3.3" of rain late Sunday and all day yesterday. Now it's all headed up to the northeast corridor to snow on y'all. But the rain meant an indoor putter day so I made a batch of pizza sauce and froze it up in 1/2 cup per small container. That will be enough for six future homemade pizzas. Might as well make good use of downtime!

Before the rain set in Sunday I got eight kohlrabi planted out into the garden. The first planting of the year. Off we go!

This morning I set the first round of brassicas out to harden off. They'll need to come in at night (low-mid 30's) for a few days before they can stay out 24/7. There are 3 or 4 each of some cabbages, broc, cauli and chard.





The new parsley (left) was planted out a little while ago and the new arugula on the right got potted up last week. Looking good!



The old arugula is blooming.



And finally, Brassicas Round Two is underway.



I had a dental cleaning appointment this morning and was going to take Pickles' truck to pick up new sideboards at Ace for the new bed. Yep, halfway to town I realized I had automatically loaded my butt into my CAR. DUH. No boards today!

The weather is just not cooperating. So what else is new? A few days ago morning lows for Mon., Tues., and Wed. were 34, 37, 38. Now they're 33, 28, 33. I was going to plant out the hardened off brassicas today but will wait until Tuesday afternoon. Lows are moderating after that.

Instead, I'm starting eggplant seed today since they take a while to get going and I want big plants to set out in April. One each of the usual Millionaire and Chinese String and now also one each of Matrosik and Rosita (thank you, Marsha!). Pickles didn't know about the two new ones and that there will be four plants this year instead of two but she assures me she has been gathering LOTS of eggplant recipes over the winter.With luck, we'll need 'em!

I need to check the soil temp in the pea beds as I wanted to plant tomorrow. Guessing that I'll have to push that back a while or experiment with covering the beds with plastic to warm them up. Maybe both.

I’m looking forward to Matrosik too also curtesy of Marsha. I cut back my white Paloma F1 plants in hopes of no hard freeze so I too may be swimming in eggplant come August.

Yesterday afternoon I prepped planting holes for the first brassica plantings. I had six more plants than would fit in one bed so I had to fork and prep six holes in the second brassica bed. This morning I clipped off the lower drooping leaves from the transplants and they'll go in this afternoon.



There are already eight kohlrabi in the bed, four quick Kolibri and four of the slower growing Blauer Spec. I've had to cover them with a small wire tunnel to keep the deer out of them. However the one on the front row, far right is missing and it looks like it has been pulled out and through the wire!



The henbit is already having a party in the garden. It's a battle every year and I try to get it out before it blooms and goes to seed. For me it's a mildew magnet and can really spread it to the peas if I don't keep the pea beds clear of it.



I never know what I'll find in the garden. Yesterday as I was prepping planting holes I dug up this. It looked like something I was familiar with but couldn't quite place it until the name popped in last evening. It's an anchor plate from a t-post.

PlainJane wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 12:59 pm I’m looking forward to Matrosik too also curtesy of Marsha. I cut back my white Paloma F1 plants in hopes of no hard freeze so I too may be swimming in eggplant come August.

We can share recipes!

I am always swimming in eggplants, which is why I dehydrate more eggplants than any other plants! (Well, maybe more peppers, if you count actual numbers! ) It's unbelievable how many things I add those rehydrated cubes to.

I'm trying that Matrosik, too. I got some from Marsha last year, but it was too late to start for last year - already had 2' plants of the others in the garden.

Yesterday afternoon was the first mass planting of the new season. The bed on the left got the first round of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and chard. The far end of the bed on the right got 2 collards and three more cabbage. The rest of that bed will get the second round of brassicas when they're ready after I remove those bunching onions and plant them around the property.



This is the big pecan tree on the north side of the garden. Right now it's not really a problem (no leaves) but when it leafs out it will shade the top three beds on the left side until about 10:30am when the sun clears it. The top three on the right will be in full sun by 11:30am after the sun swings around enough. It's OK to use those beds for leafless fall/winter but are sketchy for summer use.



Over time the big crape myrtle in the southwest corner has been throwing more and more afternoon shade, not to mention roots that have made the top bed on that side pretty useless. Combined with morning shade from the big pecan tree, that far corner only starts getting sun around 10:30 am and then stays in full sun only until about 3:30 when the crape starts throwing shade. It has been decided that although it's beautiful when in bloom the crape will be cut it back to about 5'. It will come back and be manageable. That won't solve the root problem but will really help with the shade problem.



The 50' fence at the top of the photos has muscadine grapes that have been there for years. A lot of junk constantly grows up through them despite mulch and all that stuff needs to be removed about every other year. It's a pain in the butt that neither of us cares to mess with anymore. Besides, they send masses of fibrous roots into the two top beds on each side and we don't get any grapes anyway. The squirrels, deer and birds get most of them and I'm not going to put netting on 50+ feet of grape vines. It's just too much to do with all the other stuff going on. So the decision has been made to remove the grape vines and take that fence down when there's time to do it.

And finally, some cheery Ice King daffodils blooming around an old dormant dormant Hibiscus syriacus.

It's been good getting out in the garden again. The area dug up for the new bed has dried enough so yesterday I put up the side and end boards using 2x10's which is wider than the 8" I've used on the other ones. It will take a while to fill this one. I use 1/2" Sch 40 pipe to hold the boards up. Once there's enough soil to hold up the boards I'll remove the stakes on the inside. These beds aren't nailed together so they can be disassembled if necessary and moved. The end boards slip out easily if I wanted to take a tiller through there.

Since nothing has ever been planted there maybe there won't be any nematodes but some have probably migrated there anyway. One can hope. Once there's enough soil to hold up the boards I'll remove the stakes on the inside.

While I was working on the bed, Pickles planted the two 11' rows of potatoes, one of Yukon Gold and the other with Red Pontiac. Those are behind the three Hansen's cherry whips I planted on Monday. The area behind the potatoes will have watermelon planted early may. By the time the vines reach the potatoes, the taters will have been dug and the melon vines will fill the area.

We're supposed to have rain coming through later but that line is still over in Mississippi. This morning we're making the quarterly trip to Sam's to restock some stuff so this afternoon I'd like to get some peas planted.

More daffs, a clump of wild ones that pop up around the place.


And the callery pears (wild parents of today's hybrid Bradfords) are in full bloom so they must have started about ten days ago and escaped my notice. Besides the wild daffs, the callerys are about the first thing to bloom every year in February. These invasive things are everywhere but they're pretty in the spring.

Yesterday I planted some snap peas down one side of the new bed, half row of Snak Hero and the other half in Sugar Sprint. They are the first inhabitants of the new bed. Then I got the two Wando pea beds ready for planting today.


After sowing the outside rows I used a handy dandy adjustable rake to pull back the leaf mulch enough to drag a furrow on the inside of the poles on one side, sow that and then pull the mulch back from the other side to repeat the process. Once the peas start coming up I will add the pea fencing. I love that little rake! You can adjust the width of the rake from 6" to about 15" and that's so handy for getting in small spaces or pulling stuff out from under shrubs.


Soil temp today is about 52.


I have a chart that shows germination times at various temps for different veggies. It says that at 50 degrees, 94% of peas germinate in 14 days. At 59, they will take 9 days to germinate. We have warmer weather coming so I'm hoping the soil warms up some. BTW, the chart shows 77 to be optimum, with 94% germinating in 6 days.

It's getting late for pea planting. I usually plant them the second or third week in February which means first picking at the beginning of the second week in May but it's been too wet this year. Once it gets going, picking lasts two weeks and around the end of that time the heat of June sometimes starts sneaking in early. I'm glad the peas are finally in!

Nice. Surprised your soil is still that cool there. I went out and measured two raised beds and one in the ground bed with an instant read thermometer at about 5” down and all were 65-66° on a 57° overcast day.

Good luck with the peas!

Love your beds, so much space! Do you have any issues with critters taking bites out of things?

davood wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 8:10 am Love your beds, so much space! Do you have any issues with critters taking bites out of things?

Thanks! There are a lot of deer around so I have to put tunnels of netting over everything. They're finicky. Sometimes they'll just take a bite or two of this and that but sometimes munch down a whole row of something. No tellin'! So now I've gotten smart and put a tunnel over a bed as soon as the plants go in.

We're finally in a warm period again. By 4pm it was up to 78 today and a good day to do a few things in the garden. The 5 gallon kitchen scrap bucket was full again so that means dumping it into the new pile and turning both old and new piles. The old pile still feels a tad cold but now there are lots of red wigglers in it. A good thing!

The first round of brassicas is coming along nicely. Good color and no deer munch thanks to the netting tunnel. I need to get this bed mulched to keep it cool and keep the nematodes asleep.

The Heshiko bunching onions are in the bed where brassicas #2 and #3 will go. The idea was to dig them up and replant all over the property so that no matter what happens I always have onion. I dug up about 6' of them and then decided that since they're blooming I leave the rest to set seed. I can probably get Round #2 planted down the other side of the bed and will dig the rest of the Heshikos when necessary.


Round #2 of the brassicas has been out on the front porch hardening off for about ten days so far. Left to right is broccoli, cauliflower, two pairs of lettuces and They'll be going into the garden this Saturday or Sunday. The scallions won't be planted for another month.


The weather looks good enough that this morning I decided to go ahead and put Round #3 out there too. They grow so much faster once they meet Mr. Sun. Round #2 is in the back and #3 in the front. In the front are 6 cabbages, 4 more broccoli, 4 chard and 2 collards sharing a 6-pack.


It's almost time to start peppers and I still need to decide which ones I want to do this year. So many seeds to choose from! There's room for 9 peppers down the middle of their bed with carrots to be sown down both sides. The carrots and peppers together worked well one year so I've continued doing that ever since.

We've got rain moving in tomorrow night into Wednesday morning and then they're talking about heavy t-storms late Friday into Saturday. I'm going to try to plant Round #2 late Saturday afternoon if the rain has moved on.

Looks great

I may have asked this before, but I don't remember the answer. What is that tubing you're using to support your row cover?

Seven Bends wrote: ↑Mon Mar 04, 2024 7:23 pm I may have asked this before, but I don't remember the answer. What is that tubing you're using to support your row cover?

That's 3/4" Schedule 40 pvc pipe cut to 17" lengths. You can get seven of those per 10' stick of pipe.The 1/2" black drip tubing I use for the hoops fits perfectly into the 3/4". The whole shebang sets up quickly. If it's just netting going over the bed I use four sets of hoops on an 18' bed. If frost cover is going on I use five sets for more support.

Yesterday I got that full brassica bed mulched and then ran the weedwacker around and between all of the beds. Too much henbit starting to bloom and too much winter lawn lettuce. I also hoed some henbit clumps out of other empty beds.

Pickles has finished pruning crape myrtles and is now starting the grape removal project. Yesterday she got about half of the fence mostly cleared and today she toted off the debris.


During the night we got another 1.3" of rain. It was supposed to be nicer this afternoon but just now the weather dude said there was a possibility of severe storms this afternoon. And they're still holding with severe stuff Friday night into Saturday. This area of standing water is going to get a lot bigger! Like maybe the whole area. But it's March and that means very iffy and sometimes turbulent weather.


It's also Carolina Jasmine time when these beautiful strands of yellow flowered vines entwine themselves through trees everywhere and anything else they can find to climb. They're actually a jessamine but everybody calls them jasmine. So Jasmine it is. Some years the wild wisteria is blooming at the same time and what a wonderful mix of yellow and lavender hangs all over the place but not this year.

I just got back from the feed & seed with a resupply of seed potatoes "just in case". Total cost was $2.20 for about 3 lbs and I'm glad I got them. Now they're saying we could get up to 3" of rain Saturday. I checked on what kind of peas they had (just in case) but there was only Early Alaska and that's not what I want so I'll be crossing my fingers that the peas don't rot.

Meanwhile the asters are up and carpeting their bed with some Asiatic lilies poking up too.


And the iris are coming up.


There are some unknown daffs that grow up against one of the beds every year. No telling how they got there!


And finally, the red Kalibos cabbage seed I got from Pinetree never did show any signs of any color but green so I contacted them a while ago. They apologized and said they are realizing that they were sent the wrong seed by the supplier. They sent me a replacement pack pronto. Welllll, it's not turning red either! Time for another e-mail to Pinetree and a purchase of Kalibos from Baker Creek.

Yep, the annual March pond is back. Happens every year. Fortunately I don't need those areas before late April. The white pipes on the other side mark where four rows of Silver Queen will go.


The grape vines are now gone along the top of the garden. There's about 15' still to remove where the vines went around the corned and started down the near side. Post removal will happen as there's time but before the ground hardens which means there's plenty of time to get that done!


The first asparagus spears are coming up.


The new bush cherry saplings are showing signs of life. Wakey, wakey! The pic is a bit blurry as it's windy today and the darned thing just wouldn't stand still but you get the idea.


Today I've completed another journey around the sun and there are ribs in the smoker. Life is good.

The brassicas that were planted out Feb 18th are coming along nicely. To the left are more that were just planted a couple days ago.


They were talking about a 31 low for this morning so Pickles and I covered up the brassicas late yesterday afternoon. The older plants are pretty hardened and shouldn't need it but it wouldn't hurt to cover the recently planted ones. So both got covered. It's 34 now and I don't think it will get any lower. In the back you can see the last section of grapevines that need to come out as well as one of the two grape stumps


If you recall, the red Kalibos cabbage seed I ordered wasn't red and they sent me a replacement pack. It seems the replacement isn't Kalibos either! It's getting too late to order it elsewhere so I'll just do that in the fall.


Since the peas are up, today I need to finalize a plan to protect them from the deer. I'm leaning towards surrounding the two beds with a netting enclosure like I did with the corn to keep the squirrels away from it. If it isn't one critter it's another! The enclosure will go up pretty quickly. More on that later.

Y'all have a great day!