Old Garden post from back in May

well my garden has had it a bit rough. I went to Vegas to check out Mel's broken elbow and all my sprouts were dead when I got back... I had given careful instructions on bringing them in if it got cold, but hadn't mentioned that they would need water. Oh well.

So I might have cried. A bit. I called mom and dad answered and was not appropriately sad but mom was. Mama helped me replant and I put a space heater on them and they popped up pretty quickly. I was able to harden some off and even planted some Saturday. The seedlings were still just little 2 leafers, but I figure at this point getting them in the ground as soon as possible is the only way I might get a harvest.

Oh and the local neighborhood kids had knocked over the walls o' water in the front and squished my tomato plants. Nice. Actually they were all able to recover except one which forunately was one I could replace and so I did. Unfortunately the kids proceeded to knock them over another time or too. I was not feeling very kid friendly after that...

I was able to get a ton of things done Saturday in the yard. The last bed turned over, the aforementioned seedlings planted (1 squash, 5 cukes, 8 tomatoes, bunch of basil, marigolds and nasturshums), finished pickaxing the new bean bed (yes it requires a pickaxe as even my mad shovel skills couldn't get through the hardpan type layer), attended to the potatoes (half the smaller dirt pile is gone), tested bubbas soil (Mama planted bubba and company. the soil is alkalai but not as bad as I thought it was, and the nitrogen and phosphate levels are good, but viritually no potash- i'm not even sure what that is), got a new raspberry planted and weeded/mulched 5 others (9 down, 9 to go), got first set of beans planted, put out some new sprouts to harden off, and started a bunch more seeds.

New bean bed all ready for seeds

Here are the peppers planted. ummm might have planted a bit much as there are 10 hot peppers and 24 sweet peppers... I like to try lots of different kinds and this year they only came in 4-packs. So really I practiced restraint.

Then yesterday it snowed (24 May). I had brought the hardening off seedlings in close to the house as it was a bit colder of a night but noone said it was going to snow (I check 2-3 different weather reports on all questionable nights). It wasn't just a little snow.... And the wall of water tomatoes had snow in them because I had put the cages inside of them to keep the kids from being able to knock them over and open them up so the bees can polinate the flowers. I tried to get the snow off but it was still coming down and was a lost cause. Had a few hot hats that I put over a some tomatoes, but thats all I could do before needing to leave for work. I stopped back at home after my meeting and it had finally stopped snowing so I went around and pulled all the snow off of all the seedlings and other plants, figuring that most were gone. Fortunately most survived. Thats good cause I was sad.

updated to add: Things are growing pretty good. I've had to replant the beans a couple of times, and the carrots are still not coming up well after replanting twice. I don't know that I'll get tomatoes off of the seed started ones in the back as they are still tiny. The ones up front look great. I'll need to try all the varieties again next year I think.