Week 5: Progress

This week, I bought two trellises and set one up to hold the cantaloupe and the watermelon plants. The other trellis was supposed to be used for the pumpkin plant, but as you can see from the picture below, the dang thing is too big for the size of trellis that I bought. For now, I'm just going to let the pumpkin plant grow on the ground.



The marigolds have started to bloom. The pumpkin, watermelon and cantaloupe all have flowers on them as well. Are the Walmart jalapeno transplants are doing OK? Well, sort of. They have lost a lot of leaves, but the new leaves on top are looking pretty good.

Week 4: The Radish Harvest

Today, we harvested radishes from the Square Foot Garden. Check it out!



Needless to say, the kids loved it. Radishes...Go figure.



Now, what the heck do I do with 48 radishes that are supposed to go bad in about 5 days... Hrmmm?



It is kind of hard to find a good recipe that might taste good with radish as the main ingredient . I did find one recipe online for something called Lebanese Fatoosh. Radish is not the main ingredient, but it is in there. I modified the recipe a bit to make sandwiches instead of salads. Here's what I came up with.

Subterranean Mediterranean Vegetarian Pita



Servings: 6-8

Ingredients:
4 pita breads, halved and sliced open
6-8 radishes, diced
1 small bag of spinach leaves
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1/2 of a red onion, diced or sliced thin
1 cucumber, diced
1 small container Feta Cheese Greek Olive Mix (from the HEB Olive Bar)
1 tbsp of Mediterranean Sea Salt Seasoning
4 tbsp light olive oil
4 tbsp lemon juice

Directions:
1. Combine all the veggies and seasonings into a bowl and toss evenly.
2. Toast the pita bread in a toaster after slicing.
3. Put the veggies into the pita bread.
4. Relax and enjoy.

Week 4: Progress

This week everything grew very well, but again, I had to trim off some of the pumpkin leaves. Pumpkin leaves are like 12" around and cover up the other square feet. I don't think pumpkin is very good for Square Foot Gardens unless you plant them in one of the corners and plan on trimming some of their leaves off (thus limiting the number of pumpkins you will get).



Also, I had a lot of help from my son on watering this the weekend. Thanks little Dude!

Week 3: Progress

This week, everything started to grow rapidly -- especially the pumpkin plants. I trimmed off 4 eight inch leaves since they were starting to cover some of the corn. My son and his friends decided to do what Dad did and pick off a few more pumpkin plant leaves when I was not paying attention. Needless to say, they got a "Time Out!" A lesson for them? Or is it a lesson for Dad? Hrmmm....

Some of the plants in the garden have started to lean to the right due to recent high winds and rainstorms. I used some wooden skewers and twine to tie them upright. I do not know if this is recommended by Gardeners, but I simply cannot have a garden with a Gangsta Lean.

The jalapenos and the rosemary still haven't sprouted, so today I picked up a mild jalapeno plant and a regular jalapeno plant for a whopping $3 (negotiated) at WalMart and planted them in the available squares. The little plants had 1/4 inch jalapenos on them already, but I cut them off (see Week 2 Progress for info as to why I did this). These little plants are in bad shape, but I hope to bring them back to life. Also, I used the Jigg spray on all the plants today. We'll see how that goes.

Next week, I have to build a trellis for the pumpkin, cantaloupe, and watermelon plants. The Sugar Baby Watermelons are already starting to grow offshoot vines on them. I plan to make the building of the trellis an educational experience for my son and his friends.

Week 3: How to Make an Organic Pesticide

I did a lot of reading this week on how to make an organic pesticide. Apparently, organic pesticides can be tricky to make depending on what type of pests you have. Since I do not think that I have any pests yet, I decided to make a general organic pesticide. This recipe is supposed to deter all sorts of critters. I am going to call it "The Jigg" for my garden.

The Jigg (Jolly Green Garlic Goodness)

1 Onion
10 Cloves of Garlic
7 Jalapenos
1 tbsp Cayenne Pepper
1 Squirt Dish Soap
1 32oz Squirt Bottle

Chop the onion, garlic and jalapenos and combine in a blender. Add the cayenne pepper and blend on the highest setting for about three minutes. Let it sit for about 5 minutes to separate. It makes 3 distinct layers within the blender after 5 minutes. Scoop off the top mixture and discard. Put a squirt of dish soap into the squirt bottle and pour the middle layer from the blender into the squirt bottle. Put on the cap, shake it up, and there you have it... The Jigg for your Square Foot Garden.



Be careful with this stuff. It irritated the hell out of my hands!

Sources for this organic pesticide recipe include my friend Jason Costello, The Farmer's Almanac and results from your common Google Search for "organic pesticide recipe". Another interesting page that I came across while researching is this Organic Pesticide Chart. I do not have any specific pests that I am trying to get rid of yet, so I will let you know how this one works.

Week 2: Progress

Things have really started to take off this week. We had a couple of days of rain and that helped out a ton. Everything has sprouted, except the jalapenos and the rosemary. Unfortunately, the marigolds are growing slower than the vegetables.

Note to self: Plant marigolds about 4 weeks before planting everything else.

The green beans seem to be aggressive growers, but the dang jalapeno seeds still haven't sprouted yet. I did some research online and it can (supposedly) take anywhere from 14-21 days for jalapenos to germinate. The jalapeno seeds I planted are from store bought peppers I ate about four weeks ago. I am going to give them until next week to sprout and then I am going to the gardening store to buying a jalapeno plant.

Interesting Tip: I learned an interesting thing about jalapeno plants this week. Apparently, if you snip off the first flowers that the plant creates, it makes the plant grow even bigger before producing more flowers. That means more jalapenos!

This upcoming week, I am going to have to make some organic pesticide. I took a close look at the plants and I do see little critters crawling all over my plants. Not bad ones (I think?), but critters none the less.

Week 1: Progress

One sugar baby watermelon plant died this week. It's OK. I thought that one was going to die anyway. I think all of the watermelon transplants may have some sort of disease on them. There were two spots free in the watermelon square foot, so I just added some seeds that I had saved from a watermelon I ate a few weeks ago. We'll see what happens.

It rained yesterday and today. What's amazing is that the plants seemed to respond immediately after the rain. So far, the corn, pumpkin, cantaloupe, green beans, okra, and marigolds have all sprouted. No basil, tomatoes, carrots, rosemary, cilantro, onions, or jalapenos yet.

Planting Day

Boxes are built and freshly planted. Those are 3 transplanted sugar baby watermelon plants in the 4x4 box. I had those growing in a small pot and they were not doing so well.

Planning to Plant

I'm just getting started with Square Foot Gardening after I watched this Introducing Square Foot Gardening video online. My son and I built the boxes and planted them last week in May 2009. I picked up the seeds from Rainbow Gardens and the bedding from Fertile Garden. My son and his friends were so excited about making a garden.



Here is the layout I planned for planting. It should be noted that the jalapeno seeds in the 2' x 2' were taken from some delicious jalapenos that I bought from the store.