Weeding

Wow - 2 weeks hiatus and the weeds are exploding in the community garden.  Sooooo, it will take a huge amount of manual labor to weed if I don't put down some static weed control.   (Before & after images below...about 1 hour of work and didn't finish it all.)  Thus I am ordering more pro weed mat.   Now I see the wisdom of putting that stuff down basically all over.  But it's a lot of mat to order, since the good stuff is about $27 per 3x50 feet.  That's enough to block 2x25' rows.  6 total rows to worry about in the 25' square.

The basil plants that I started from seed are barely growing; slightly bigger in the home garden.   A few carrots have emerged in the comm garden but will take care to separate from fast growing weeds.

The good news is that most of the tomatoes are doing OK and growing... The first flowers are emerging.

Mothers' day update 2014

Yesterday and today I did weeding and watering at the big garden.  Learning more stuff:  first,  the IRs and CGs did not do so well after transplanting.  They were smaller because they were sown later, and I think they could have used some more time to establish themselves before transplanting. so about half of the IRs/CGs died, and those that are alive are scrawny.  Next year allow to establish in 5 in pots, another week, outside with sun, before transplanting.  But most of the other plants survived and are doing okay.

May has begun...All plants now in the ground.

So I finally got everything planted in the community garden plot, between last weekend and today.  It's a bit over the top in terms of numbers of plants, but I am guessing the per-plant yield will be lower than in my home garden.  

At home I have 2 HC, 2 RP, 2 CP, 2 BC. Plus cukes, carrots and basil.
At the community garden: about 65-70 plants plus 2 basil and some carrots. !
The totals per variety are:
1 FL, 1 HC, 1 PPP, 2 RP, 4 BC;  3 CP., 6 BFT; 3 AL, 7 SS, 5 CG; 8 ML, 4 BB; 4 KB, 6 OS; 3 GZ. 11 IR
Some of the CP I planted on the first day did not survive.  They were too dry.    I took care after that to moisten the pots thoroughly before planting.   We got a lot of rain last week so soil conditions are better now.
Here's the arragement by row in the community garden:
One. FL. RP. RP. CP. CP. CP. PFT. HC. BFT. BFT. CG. CG. BC. BC. BC.

Two. KB. KB. KB. OS. OS. OS. OS. OS. OS. KB. CG. CG. CG. BC.

Three PFT. PFT. PFT. AL. AL. AL. ML.x 8.

four. BB. BB. BB. BB. SSX7. GZ. GZ. GZ.

Five. Basil. Basil. PPP. IR X 11.

Six. Carrots half row.

All seedlings finally moved to 4 inch pots... intro to the community garden

I mixed good quality potting soil with either about 1/4 peat moss or germinating soil for repotting.   As of today they are all in 4 inch pots.

For the 2nd round attempts at germinating I used good quality seed germinating soil - and got nearly 100% germination.  What was even more striking to me was that the plants were more vigorous too.

Last saturday I put about 8 plants into my plot in a local community garden.   These were mostly Cherokee Purple and a few others.  However the watering supply wasn't hooked up yet, so  I hope they survived the next few days till rain came.  The soil seemed moist below the surface so here's hoping they are OK.

Big rock

Well after some more digging I concluded the rock was a piece of limestone at least 2-3 feet across, of unknown depth.  Too big to remove without a tremendous effort. I buried it about 10 inches deep and decided to plant cucumbers on top.

My garden rocks

I was putting down more topsoil+black kow+ peat moss the other day, so I was diggin' and mixin', and went just a few inches deeper then last year.  Then I found a limestone boulder.  Or bedrock...

More sowing

Over the last few days I planted fresh Indigo Rose seeds, and new Costoluto Genovese seeds (an Italian red ribbed variety that I hope does better than Zapotec did).  And, some basil.