Carrots Archives - The Gardening Adventure

Garden journal – October 2020 part 1

In the month of October, I continued planting the cool season vegetables: onions, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, carrots, spinach, Fava beans and peas.

I also transplanted the sequoia strawberries in a bigger container. The small plant purchased last year multiplied and I had to move it into a bigger container. I transplanted 6 plants in a big rectangle container.

I removed most of the remaining basil plants and amended the soil with steer manure. Afterwards I prepared the rows and planted the lettuce, arugula and spinach seeds. I also planted yellow onion bulbs and transplanted the broccoli and cauliflower seedlings.

Another project was to remove the weeds from another space in my garden where I had the summer squash and zucchini and plant cool season plants. I amended the soil with steer manure and planted carrots, arugula, radishes and Fava beans.

The last project was to plant the peas in 5 gallon pots. They are growing very fast: they spouted in 1 week and 3 days later they were already around 4-5″ tall.

Relocate mature plants Garden journal – September 2020 Part 2

During the second half of September, we had a few days with temperatures in the 80s and I was able to do some work in the garden. I had to relocate mature plants to make space for the cool season plants. I didn’t want to be late with my cool season plants like last year, so I decided to start early.

One of the tomato plants was getting infested again with a lot of spider mites. The spider mites love the heat and low humidity weather that we’ve had lately and they multiplied fast. I removed most of the leaves and sprayed the plant again with neem oil.

The cucumber plants that were in the ground stopped producing fruits for some time. So I decided to remove them to allow more sun to get to the peppers and eggplants.

In order to make space for the cool plants in the garden beds, I removed and relocated a few mature plants. I removed the celery, arugula and strawberry plants from the garden bed where the big tomato plant is. I purchased a new type of garden soil, Amend from Kellogg, and I mixed it into the existing soil. Afterwards, I planted parsnip, carrots, beets, onions and radishes.

Because my seedlings are not ready to be transplanted outside yet, I purchased 6 seedlings of purple broccoli and transplanted them in the same garden bed.

I used the homemade compost in another garden bed. Because it was enough to cover only about 75% of the space, I will use planting mix and manure for the other 25%.

Relocate mature plants

Last year I compromised my cool season plants because I didn’t remove or relocate mature plants and I planted the cool season crop between a few leftover plants from the warm season. Another mistake was that I transplanted seedlings too late in the fall. Hence this year I decided to do it right and start fresh with my garden beds and a little earlier.

Relocate strawberries

As space is always a problem in my garden, I was planing to relocate the strawberry plants in pots. But after I read an article on Greg Alder’s blog in which he had transplanted strawberries next to the fruit trees, I got inspired to do it the same way.

First I prepared the new location next to my apple tree, by removing the layer of wood chips. Afterwards I watered the place a few times to be sure the water gets at least 4″ deep and made holes for the strawberry plants to go in.

Next I removed the plants from the old location and cut all the runners to have only individual plants and placed them in holes in the new location.

Next to the strawberries I had a few arugula plants that needed to be relocated also. I decided to move them into the other bed with homemade compost. I also watered the new location until the water got at least 4″ deep into the soil, and then I relocated the arugula plants.

Relocate parsley

Because I moved my blackberry plants from the 5 gallon pots into bigger ones, I also had to relocate the parsley plants. As a result of that, I moved them next to the arugula plants as the space was already prepared.

Transplanting blackberry

I created the new potting mix needed to transplant the blackberry plants. In order to do that I took the old potting mix from the parsley plants and mixed it with bark, peat moss, perlite, fertilizer and garden lime. The experiment with the potting mix tried during the quarantine wasn’t successful, so now that I could get all the ingredients, I did it by the original recipe.

In the beginning of the month, when we had the record heat wave, I moved the blackberry plants in the shade next to some trees. And surprise, all the tips the touched the soil developed roots. I cut them and placed them in 4″ pots, hopefully I will get more plants by next year.

I decide to transplant the other Blackberry plant directly into the ground, so I can see if it will be a difference between the plants next season.

Blackberry plant transplanted in the ground

Transplanting raspberry

A friend planted a few raspberry plants last year and he harvested a lot of fruits this year. Since my kids love to eat berries, I want to give it a try. The variety that I found is called Willamette.

Next year I should have strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries if everything goes well. We’re all looking forward to it!

Another project was to fertilize the papaya, dragon fruit and artichoke plants. I finally found some chicken manure at Armstrong gardens.

This month I tried for the first time the air layering of cherimoya and fig trees, hopefully I will have positive results in a month or two.

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.