Addicted to gardening

Cherry Belle radishes
1st harvest of 2013 gardening season

It was a gorgeous weekend. Temperatures were in the upper 60's, there was a light breeze, and SUNSHINE! I am loving it. 

To celebrate, I just about spent the entire weekend gardening (6 hours on Saturday and 8 hours on Sunday). I bounced from vegetable gardening to flower gardening throughout the weekend. Ryan thinks I am addicted to gardening....maybe I am. 

I do enjoy gardening, especially when the weather is nice. I am trying to get the gardens in shape before it gets too hot outside and the weeds take over. We made lots of progress in the garden this weekend. Here is what I did in the vegetable beds:  

I transplanted the remaining tomato plants, including four varieties of cherry tomatoes (Sun Gold, Sweet 100, Yellow Pear, and White Cherry). Learning from last year, I reduced the number of plants in each bed (two per variety) and centered each tomato in a support cage at the time of transplanting. No more lost fruits from struggling to place the cages around a large plant. By reducing the number of tomato plants I am growing this year, I am able to give away a number of "extra" plants to friends, neighbors, and co-workers. This makes me happy to share what I have, but it is sad to let them go. Call me selfish if you will, but I did pick the "best" of the bunch.  ;)

This year, I am trying a different transplanting technique on the tomatoes - trenching. 

 

Trenched tomato plant

The majority of the tomatoes I am growing this year are indeterminate. Meaning they will continue to grow and produce fruits until they are killed by frost in the fall. These plants will get HUGE! While the plants are staked and caged to help contain the monstrosity they will become, a few strong gusts of wind can pull the entire plant (roots and all) out of the ground. 

To help prevent that from happening, this year, I decided to try planting the tomatoes sideways instead of upright. To do this, I snapped off all but the upper leaves of the tomato plant. I then made a trench in the soil and added a handful of medium-to-fine crushed eggshells prior to laying the tomato plant in the trench on its side. I gently bent the plant stem up and then buried the roots and the majority of the stem with soil. Just the upper leaves remained above the soil. Roots will form all along the stems of the tomato plant, thereby developing a stronger root system (and hopefully preventing the wind from pull the plants out of the ground). Let's see if this works. 

Now that the tomato plants are off the deck, I have room for the pepper plants. Today I started the hardening off process for the pepper plants. First, I potted up the pepper plants into larger containers, added some fresh potting soil, and then gave them a good watering. I set the pepper plants in the sun for 20 minutes before moving them to the shade. It is still too cold at night for the pepper plants, so I will bring them in at night and set them back out in the morning. When I am at work, I will keep the peppers in the shade to get filtered sunlight and in the evening, I will place the plants in the sun for about an hour before bringing them back in the house for the night. I will probably transplant the peppers into the garden in 2-3 weeks, when the nighttime temperatures are in mid-50's.

This is going to be a good year for gardening.  

:)