Tomato Tree Production Commencing

Tonight we worked together in the garden. The tomatoes exploded out of the top of the walls of water and needed space to grow. Last year we had phenomenal success growing tomato trees using a trellis fencing system. So we've decided to try that method again and see if we have repeated success. The three older boys were charged with holding the tomato plants once the walls of water were removed (as the tomato plants lacked the strength to hold themselves up) and until Michelle could get the plants tied to the trellis we had created.

The boys could hardly stand still that long but after a lengthy 5 minutes all of the boys were relieved of duty and were off playing in the water (slide and wading pool). Michelle finished tying and pruning the tomato plants to give them the maximum growth potential. We'll see how well we do this year.

While the boys cleaned up the yard from their home water park play day Michelle methodically continues to prune the tomato plants.

Michelle finished before the boys could completely clean up the yard. As you can tell by the shadows, it was nearly 7:30 pm before we starting thinking about dinner! The boys started getting pretty ornery but we had them all in bed before 9:30 with showers and bathes. Ok, not a world record but it's summer, right?!

Gardening: Step 2

It has taken us a little bit longer than we wanted to get to this point in this year's garden. But the school semester has been grueling and has provided limited time to spend cultivating the soil. Michelle finally decided that waiting for me to actually form these rows was not getting anywhere and she took matters into her own hands. (I had actually created rows at one point but I didn't do a very good job and Michelle had erased my mistakes.)

Now I understand what a real row is supposed to look like. Deep furrows separating mounds of dirt where the plants will actually be planted. I also laid down the pvc pipe for the watering system.

Michelle has adjusted her garden rows so that each row will have plenty of sunlight and won't significantly shade the adjacent rows. Since some plants grow taller than other plants this planning takes great forethought.

And now we are ready to proceed to the planting stage!

(Posted: 7/24/10)

The Garden Begins Again

It's that time of year when we begin getting the soil prepared for the annual garden. Michelle has decided that we need to enrich the soil every other year. Apparently this is the other year. It's a good thing Michelle knows what she's doing, I'm just the grunt laborer.

We feel quite fortunate to have some wonderful friends. We were able to borrow a roto-tiller to get the soil mixed and ground tilled and ready for planting. Actually, this is just the tilled part. We still have to make the rows, lay down the watering system and get support fencing installed before we're really ready for this growing season.

There's something about seeing the ground getting prepared for another garden. We're excited about what we'll get this year. I think we're finally learning from all of our mistakes so this should be a good year.


(Posted 7/24/10)

Harvest Time

Michelle's hard work this summer is beginning to pay off. It's harvest time! It's almost overwhelming trying to keep up with the produce that our garden is producing this year. It is very exciting to know that we were able to produce all of these vegetables from our very own garden. It's also very delicious.

Take a look at these tomatoes. We tried a few growing techniques this year. The results are fabulous but we may have not try the sprawling tomato plant again next year.

The boys were excited to be drafting into service. We made them shuck their own corn for dinner. They were so excited that they shucked my corn to (while I was at work). It's great to have so many big helpers around.

Even Aleky wanted to be a part of the process and he shucked his corn too.

Garden Harvest

Michelle has been doing a fabulous job with her garden this year. She has figured out all the cool stuff about spring harvest, summer harvest and fall harvest. She's also figured out a special watering plan that is supposed to make the produce/plants more hardy while reducing the amount of random weeds that show up. It seems to be working out great.

The spring harvest is finishing up. In fact, the carrots are the last of the spring plants. This has been really exciting for us. This is Michelle's first real attempt at raising carrots! I don't know about you but these look really nice!

Of course the temperature outside has gotten quite hot. So we decided that the best time to pick the produce was after we put the boys down for bed. We witnessed a beautiful sunset as we finished picking the beans.

I just think it is so cool that we are raising so much good food for our family. And I am very relieved to say that our garden is still going strong.

Gardening Success

It is officially...we now have a successful garden. This time last year our first garden was officially dead. But this year things are going much better. The carrots are getting bigger and are nearly ready, the peas are about done for the year as is the lettuce. And the tomatoes are taking over the garden.

Michelle has been quite excited with the beans and corn. They are growing very well and we are so excited to have these fresh vegetables although it will still be a few weeks before they are producing anything.

We're just excited that we haven't killed the garden this year. The next major hurdle will be the Pioneer Day weekend. If we make it past then with a thriving garden it will mark our ultimate triumph for gardening in 2009.

The Garden Is Producing!

We are so excited that our garden is doing so well this year. Here is the current picture of our garden.

The peas are starting to come along...

And the cauliflower is nearly ready to harvest.

And the broccoli too...

The beans and corn were planted later but it is coming up now.

Isn't this a beautiful sight!

The Garden Begins to Grow

Michelle has put in a lot of time trying to make her garden successful. After the trials of last years garden, with 3 failed attempts, we anticipate that this year will be better. So far things are looking good.

Everything seems to be growing as it should, except the bulb onions. They haven't really even started growing. But we've had to thin the carrots and we've produced more lettuce than Michelle can eat (she tries to get the rest of the family to help her but we just aren't quite as excited as she is).

The 2nd half of the garden was just barely planted and it looks like it is coming up nicely as well. This half of the garden is more of the summer plants. The other half of the garden is the cooler weather crop.

Michelle has engineered her own special watering system. The main line is on a automatic timer and then each individual line has a manual shut-off valve to make sure that each row only gets the right amount of water. Of course there isn't anything we can do about all the rain we are getting (so the automatic watering system has been turned off).

So far things are looking good. If we make it past July 24th with a thriving garden we know we have been successful. Of course, last year we had killed the garden the first time by Independence Day!

Monster Bean

I went out to pick some beans from our makeshift green house a few days ago and found a MONSTER BEAN!!! The smaller one next to it is a normal size bean. The funny thing was that it didn't have bulging bean seeds or anything . It was nice, smooth and good on the inside too. I guess I had used too much fertilizer trying to give my garden a boost hoping it would miraculously grow faster.

Ideas At Work

It's 6:00 am, and I can't sleep. It has been raining almost non-stop since early Saturday morning. We stayed up until midnight on Friday trying to set up a little greenhouse to protect Michelle's green beans from the imminent dropping temperature. As we neared the completion of the project, and noticed the impending rainstorm approaching, we realized that our greenhouse design has some inherent flaws (mostly relating to the capture of rain on top of the plastic). How do we keep the rain from pooling on the short side of the plastic and eventually ripping, tearing or damaging the greenhouse. We have come up with several brilliant ideas so far:

1) Design evolution. As we built the greenhouse we suspected the rain pooling to be a problem so we shortened the distance between the apex (peak) of the roof and it's short side. This would limit the surface area potentially at risk.

2) Support. We used twine to attach from the fence to the ridge pole. This would then provide a measure of support to the plastic and would limit the areas of pooling by maintaining high spots every few feet. In addition, we extended the twine to the ground on the opposite side to provide an added measure of stability to the structure.

3) Tension. We concluded that if we keep the plastic tight enough that the rain would simply drain and no puddling would ever occur.

4) Tension support. We suspected there may have been some inaccuracy in our measurements, plastic measurements, fitting of our frame, etc., which caused slight dips in our otherwise perfect design. We were able to correct a measure of the error by pulling some of the excess plastic and taping it with duct tape. This helped, in a measure, to restore the tension. (This was done after it was already raining and puddling has started to occur. Michelle had me hold the umbrella over the work area while she dried the plastic with a rag enough to attach the duct tape.)

5. Mid-structure support. When the tape failed to eliminate the pooling Michelle added additional supports in the middle of the plastic, at regular intervals, to create a steeper run-off which would help eliminate low spots and would allow the rain to drain. She used some left-over gardening sticks (from a previous garden) to push the plastic up. The concern with these poles was that they are thinner and since they are essentially just sticks we were concerned that if enough water managed to pool, these poles may just poke through the plastic.

6. More Mid-structure support. If one pole doesn't work try more. The pooling continued so Michelle added additional poles. It seemed to work but we now realize that it was a slow down in the rain that gave us that false sense of accomplishment.

Now it is 6:00 am and raining again and it is raining pretty constantly. I woke up to the sound of the rain and then I realized another solution to the dilemma of the pooling water. Add drains. We've been able to determine where the water is most likely to pool. Since those spots are the obvious low spots, we can just add drain spouts in those spots which would allow the water to drain instead of just collecting and pooling. The idea is simple, the design a little more complicated but my current thought is that we can poke a hole at the bottom of the pooled water area (after draining the water), insert a straw, extend the straw through the plastic side wall, and "seal" the 2 holes with duct tape. The straw will allow the water to drain below the side support and would be positioned to drain the greatest amount of water without creating a place for the heat to escape the greenhouse. I'll have to try it when it gets light outside.

The Greenhouse Effect

According to the weather predictions on our WII console, there is a major drop in temperature anticipated for this weekend. Lows should dip into the 30's with freezing weather possible. And rain is likely through the weekend. All this means bad news for our struggling crops, possibilities of freezing buds would end our last hopes for harvesting any significant amount of green beans, peas, and zucchini.

Michelle is a fighter and is not going to lay down for this one. So we've been engineering a make-shift greenhouse to save our little garden. And while the sun has gone done and the temperature is falling, Michelle is creating the fabric that will be the salvation of garden. I'm really just here to assist with the grunt work to help realize Michelle's dream of a PVC pipe greenhouse.

Check this out! We bought some rolls of plastic that we're planning to drape over the garden. But the rolls only come 10 feet wide by 25 feet long. Well we need something wider than 10 feet. So Michelle is sewing the platic sheets together!!! Now I would never have even consider the option of sewing plastic together. But it's no big deal for Michelle. With the 2 sheets sewn together we can drape it over the plants, stake down the edges and BOOM, we have a PVC greenhouse.

We already understand that this is not going to be a permanent structure in our garden. But I'm impressed and I live here! The real test is going to happen over the weekend as the temperatures fall...will our plants be safe in their new home or was it all for nothing. As Thomas Edison would say, should the greenhouse not work, "I've discovered another method that will not work." But let's stay optimistic here, Michelle figured this out and she's much smarter than I am, so this little greenhouse should do the trick. It just has to work for a couple more weeks until we can harvest our garden!

Aleky discovers the plastic for the greenhouse

But he's not sure what to do with the pvc pipe

The boys don't want to be left out of the fun

The frame has been assembled

Michelle is sewing the plastic together

The project lasts into the night

Staking down the plastic for the finishing touches

Completed just before midnight

The Farmer in the Dell

We are pleased to announce the arrival of the first fruits of our garden! Okay, the beans were not the absolute first fruits...we've had some tomatoes, zucchini and peas already. But after the trials of our garden this year we are pretty excited to be getting some produce before the weather gets too cold. In case you didn't know...this is the third try this year! Let me recap:



1) Everything started great, getting the garden tilled and prepared (we even added compost from the city green recycling center). But just to make sure that the soil was just right Michelle added some slow release fertilizer (with weed preventer). What we didn't realize at the time was that the weed preventer also prevents garden plants (seeds) too! Once we discovered that we had to replant the majority of the garden (everything that started as seeds...corn, beans, peas, etc.).

2) Now that we had the garden sprouting and growing we wanted to ensure that the plants had enough moisture. Everyone knows that you put grass clippings around the base of your plants (except tomatoes - because you tend to invite little pests) and that helps your plants grow, maintain their moisture, etc. But...grass clipping are a bad idea if you just sprayed the lawn with weed killer! Yes, we killed the garden a second time, except the tomatoes.


3) Undaunted, Michelle faithfully started over and replanted the garden taking great care not to apply anything with weed killer (we didn't even bother doing the grass thing this time). Things were going great. The corn was shooting up, beans up the fences, squash out of control (just a happy day for my "budding" farmer). And then we noticed that some little bugs were enjoying our garden more than we were! So Michelle started to spray the leaves to kill off the bugs. And then the fateful mistake occurred. Just before leaving on our camping trip for Pioneer Day (July 24) she sprayed the entire garden. The problem was that it was still mid-day, way to hot to apply this particular type of spray. We didn't realize anything until we returned home from a most wonderful experience only to discover the entire garden wilted and brown! Let's just say that it was not a pleasant evening. And what wasn't killed by the bug spray fell over in the big wind storm because the garden was getting watered too much (we were watering the garden on opposite days from the neighbors watering their lawn and the net result was a daily dose of water...equals soggy ground).

4) Just like the pioneers of old we planted a new crop at the end of the summer! This time we have added no fertilizer, no grass clippings, no bug spray, nothing! Just a completely natural garden! (Third time's the charm! How many people would plant their garden 3 times in one year?)  We can now gaze out of our window and see corn stalks over 6 feet tall, beans returning up the fencing and big squash leaves in the garden corners again! And today we got the first harvest of green bean which we enjoyed in a wonderful dinner! Normally we don't get quite this excited over a small harvest of green beans. But this year it has taken an amazing amount of persistence to get this handful of green beans. (And Michelle harvested enough cucumbers to make her very first batch of pickles!)

(Please note that she is holding the bottle of pickles in her left hand)