DOA In The Garden: June 8, 2022

 I've decided to try letting my plant babies be outside at night despite the cool temperatures, still in the 50s at night.  So far, everything looks fine, so I'm hopeful.  Just in the nick, because we are all down with colds and doing that physical lifting and hauling isn't smart!

Hopefully I'm better by Wednesday, and can get back to potting and planting and weeding.

We may well be having one of those overly cool summers.  I recall going on a July Daylily tour one year and it had been cold all summer and hardly anything was opened.  Good thing people had "companion plants for us to look at!

I have never had an iris that I have planted come back and bloom the next year. Until this year, when a gorgeous pink iris has returned! I didn't even give it a nice place in the garden, as you can see, because I knew nothing would come of it.  Now, I need to consider moving it to a nicer spot, and it hates me and doesn't bloom, or I have to up my game in the place where it is now.

Clever Cloches (not)

Well, desperate, not so clever.  In my determination to cover my seedlings at night I carved the botton off of a Tidy Cat Plastic Container and a big old Hawaiian Punch plastic bottle.  I'm also using a Folgers empty plastic container on a tomato.

I'm better prepared some years and have saved back gallon milk jugs which are GREAT with the bottoms sliced off. You can easily vent the container by taking off the cap.

I wish I drank more pop so I had some liter bottles to use but noooo, June 8th and I'm scrabbling for things to protect my babies from the cold.

On the plus side I seem to have plenty of empty tp rolls to use as cutworm collars for my seedlings...

Cold Weather Gardening in June

I've been waiting for it to WARM UP so that I could put in my warm weather veggies.  This weekend it is JUNE, right?  Lovely warm June!

Cucumbers, Swiss Chard and two types of lettuce.

Sweating during the day working in the sun and having to cover my plants and stuff things back in the mini-greenhouses at night. 47 and 50 something at night, and 50s predicted at night all this week.

I thought last week's hail and rain damaged some of my seedings but I'm now thinking something is going into the greenhouses at night and shearing off my morning glories and tomatoes.  This in addition to the cold is just too much.

I finally got my Yukon Gold seed potato bag planted.  The bag really isn't too big.

Theoretically you can start potatoes in it in March and April, according to the directions.  I had a thought maybe they could be started in the garage, but reading the instructions further, they want you to pour a gallon of water a day into the bag.  Hmmm.  Not so good in the garage.  I could if the weather is less snowy into April next year go ahead and try it outside.

I used my trusty new Swiss Army knife to cut of sections of the potato with eyes to plant.  Afterwards I was thinking maybe I should have left more potato with each eye section but if I putzed around making sure I had done that right those potatoes would never get in the bag. 

I was a wild thing and also put a few sections of potato with lesser eye sprouts in a raised bed.  None of the eyes were the one inch long desirable size.  We shall see if I get no potatoes or a plethora of potatoes.  Gotta try stuff.

Since only three of my tomato seedlings survived the hail massacre, I planted a row of Black Krim and Super Bush tomatoes each.  These are last year's seed so we may get nada, but again, I have all these nice raised beds, I should just TRY STUFF.  No harm no foul.  Anything that sprouts and lives is just great.  Especially this year.

I cleaned out a bed on the west side, the most gnarly looking and right by the street.  It took maybe two hours just because of dead Siberian Iris foliage which would have been sooo manageable if I had cut it down last fall or early spring.  Then again, my defense is that we never got an early spring.

All of my tropical house plants outside are taking this cold really well.  I keep waiting to look out after another cold night and they've all lost all of their leaves but noooo.

Box Elder Bugs remain noxiously clingy.  I wore a ratty shirt outside to work yesterday and I didn't notice a hole in the shoulder right off.   I must have seen it out of the corner of my eye ten times and thought it was a Box Elder, and I slapped that hole in my shirt silly, let me tell you.

I finally put some corn in a bed.  I buy seed for corn every year meaning to plant some someplace, maybe even in a container (some grow everything in a pot on your balcony blog made me thing containers would work).   It is in a couple of rows in a 2 x 6 ft raised bed, carefully spaced.  Knee high by the Fourth of July is unlikely but it would be fun if it worked.

Fig A "Field of Early Glow Corn"

I'm moving alot of plants this year so I am going to have to do a combination of potting things up and moving directly from one spot to another.

My game plan is I will inventory what needs to be moved, then plot out where I can most likely put the transplants, then voila, move those puppies.  I'm sure to have everything on the east side by summers end.  (wink).