Beets Archives - The Gardening Adventure

How to transplant cucumbers

One of the major projects or today was to transplant cucumbers seedlings in the garden.

I had a few other smaller projects:

Harvest beets
Trim tomato plants
Add planting mix to the garden beds
Remove poppy plants
Treat eggplants against pests

How to transplant cucumbers

The cucumber seeds planted on April 4 are now seedlings ready to be transplanted. I had seedlings in 5 of the 6 squares and I planted 2 of them in the ground and 3 in pots.

Next I will explain step by step how I transplant cucumbers seedlings in the ground. I’m using one extra ingredient that I don’t use for any other plants. It’s an organic granulated slow release fertilizer that I purchased a few years ago and I noticed that the cucumbers love it.

Firstly I make a deep hole, place the granulated fertilizer at the bottom and then I cover it with soil. The fertilizer will help the plant later in the season, when the roots will grow deeper and reach it.

Next I add to the hole my regular ingredients: half measuring scoop of starter fertilizer, half scoop of grounded eggshells and quarter scoop of epsom salt. Then I carefully remove the cucumber seedling from the container and place it into the hole. I cover the seedling with soil and when I’m about 1″ from the ground level, I add the earthworm castings which I cover with a very thin layer of soil. The last step is to water it thoroughly to make sure the water gets all the way down to the roots.

Cucumber seedlings — Cucumbers ready to be transplanted

Hole for cucumbers — Hole after I covered the granulated fertilizer with soil

Below are the seedlings transplanted into 5 gallon pots. I explained my method to transplant cucumbers in pots in this post.

Tomato care

During this time, the tomato plants are growing very fast. I have to check them almost every day because they get fruits and if they don’t have adequate support, they will fall – like the one in the picture below.

I secured the fallen branches to the trellises using plastic rings. In the next pictures I will show the entire tomato plant before and after. Circled in red are the branches which needed saving.

Another project was to trim all the tomato leaves that were touching the ground. in order to stop the spread of the diseases and pests.

Beets

Last year I left one of my beets plant go to seeds and this year beet plants spouted everywhere. The one in the picture below grew between 2 concrete blocks. There was almost no space between, but somehow it managed to push the vertical ones and grew one of the biggest beet roots of this season. It did much better than the ones I carefully planted in the prepared soil and watered and fertilized 🙂

At the end of one of my garden beds, I had planted beets which I wanted to use in salads. Since I had a lot of lettuce growing in the same period, I barely used the beet leaves. The tomato plants which were growing next the them were showing signs of distress, so I decided to pull out all the beets.

After I removed the beets, I added some planting mix to the soil and transplanted 2 basil plants in their place.

Other projects

Some of the garden beds needed extra planting soil. Usually you can add the planting soil between seasons, when the beds are empty and you can mix it with the soil as per instructions, but my garden beds are almost always full. Sometimes I might have half a bed empty and I do it in the recommended way. That was not the case today, so I just sprinkled the planting mix between the plants.

Every year I get tall and beautiful poppy flowers. I saved the seeds for the last 2 years, but I didn’t use them because I’m not 100% sure they are edible. This year I decided to remove them before harvest time because they are shading the zucchini and celery plants and slowing their growth.

The last project of the day was to take care of the pests that were eating the leaves of my eggplants. I like to use organic Bonide bug and slug killer to protect my plants.

Transplanting tomatoes – March 18 2020

My tomato seedlings have been growing a lot and today I decided to plant them in the garden. I removed the beets to make space for them.

After 5 years of gardening I decided to finally follow the instructions from the planting soil bag. I put a layer of 3 inches of planting soil and I mixed it with 3 inches of my garden soil. Normally I would just add the planting mix into the newly prepared hole for the seedlings.

Below is a picture of my tomato seedlings that were too big to keep inside the house and they were at risk of breaking.

I dug a 13″ hole in the ground, around double the diameter of the pot.

I removed the lower leaves from my tomato seedling.

I put the starting fertilizer, epsom salt and the ground egg shells into the hole and I placed the tomato in the ground.

After I filled up the hole with soil, when I got to about 2″ from the top, I added the worm castings and covered them with a thin layer of soil.

I watered the tomato 3 or 4 times all the way up and let it drain to make sure the water got all the way down to the roots.

Last year I started practicing companion planting and found out that carrots are good companions to tomatoes. I planted 2 varieties of carrots in the rows from the picture below.

When everything was planted, I watered the soil thoroughly.

March 23 update: The leaves of my tomatoes are sun burned. It’s not a big problem, I’ll simply remove the leaves and the plant will continue to grow new ones.

I was somewhat expecting the leaves to be affected since I didn’t have time to harden the seedlings due to a lot of rain. The weather forecast showed mostly cloudy for a few days and I was hoping that the seedlings will be fine. Usually, 1 week before planting in the garden, I would take them outside for 1 hour on the first day, and then gradually increase the exposure to sun every day .

Today in the garden Dec 7 2019

Today I took advantage of the fact that the soil was wet and I planted more seeds where I had some available space in the garden.

Here I planted red cherry radishes next to the ones planted a month ago. I like to stagger them so I have a continuous harvest.

I found a spot in the garden with eggplant and pepper plants that didn’t have any fruits on them, so I removed them to make space for radishes. I also pulled out the onion and the weeds and prepared the soil for planting.

I added some compost from my compost bin and mixed it into the soil.

The third project of the day was to plant some beets.
I had a beet plant left in the garden from the last season to flower and attract pollinators and around 2 months ago I picked up the seeds and put them in a bucket (I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them). After moving the bucket around a few times, I forgot about it and today I noticed that it was not covered and the seeds got wet from the rain, so I had to do something with them.

I also noticed that in one of my broccoli containers, a beet plant had popped out. I researched if beets and broccoli grow well together and after the confirmation, I decided to experiment and planted the beet seeds in the same container with the broccoli and cauliflower.

Soaked beet seeds, just ready to be planted

Prepared the holes and planted the seeds .

The last project of the day was to plant the pepper seeds for the next season.

I like to use the organic potting soil from Costco as my seed starting mix, but they only sell it during spring and summer time. Last year I didn’t have any potting mix left to plant my seeds, so I used a different seed starting mix. I still have some left from last year, so I will do an experiment in a container with 6 squares.

I had enough seed starting mix to fill 2 squares and I used Costco potting mix in the other 4 squares. I planted the same type of bell pepper seeds in all of them and I want to see if there will be any difference between the plants.