when are you sowing your garden this year?

[hollohas]

Garden is doing well and coming back strong from the earlier storms.

I have been eating radishes and lettuce every day for a week. Tomatoes are very strong. I have been pinching off the suckers and every flower so they spend their energy growing strong roots and branches. I did this last year and although it delays a harvest for a couple weeks, my tomatoes last year were a good 6ft tall and grew TONS of fruit so it's a good investment in the future.

Sugar Snap peas are a good 5ft tall and I expect to be harvesting peas in a week. Corn is 4in tall and growing. Carrots, beats, herbs, squash, melons, celery, onions are all still small but growing. Strawberry plants are getting big. I'm not sure if they are the single harvest variety or if they are the kind that produce throughout the summer so that will be a surprise. Pepper plants are still a little on the small side. Next year I will make sure to start them inside as usual, but a few weeks earlier.

Pole beans had a terrible germination rate. Maybe 5%. I re-sowed them a week ago also adding some bush beans that I know are from good stock. The bush beans are already germinated but I still have yet to see any new pole bean plants sprout. I think I got a bad batch of seeds. I also sowed additional carrot seeds all throughout my tomato beds. Apparently the two plants are mutually beneficial. I'll report on how that works this fall.

I got potatoes planted late, in boxes, and will report on those later.

For the above posts concerning keeping the plants protected, I always start my plants outside under hoops and plastic. I uncover them throughout the day once the weather warms but this year I got hit with the storms like everyone else because I left them uncovered while I was at work. After the damage I decided I would keep them covered even during the day until the threat of storms passes. I use PVC hoops and 5mil plastic making a tunnel. To keep them protected from above but not over heating during the day I just open the ends of the "tunnel". When I am home I uncover them completely so they get the full sun but I leave the plastic attached and rolled on the side so I can quickly run outside and get them covered if the hail starts flying.


I will post pics later today on the setup.

[rbeau30]

...
I will post pics later today on the setup.

Yes please! I think that this is what was in my head, because I think there was a pic of your garden up somewhere here before. Could you perhaps do a close up or explain how you attached the plastic to your garden for ease of placing/removing? I was thinking about putting grommets or something on the double/tripled up plastic or something like that and some hooks of some kind.

[hollohas]

Yes please! I think that this is what was in my head, because I think there was a pic of your garden up somewhere here before. Could you perhaps do a close up or explain how you attached the plastic to your garden for ease of placing/removing? I was thinking about putting grommets or something on the double/tripled up plastic or something like that and some hooks of some kind.

Currently one side of the plastic has brass grommets installed through the end of the plastic that has been folded over itself 4-5 times giving it a thicker seam. The grommets hook to simple screws that are in the outside of the boards sticking out an inch. I tried using grommets on both sides but I found that the stress each day pulling it to cover/un-cover/hook, the grommets pulled out. So now I just use the grommets on one side and the spring clamps you see in the picture on the other side. This makes it very easy to pull back each day and it has weathered some pretty serious wind as well.

I don't have closeup pictures with me but will post some tonight.