gardening with my sister on a rainy May day

Its been a very cool spring. And now, very wet. Don't remember when I've waited so long to set out tomatoes.

Anyway, yesterday my sister and I planted tomato seedlings in my community plot. These are a set of six different varieties of late blight resistant tomatoes: Defiant, Ferline, Mountain Magic, Old Brookes, Prudens Purple and Plum Regal. We had 500 of these seedlings, that are reported to have different degrees of late blight resistance, grown for our community garden by a local grower. We are looking forward to seeing how they do.

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trellising tomatoes

This year I am trellising my tomatoes. I planted the seedlings very deep, then added 1-2 inch collars (for cutworm protection).

The trellis stem is made up of two upright posts set into the ground 6 feet apart. Each post has a hole at the top. Through the two holes, I thread an 8 foot metal pole.

Twine provides the support for the tomato plants. To set up the twine, I cut a length twice the height of the pole from the ground and laid this over the metal pole with the middle of the twine resting on the pole. I then tied a knot next to the pole to hold the twine in place.

For now, I have loosely wrapped the ends of the twine around the little plants. When they are bigger, I'll tie the twine loosely to the stem of the plants. As the vines grow, I'll wrap the twine around the stem of the plant so that it stays upright and off the ground. I'll also trim off any suckers so I get a tall straight plant with lots of room for airflow.

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garden work

In my side yard garden:
- chicken wire baffles put over newly planted pole bean seeds to protect from squirrels
- winter broccoli harvested from cold frame
- cold frame prepared for summer plantings
- cucumber seedlings transplanted to tepee
- spinach, lettuce, parsley and basil seedlings transplanted (I am so late with the spinach and parsley!)

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my garden gnome on the first day of spring

I can see it in his eyes that he has snow fatigue too. But he's toughing it out.

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a toad house for my birthday!!

I was really lucky to get some garden gifts for my birthday this past week - a toad house, a little sign and a rain gauge. I put the toad house in a shady spot under the parsnips at my community plot. I hope Oracle Toad will appreciate his new home.

I spent an hour or so working in my plot today. I mostly removed mildewed and wilting squash leaves and vines. This gave me good space for fall seedlings. But it also removed shelter where Toad was hiding. I hope he will like his new home.

My new rain gauge is on my window sill as I admire it - a small gnome is holding the gauge. Looks like he will be good company for the other gnomes in my side yard garden.

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welcome back gnome

My fishing gnome is back! I thought he fell into the pond and carefully checked the mucky bottom 4 feet down - no gnome. We found him while cleaning out the garage - in a storage basket, lost for 2 years.

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garden gnomes

I have two gnomes in my garden. One in the kale patch and another in the thyme. I'm not sure where my third gnome went, he was fishing by my pond last year and I didn't realize he was gone until now, hmmmm. I guess it's time to clean out the pond.

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snow on thyme - much too early

My gnome who tends the thyme is shoveling out a dusting of early October snow. Much too early! Some places west of us got inches of snow. Ours melted by the time the sun rose to mid morning.

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