Lettuce 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.

Planting zucchini and summer squash – March 28 2020

Today my projects were:

Transplant zucchini and summer squash
Add potting soil to the grapevine
Transplant a strawberry into a bigger pot
Transplant peppers and eggplants

My zucchini and summer squash were getting too big for the containers I had them in and they needed to be transplanted outside. I removed the radishes in the picture below to make space for zucchini.

I added half a bag of potting soil and mixed it into the ground.

I had 1 zucchini plant left and 4 summer squash. I planted the zucchini next to my other 2 zucchini plants that I transplanted a few weeks ago (bottom part of the picture).

I also planted radishes next to the zucchinis.

The next project was to add more potting soil to a grapevine that I got from a friend.

I prepared a mix using old soil from another pot, added two 5 gallon buckets of wood chips, one 5 gallon bucket of peat moss, half bucket of perlite and half bucket of steer manure.

I took the grapevine out of the pot and added the new mix at the bottom and sprinkled some starter fertilizer on top of it. I placed the plant on top of it and watered it.

Armstrong Garden was giving free strawberry plants with a purchase when I bought the ladybugs 2 weeks ago. I transplanted it into a bigger pot using the potting mix I just made.

My radishes and lettuce planted on January 11 as shown in this post were getting too big and overgrowing the peppers and eggplants. I removed all the radishes and most of the lettuce.

We made soup from the harvested lettuce.

I transplanted 2 peppers and 3 eggplants and filled up this garden bed.

Today in the garden Jan 25 2020

Today I made more space in the garden to plant more radishes, lettuce and for the 4th time spinach. These are my last seeds and this time I decided to soak them in water before planting. Hopefully the seeds will germinate this time around.

I decided to remove the existing parsley, parsnip and carrot plants from the garden bed.

After removing all the weeds, I added some composted steer manure to the soil.

I planted radish, lettuce and spinach seeds in the new rows.

I also planted a row of kale and lettuce in a different spot.

Today in the garden Jan 11 2020

Today’s project was to make some space in my garden and use most of my compost, as the bin was overfilled and was starting to tilt. I decided to finally pull out some of my pepper plants and prepare the soil to feed my future pepper and eggplants during the summer. I also planted more radishes and lettuce seeds.

I temporarily transferred the top half of the compost bin to a different container. I used only the bottom half, which was ready to be mixed with the soil. After I used it all up, I transferred back the compost from the container to the bin. It usually takes about 6 months to have good compost.

This is one of the 2 garden beds where I decided to put my compost. This bed is about 4′ x 8′.

I removed the old plants.

I dug up 8-10″ of soil from one half.

I filled up the hole with the compost.

I covered the compost with the soil and did the same thing with the second half.

I replanted the garlic on the side and prepared new rows.

I planted lettuce and 2 types of radish seeds.

I did the same thing with the compost in a portion of the second garden bed: removed 10″ of soil, put the compost in the hole and then covered it back with soil.

I planted more radish seeds in the newly prepared soil.

Today in the garden Dec 28 2019

Today I planted lettuce, radish and spinach seeds in the garden and I also planted tomato seeds inside.

It’s the third time this year when I plant spinach and none of the seeds germinated, hopefully they will this time. I planted the spinach in rows between my broccoli and cauliflower plants.

Spinach seeds in rows next to cauliflower and broccoli

I planted lettuce seeds in a few rows next to the older lettuce plants. I plan to transplant them when I will make more space in the garden.

I also planted more radishes, but I feel that they are growing very slowly this year comparing with previous years. I planted some seeds almost 2 months ago and they are not big enough yet. I’m going to plant seeds every 2-3 weeks to have a continuous supply of them until the weather will be too hot for them to grow. Radishes are among our most favorite vegetables during the winter season.

New rows of radish seeds planted on December 7

I planted a second round of radish seeds between the rows from November 18.

I also planted my tomato seeds inside. I chose 8 varieties: Cherokee purple, Glacier, Cherry red, Cherry black, Brandywine yellow (they were my favorite this year), Brandywine red, Better boy and a small oval yellow one (last year I got some tomatoes from a friend and saved the seeds, but I don’t know what kind it is).

This year I will try to limit my tomato plants to under 20. I’m planing on keeping 2 plants from each variety, so I can have a backup, just in case something happens with one of them. I will most likely not resist buying other new varieties from Costco or Armstrong gardens. But even if I buy 4 more kinds, I will still be at 20 plants max.

Another project for today was to multiply my very young blackberry plant that I received at one of this year’s local gardeners food swap (I don’t know the variety). I saw a video on youtube that was explaining how blackberry propagates and they said that when the tip of the plant touches the soil it will grow root. I took the tip of the plant and I inserted it inside a cup filled with potting mix. I will check back in 1 month to see if it has grown roots.