Mr Yan - March 2013

[mr_yan]

Today I started the first round of seeds with the help of a 2.5 year old.

We started 75 individual plants and two 3' long gutters of peas.

Started count:
in a flat - 50 peat pots
20 bell peppers
6 hot peppers
4 Thai Basil
10 green basil
4 broccoli
6 ground cherries

in newspaper pots
10 beets
10 spinach
5 marigolds

and as I mentioned
2 3' lengths of gutters with double rows of sugar snap peas

I'll have two more rounds of seed starting this year with things like tomatoes, melons, and squash.

 

[mr_yan]

Guess it has only been 3 months since I started this.

Yesterday I did a big harvest of greens along with a handful of beets and turnips and cleared all the scapes from my garlic. My 3 broccoli plants are large and strong and looks really good but has not started to head out yet. My 7' of sugar snap pea pods were great until I didn't have time to harvest for over a week (that week sucked illness throughout the family and then my wife had her appendix out) and now I'm just letting them go to collect seeds.

I fixed and rebuilt some trellises yesterday. I've played with different ideas over the last few years but have now settled on using 1/2" EMT conduit for the frames and tripods. The conduit is like a giant erector set but won't deteriorate like PVC junk. I'm using this for pole bean strings and tomato tripods at least but my large trellises are still wooden framed.

I need to fill in the place where I harvested turnips and beets and I don't really know what to put in yet. Collards may handle the heat yet to come but still produce through freezing. I don't think I have enough basil growing yet.

Season to date I've harvested 7.55 pounds from about 200 sq feet of garden. I've spent $125 on seeds, fun new tools, and some trellises. This give me a cost per pound of $16.55