Garden News

May 15, 2009
By Cliff Chamberlin


Solid overcast and damp outside this morn. 55 heading for 68 this afternoon and plenty of wind. Could use a good rain tonight, but its suppose to be dry till next week.

Heading outside this morn to mow front yard and then weed garden. My spuds, beets and onions all have that darn red earred pig weed up. They pull easy, just as long as you will pull them. I go along on my hand and knees with a plastic lid from a garbage barrell and get the job done.

Got all my garden seeds in yesterday. Have plenty of room left up top for more stuff. I need yet to purchase my tomatoes and pepper plants and get them in. I did yesterday got all my tomatoe cages pushed into place. Went from 15 tomatoes last year to 20 tomatoe plants this year. Also increased my peppers to 2 rows this year. Most all will be bell peppers, but will put in 4 plants of Plabonos.

Maybe I take up the extra room with sweet potatoes and watermelons. Craig has cantaloupes growing and that will give both of us plenty of melons. When I increased my garden from 20 x200 to 20 x 350 ft, I had to plant something more. This year I added 2 kinds of cabbage, cauliflower, okra and increased my spuds from 5 rows to 8 rows. The first 3 rows at the bottom of my garden are gladiolus for color.

My sweet corn got moved over to the West end of our property and that's where the increase in space came from. Have have been planting 500 ft of sweet corn, now it 1040 ft this year. I have piped water over there, so can get the water coming when needed.

I must be nuts for playing in that much dirt ! Then one of these days, Candy and I will have to start picking and putting up all this stuff. It sure taste good all summer and thru the years, so guess my efforts pays off.