Monday, June 29, 2009

Steve's Garden Expanded...

I have now finished moving in to a townhome. No more apartment balcony gardens for me! =) Less than a full day since the old apartment was left for good,I already want to put in a Coy pond & waterfall...lol. ;-) Anyways, 3 Alleve couldn't alleviate the muscle aches I have, but I have accomplished a lot. My kids now have a huge deck to play on & I have a huge yard for Steve's Garden...




We'll begin with my

first harvest!!!!



I've already used the heck out of some herbs, fresh from my garden. Finally, after last year's 11 plants didn't ever make it past the flowers (never a single pepper due to spider mites & aphids), my first harvest is 2 Hungarian Wax Peppers, turned yellow a day after arriving at their new home. This offsets the tomato plant disaster, which i'll show you about in a few (*shiver*)...



From this plant...





Speaking of pepper, what's new with that "Hyponex Experiment" Steve has been going on & on about for weeks & weeks...Here she is, with a 2 inch long Jalapeno, a baby one & 5 flowers I can tell will make at least 3 peppers...



THE HYPONEX EXPERIMENT






I love this tree...not only does it shade the deck from the worst of the sun, it allows for some nice hanging baskets which I happen to have. =) My Monster Cherry Tomato plants are the only ones to make it through the move w/o any moderate to severe damage. Then, my pine-needle floor with the rest of my plants. Check out the beginning of The New Steve's Garden...







Berries & Herbs...





Peppers (they love it there with the sun protection from too much wind)& a sorry uprooted broken mater plant that probably won't last a week...lol...was a late decision anyways...






The 4 Stooges...lol...what remains of my 2 Early Girl plants & my 2 San Marzano Tomato plants. One of the Early Girl plants got slaughtered by wind & broken twice by me. :-\ It still lives though! I probably won't get a single tomato off it this year, but I will be happy if it makes it. The three others got massive wind burn on the top 2-3 feet and lost about 5-6 branches a piece...Double caged shortly after this picture was taken...

Monday, June 22, 2009

Baby Peppers, Hyponex Experiment Update & More: June 22nd

The score for this year so far: Steve: 1, Spider Mites & Aphids: 0! =)Yes, I am winning the battle against spider mites and aphids this year. Yay! After seeing my results so far, i'm almost absolutely sure I must have brought them with me from my uncle's 110 year old house. I've seen literally like 1 or 2 so far this year that have been squished immediately.

I found out from some of the helpful folks on GardenWeb that my unknown variety pepper plant is in fact a Hungarian Wax. So, I now have about 4 or 5 baby peppers growing on that plant. I also have one baby Jalapeno growing on the "Hyponex Experiment" plant! A few other miscelaneous updates are also below.

Some of you may be aware that i'm moving to a townhome (that i'm renting) this coming weekend. Even if i'm not allowed to do raised beds or in-ground plating, I will still have quite a bit more space for my container garden. =) I will also be able to give some plants the sunlight they need that they just cannot get in their current environment, my apartment porch. I will try to post one more complete blog picture update before I move.




First, the peppers. The "Hyponex Experiment" goes quite well. The plant continues to grow at a normal rate. It now has one baby Jalapeno on it & several buds soon to open (within the next week or so). Here's a picture of it from this weekend.






My recently found out to be a Hungarian Wax Pepper plant is below. It's a Burpee 5 pepper seed variety pack plant I received from the MTPS that was unknown until it started to grow peppers. I asked a few knowledgable folks about it & found out what it is. As of this morning, I was able to count 5 wee peppers on it from afar. It may in fact have one or two more I can't see just cuz I didn't look too close.






One other plant I received from the MTPS and am continuing to learn more & more about is my Lemon Balm. I spotted a handful of prettty little white flowers on it Saturday! I was worried that the flowers might make it "go to seed", meaning it would no longer taste good or be harvestable. Most people seem to say it's ok to leave the flowers on it. I'm still not 100% sure what I should do though. I'll probably yank all the flowers off just to be safe. A somewhat blurry camera phone picture of the flowers is below.






Last, but certainly not least, is my favorite plant from the MTPS, a Red Dragon Flower. I haven't done any research on this plant yet, but my green thumb has allowed me to keep it alive. =) It didn't do much at all for the first few weeks. In fact, it started to look like it was on its way out. It got a gash in one of the two "main stems." Over the past week or two, this gash has almost completely disappeared & it is growing a ton of little stubs off the main stems. I guess these will grow out & become full-sized eventually. I'm thinking this plant is a hot summer growing plant just because it didn't do anything until it got quite hot recently. Anyways, here are two pics of the baby stubs.



Thursday, June 18, 2009

Baby Hot Peppers & Early Girl Tomato!!! - June 18th

Some of you may be aware of my laborious war with spider mites on my hot pepepr plants last year (if not, read my 2008 garden post about it). I had 11 total hot pepper plants and never got a single pepper off any of them. In fact, I didn't even get as far as having a baby hot pepper! The spider mites (and aphids) obliterated every bud and flower within a day of it opening (flower) or turning light green (bud). Well, I was quite upset & determined to get some stinkin' hot peppers this year! =) I am now already further than I was last year. I have a various (Burpee 5 mixed Hot Peppers) hot pepper plant that has 4 wee baby hot pepeprs growing on it now. The flowers fell off a few days ago. Yay! I think it's a Jalapeno plant, but won't know for a few weeks. I am not "counting my chickens before they hatch" either & still plan on keeping a close eye on all my hot pepper plants a few times daily for spider mites and/or aphids. I plan on ordering a 1000 or so ladybugs to get rid of them if they do show up because everything I tried last year (easily 10+ sprays/home-made repellents well over $50) did not work. Wish me luck! Here's a few pictures of the wee babies growing so far. Sorry for the blurriness. I'll see if I can get the wife to take some better pictures soon. You can see the baby peppers though & that's the point of the pictures. Click on them to get the bigger/full size version to be able to see the peppers.




Wee Baby Hot Peppers:








Next on this update, is my first baby Early Girl Tomato! I'm wicked excited. It's great that I have so many Cherry maters growing, but I want big ones too. =) I found another wee Early Girl to the right of this one (barely out of the picture) this morning.

Monday, June 15, 2009

A Few Quick Updates: June 15th

Nothing too fancy about this update. Just a few recent pictures of new & exciting progress in Steve's Garden...




First, is my doesn't count because it's Herbs, first harvest! ;-) Some Lemon Balm, which didn't make it to the dehydrator as it was used almost immediately.






Next is an update on the two largest tomatoes on one of my Cherry Tomato plants. I expect they'll be my first true (not herbs...lol) harvest.






The "Hyponex Experiment" Jalapeno plant is flowering!






Last, but not least, my Yellow Bell Pepper plant is also flowering! =)

Thursday, June 11, 2009

2009 Garden Pictures: June 11th

This update contains another round of professional garden pictures taken by Stephanie Boutin Photography. It's been about 2 weeks since the last full garden update. I hope you've enjoyed the little "tidbit posts" in between with various new findings. You'll see another one or two items recently discovered in this post. One of which is my first Strawberry flower (not a runner...runners apparently coming soon, after fruit formation). =) Yay! I've decided, at first, I am not going to prune anything (except dead leaves) off the plants in my ever-bearing strawberry bucket so I can maybe get a handful of berries. If the plant starts to develop problems due to this though, I will prune them.

One of my "Monster Cherry Tomato" plants has a ton of small maters growing (probably about 12-15 so far) and several more on the way soon. It will very possibly produce my first harvest of the year.

A few of my pepper plants are now flowering or within a day or two of doing so. A "Hyponex Experiment" update is below, with its brother Jalapeno Early Organic Pepper Plant. I forgot to take a picture of the Texas Sweet Onions, but they haven't changed much at all. I didn't take a picture of the Mucho Nacho Jalapeno seedlings because they got a bit too wet and lost their bearing somewhat, so they probably won't grow anyways. More information follows, with each picture or set of pictures. As always, please comment, e-mail me or ask me on GardenWeb if you have any questions or whatever. =) Peace - Steve




Failed or given away plants so far this year:

[Failed]Bannana Pepper: Damping off got this one. :-\ It was doing well too. I just let it get too wet.
[Failed]Red Sweet (Yolo Wonder) Pepper: Another victim of damping off. Ugh! I have to learn to watch the moisture level of my pepper potting mixes better.
[Failed]Southport White Globe Onions: Never got much past 2-3 inches. Then they browned up & died. I want to try onions from seed again next year, but apparently have a lot left to learn.
[Given Away]Bush Strawberry: Given away at the MTPS (Middle Tennessee Plant Swap)




California Wonder Bell Pepper:






Cherry Tomatoes (Both now at over 5 feet tall at 12 weeks old from seed in dirt. The first plant has about 12-15 tomatoes growing and a ton more flowers open!):





Mater & flower pics from the first plant above:












Dill Weed (Growing fine still. Finally at the stage where it doesn't fall over all the time...lol):






Dwarf Lime Tree:






Early Girl Hybrid Tomatoes (One of the 2 I have has a handfull of flowers and one wee mater growing now! Only one pic of both this time.):



Buds & flowers:



The wee mater, still hidden by leaves of the flower:






Emily's Indian Princess Nasturtiums:






Garlic Chives (About 50 or so new baby chives growing all around the old row in the middle.):






Jalapeno Early Organic Peppers:

The "Hyponex Experiment" plant (Had 2 buds growing last time I checked.):



My other Jalapeno Early Organic pepper plant:






MTPS Plants



*Baby Gold Goldenrod & Stonecrop given away to a good friend of mine.




Chocolate Mint:






Foam Flower:






Hot Pepper:



4 flowers on it now!






Lemon Balm (Growing like crazy. I need to pick some of it.):






Mint:






Russian Sage:








Sempervivum Cactus (Also known as Hen & Chick.):






Thyme (I need to transplant this to a larger container. I just haven't figured out what kind yet...lol.):






Triple Crown Blackberry (Still no evidence of berry/flower formation, but getting big!):






Wineberry Raspberry:






End of MTPS Plants






Yellow Tomato (Looking a ton better since being potted up):






San Marzano Organic Tomatoes (One of which has a handfull of flowers.):





The flowers:






Serrano Pepper:






Strawberry's (First bud showed up about 2 days ago. Yay!):



First Bud:






"World's Hottest Habanero" (Getting to be a good size. It should start budding soon):






Yellow Bell Pepper (Budding like crazy! =) I'll have some flowers on this one very soon.):



Buds (Kind of a blurry pic...not easy to get a picture of.):






Sweet Basil (Starting to take off a bit. I'll probably have to pot them up soon.):