesterday. Back right contains frosted explosion and chinese lanterns which have not sprouted yest. Tomatoes on right bottom and peppers to the left are doing well.
Chris

This is a layout I created for our upcoming spring garden. This is a first run with possible changes coming. Really narrowing down our plant selections this year and growing specific varieties instead of growing a cacophony of veggies to see what takes. Each year we get better.
chris

Iceberg Lettuce

This is one of 9 iceberg lettuce plants we are growing in Earthboxes. These are transplants from seedlings we bought from Farmers Supply.

Aerogarden Tomato!