Sunday, June 14, 2009

Raised Vegetable Bed - A Progress Report

So it's been a little while since I posted, seeing as with my work hours, I don't get home early enough to photograph while there is decent light.

So I've divided up this post into two sub categories: Last months pictures and this months.

The Old:

So here is a progress of the raised vegetable bed a month ago. Since my first post I added two tomato plants on either side of the bed (a Red Brandy wine and a Purple Cherokee), both of which were given o me by Chris and Michele. I also planted three cloves of Garlic, I had noticed they were sprouting in our kitchen counter, so I decided to plants them to see what would come of them.




The New:

Ok, so over this weekend I finally had time to snap some updates to the garden. Things have certainly starting growing...and some not so much...


Quite a bit has taken off; the Patio tomato plant on the right has grown enormous in comparison to the other Patio tomato plant to the left, which is now dwarfed by the Red Brandy Wine. However, I'm running into a problem where the larger Patio tomato plant is starting to choke the sun out from the Purple Cherokee, as you can see in the image below.

I'm going to have to cut or tie back the Patio tomato plant to give the Purple Cherokee a fighting chance for sun, which is a stark difference to the left side of the bed where the Red Brandy Wine towers over the other Patio Tomato. However, I think the reason for that is that I didn't pick a tomato that it's been putting all of its resources in trying to ripen. The green tomato that I picked off of it was the hardest green tomato I've ever held.

So in other parts of the veggie bed, the Asparagus are going happily, though some smaller then others. Out of the six roots I plants, only four emerged, with two being the biggest (closest to the camera), The smallest, just barely poking out of the soil a hefty 2 inches.


And lastly, the Zucchini and Cucumber. They have remained their same size for the last month, though the Zucchini have begun sprouting flowers.


Hopefully we'll finally get some warmer weather... Next article will focus on Dehydrating herbs, stay tuned...

4 comments:

Pam J. said...

Looking good! especially your spacing. Every year I make the mistake of trying to raise too many tomato plants in a very small space. I just hate thinning out the plants.... a weakness I know. Looks like you've given yours a nice home. A local farmer once told me to never overfeed tomato plants. He says it makes the green leaves really full and bushy and healthy but at the expense of the yellow flowers that turn into tomatoes.

C4 said...

I have a post in the works on how important proper thinning of plants is. I know it is one of the hardest parts of growing for me to pick and choose which plants live.

On fertilizing Pam is correct. To elaborate the element to avoid is nitrogen. If you're going to fertilize your tomatoes pick a fertilizer with higher PK values and lower N values. Ie 4-6-8 and definitely avoid the 15-0-0 stuff. Its like hitting your plants with steroids. They look all buff, but their reproductive bits lose out.

C4 said...

I should also say I'm really excited to see how things are coming along. I can't wait to see how it looks come July!

Steven Ashley said...

Thanks! I'll post up the updates from the pics I took this last weekend.