Ohio Tiller
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Re: Let's get this garden started!

rainbowgardener wrote:Oh I love it, especially this:

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Dinosaur in the jungle!

And incidentally, your plants are looking great!
He shouldn't have any problems with bugs! LOL!

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Cola82
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Haha, nope, Ohio! :)

Applestar, I dug out the bulbs that failed today and they were just mush. Just the gentle digging I was doing tore them to pieces. Sigh. I bought more narcissus and a couple big daffodils at a daffodil fair. I also picked up some ferns and another hydrangea for the shadier parts of my yard.

I also started some new basil in solo cups covered with plastic after my very last surviving basil finally turned brown. I don't know what the heck went wrong with them, but I'll be more conservative about the pruning this time, just in case.

I also took a bunch of tomatoes and other starts to my boyfriend's aunt's today. She moved in around the block so I just put them in my garden cart and pulled them down the street. I'm sure they'll appreciate the extra room. That's almost all of the plants I mean to give away.

The carrots have not grown at all since the last time I photographed them. It's probably the fact that it's been below 30 degrees at night this week. :/

When is it going to be spring, again?

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Cola82
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Purple basil sprouted (along with some other stuff but who cares).

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Cuttings are doing alright. I put the pepper in a bigger pot and trimmed the rosemary. The sun gold rooted in water in just a couple of days (Indigo Rose took more than a week), so it still has a lot of the sun damage from parent plant sitting in the yard.

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Fun times! I've been hoping to harvest seeds from the Japanese Maple out front ever since we moved here, but the whirligigs never seemed to ripen. It doesn't belong to us, and ever since they cut it back it leans more into our neighbor's side of the driveway, so I was delighted when I found a tiny sapling sprouting right next to our doorstep. I found two others, but one perished when its taproot was severed at the base--I was digging carefully but the clay broke apart and took the delicate roots with it. Of the two remaining who had enough roots to maybe salvage, I think one is a sugar maple like the ones planted along the sidewalk, but the other clearly has beautiful red leaves sprouting from between its cotyledons. I'm so excited, I hope it survives.

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Scrappy Coco
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Amazing, I never managed to get seeds like basil, peppermint and so germinated.

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McKinney88
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You are great are at starting seeds indoors! I have not had very good luck with it. I love the dinosaur pictures by the way. Too funny.

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Cola82
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Sorry for not updating this thread in a while. I've been busy, it's been raining heavily, and we haven't been able to afford soil and compost and such until recently so everything has been in limbo. Unfortunately for my broccoli romanesco, that seems to mean bad things:

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I'm not sure what's wrong with it, exactly. I think it might be a magnesium deficiency. Anyway, I put them in these pots about a week ago because I was concerned what being in 6" nursery pots for so long was doing to them. It might be the cause of the stress in the mature leaves and this is just a delayed reaction. That would explain why the two smaller plants which had fewer roots aren't showing the same problem. Although all three plants have different blends of old soil, new soil, and old mulch that I had on hand to pot them.

They should be in my raised bed sometime this week, though. I'm just waiting for it to stop raining buckets.

ETA: I just want to clarify that the broccoli wasn't on the patio like this all week--I've actually been keeping them out in the raised bed to get as much sunlight as possible, but it started hailing earlier this week and I brought them under the shelter to keep them from getting pummeled.

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A fourth cat seems to have made an appearance in our yard (the tux cat in the back). Unfortunately, third cat jumped out of the raised bed when he saw me taking a photo, or they would have looked like a bed of cat plants.

We've decided to cut back on what we feed third cat to discourage other cats from viewing our yard as a free resource.

You can also see my barrels full of kale and carrots, here. The raised bed has plastic in it at the moment to kill the weeds in the bottom of it. I'm going to remove it before I fill it and use newsprint as a liner.

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Cola82
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Here's the seed starting spot in my office. Right now it's just basil (purple, sweet, and thai, but I also picked up and plant to start some lemon basil), some tomato cuttings in a shot glass, rosemary from a cutting, my maple saplings, and all the lavender I took out of the fridge last week. I'm still waiting for it to sprout.

I'm also going to start some squash today if I have time.

Franenuss
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Beautiful photos! And so fun to read this tread!

(The dinosaurs are great!)

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applestar
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Burgeoning tables down to a couple trays -- isn't the seed starting season crazy making? :lol:
You are doing great! I'm basically doing the same thing just a few weeks behind :D

Yesterday, when I was looking around -- I had a big project to start, but in the morning, I couldn't focus -- the sun was warm and I kept walking around aimlessly in the garden noting this and that... I found a few Japanese Maple seedlings growing and some of last year' seedlings coming back. I think I WILL try potting them up this year and see if I can protect them from rabbits and other nibblers by putting them inside one of the fenced garden areas...maybe the Blueberry bed. 8)

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Cola82
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I love finding seedlings, Applestar. They're like little gifts. :D

Okay, so, my raised bed is all squared away. I got my hands on an affordable quantity of compost and soil, tilled up the ground, laid down some newspaper as a barrier and filled them up. I installed stakes and secured them with twine to the borders of the bed so they won't fall over and put up a trellis.

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I added bird netting after I caught some starlings hunting around in there. I think they're nesting on the roof, because they keep dive bombing Third Cat when he visits the yard. Everything's a little rough because I don't have a lawnmower, so uh, yeah.

I also screened in the kale with leftover bird netting. The openings are small enough to keep the butterflies out, hopefully.

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Carrots. I'm going to make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons where they're concerned. ;p

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Shade garden over by the South side of the yard.

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Cola82
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I just wanted to add that one of those broccoli in the front of the bed got snapped at the base as I was getting out of the five gallon pot. It's not easy getting plants out of larger pots. O__O

Anyway, I only had masking tape to fix it, so I patched it up as best I could and hoped for the best, and somehow it isn't dead yet. It's been four days.

Hooray?

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applestar
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What I'm seeing is great source of free green mulch and compost greens. If you don't have one, invest in one of these Image and a ...a... What is that called? You know, kitchen knife sharpening stick?

Please be careful with it, but it's a joy to use when super sharp. I just grab tufts with left hand, hook (well below) and pull. (Wear a Kevlar glove if you want to be extra sure).

evtubbergh
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LOL. All your comments on needing to see green to believe in spring make me laugh. You should all go visit Nelspruit (near Kruger Park) in winter; they don't get winter. When my husband moved to Joburg he couldn't believe how we actually get 'seasons'! Even in Joburg though, there is a little green in some gardens.

I do get the early dark problem though. It's not as bad here but I don't like it getting dark so damn early! It's getting dark early already and it's only May :(

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Cola82
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Haha, a couple weeks ago my step dad buzzed all the grass for me with a weed whacker and I was able to rake it all up over the edges of the yard in big heaps. Unfortunately, I don't have the space for composting. Trust me, composting is on my "someday" list.

Also, the yard dips at the end so I can't really do anything on half of it. If I owned the property, I'd terrace it, but we also hate this house. It's a row-house, so it's super dark inside. Someday, it will just be someone else's problem.

Evtubbergh, it's definitely spring here now. Really, it's summer. It's like we just skipped spring. When it isn't raining, it's 80+ degrees. D:

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McKinney88
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How did you start your carrots? I am having no luck at all with it. Your garden looks great too!

Ohio Tiller
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McKinney88 wrote:How did you start your carrots? I am having no luck at all with it. Your garden looks great too!
Carrots would be impossible to start trying to replant them would be a nightmare. I always seed mine in a raised row and have always got a great crop of carrots.

evtubbergh
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@Cola82 That's weird, we also skipped autumn a bit as our first frost came a month early! It's either summer or winter here every day. It's weird.

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Cola82
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McKinney88--I didn't start them inside. As Ohio Tiller points out, that wouldn't work out super well. The few plants I've tried moving around the barrel are kind of wilty.

I just sowed them directly in the barrel in early January in rows, which are hard to discern now, but they're there.

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McKinney88
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I started some outdoors a few weeks ago but none of them came up. I tried to start some indoors now.

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Cola82
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It finally stopped raining over the weekend so I did a lot of work. I harvested a ton of kale and we had it for Mother's Day dinner alongside asparagus from another family member's garden (it was amazing).

Honestly the worst news is that the faucet that cracked when it froze last February is more damaged than we thought. It's getting into the house somehow and it has warped the laminate flooring in our dining room on the other side of the wall. We're going to have to call a plumber and that's expensive enough that I guess I'll be painstakingly transporting water from the kitchen to the garden for the foreseeable future. So much for that awesome automatic watering system I got for Christmas. :/

Looks like my peas are finally breaking the surface, two weeks after I sowed them. I feel like a fool--I broke down and soaked some in my office to see if they'd sprout and it only took them three days. I guess I'll see if my mom wants them, since I don't have room and it seems a shame to just throw them out. I've been covering them with these semi-transparent solo cups to keep the starlings out of them. But I watched Third Cat go out there and knock one over out of curiosity so we'll see how well THAT works. ;p

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Unfortunately, it looks like my broccoli isn't recovering as much as I thought from being snapped at the stem. I can't tell what exactly went wrong, but it wilts in the sun more than the others, which my kale did last year right before it died. I don't think it will make it and I'll probably just cook the leaves tonight or tomorrow. You can see it, third from the left, looking wilted. It perked up in the shade.

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Planted yellow zucchini and butternut squash over yonder. I'm hoping I can send the zucchini up the trellis. I'm thinking sowing peas on this side was probably unnecessary since they all seem to be coming up, so I may pull them. I don't expect the arugula to last much longer, though.

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Carrots are really taking off. I rotated the barrel to get more coverage.

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Rosemary and sage are just happy it stopped raining, I bet, but they've the rockiest, sandiest soil in my only terra-cotta pot, so I don't think they ever got too saturated.

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Amaranth is looking beautiful. It's sprouting blossoms all down the sides, too. And the bees are loving the chives.

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ETA: Almost forgot my tomatoes. I put the Indigo Rose in a sunnier spot and the fruit darkened almost instantly. It's really cool to watch.

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Cola82
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Oh and here's a cartoon I did. It could be better.

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McKinney88
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You draw cartoons? That's awesome.


I need some carrot advice. Here are my carrot seeds I started.

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What do I do with them now??? First time with carrots.

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Cola82
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Well... this is my first time with carrots, too. I did find that moving them around when they only had one or two true leaves was okay, and they seemed to recover quickly, but once they got any bigger, moving them was death.

So my completely amateur advice is to wait for them to get a true leaf or two--they'll still be tiny, and it looks like you clumped all the seeds in the center, so they'll be tough to tease apart--and then plant them out where you want them.

And yeah, cartoons is my thing. I draw my avatars and everything. This is my handle everywhere if you want to look up my work, but that's all the self promotion I'm gonna do. I know that's kind of frowned upon. I figured a gardening related cartoon was okay, though.

Ohio Tiller
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McKinney88 wrote:You draw cartoons? That's awesome.


I need some carrot advice. Here are my carrot seeds I started.

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What do I do with them now??? First time with carrots.
Plant them as is do not try and separate them they have very delicate roots finer than frog hair! Once you break them they are done. Carefully plant the whole clump and then thin them out later. or just leave them and get twice as many. Some will just be oddly shaped.

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Cola82
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Nevermind, imgur is being a butt

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Cola82
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McKinney, this is what the carrots looked like when I moved them around. I only moved a couple around, and I did so by using a finger to get a whole clump of soil that I plopped down a little ways away from the other plants.

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One of the carrots is showing signs of being an actual carrot (haha):

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Here's a wide shot. You can see my drip system:

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I think I'm trying to make up for all the overhead involved in gardening by growing things that are hard to come by in the grocery store. Thai basil, Romanesco broccoli, purple basil, indigo rose and sun golds, tomatillos, multicolored carrots, smooth leafed kale (we only seem to find lacinto and that kale with all the ruffles) and different kinds of peppers. I guess we can get butternut squash, watermelon, and yellow zucchini anywhere, but growing them yourself gives you access to squash flowers, which I think are very tasty in pasta or salad (my experiments with frying them were underwhelming).

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I fixed some issues I was having with the way the bird netting was applied and the twine I'd used to secure the stakes to the edge of the bed. Everything is much more solid now.

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Nasturtiums are coming up. I planted a mix of new seeds and seeds I saved from last year. Guess we'll see how it goes.

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Indigo Rose still has green shoulders but it looks so striking:

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Peas are about this size. They seem to like being under the cups.

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The sweet basil looks sickly but the purple basil seems fine:

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Watermelon:

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Tomatillos, habaneros, red chiles, lavender, and some backup eggplants still chilling in the office. Yes, I know the tomatillos are spindly. the first batch of seeds never sprouted, so I wasn't paying close attention and didn't take off the plastic for a couple days. Oops:

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The cat is very unhappy.

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Cola82
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Habaneros and red chiles grown from supermarket seeds seem to be doing okay. We'll see how they turn out, ultimately.

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The zucchini exploded when I wasn't looking. Butternut squash looks the same as it did a few days ago, but the arugula is really leafing out. I should probably eat it soon.

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Geraniums opened up when I wasn't paying attention.

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Still no head on the broccoli. :/

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This little guy couldn't seem to figure out the bird netting.

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Third cat was waiting patiently for me to finish looking at everything so he could access his kibble on the patio.

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Azul enjoyed messing around with the bird netting.

[youtudotbe]https://youtu.be/7VhpKcnPPQ0[/youtudotbe]

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Cola82
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I really need to eat all that arugula.

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So I had a slow realization that I'd planted two butternut squash instead of the butternut squash and a watermelon over the last week or so. Contributing to this realization was the similarity between two plants I knew from experience should look much different. Luckily, I hung onto what I thought was the spare butternut squash seedling, and it's been putting on the kinds of leaves that I associate with watermelon, so I was able to swap it out with one of the butternut squash.

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The amaranth is so velvety I can't keep my hands off of it. I wish I'd grown more.

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You can't see it here because it's really hard to take good photos of dark fruit in total shadow, but the Mangan eggplant has fruit on it, as well as several more flowers. I'm pretty excited about that. It looks like it's still about half the size it needs to be before I can eat it.

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Big news in broccoli land, the romanesco finally has a head! It only took four months. D:/

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Less good news in carrot land--several of my carrots bolted. I ripped them up, but they're too small to eat. Oh well, they look pretty on a plate. :(

Possible causes, according to the internet, are that I didn't water them enough (had to believe because I've watered them a lot), the hard freeze we had in February right after I sowed them originally, and planting them too closely. Maybe someone here has a better idea what could have gone wrong.

Luckily I still have about a dozen carrots that haven't bolted... we'll see how they do.

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Temperatures have been very mild, but in the last week or so, it's been below fifty at night. The weather won't make up its mind.

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Cola82
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I would appreciate help figuring out what happened to my yellow zucchini.

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The white spots you can faintly see are actually dried milk droplets from the milk spray, which I've only half heartedly applied since this cultivar is resistant to PM. I've focused my energy on the butternut squash, which looks amazing.

Given how some of the other plants are also struggling, too, I think what's happening is that the compost I bought is junk. Not literally--they promised me it didn't have any manure in it--but in the sense that it doesn't have many nutrients in it. I mixed it with a cheap veg/garden soil that drains ridiculously fast. I've noticed everything potted in it exclusively is really stunted. I would use my own compost, but I don't have room in my small yard to create any.

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I haven't tried purchasing any fertilizer yet. The only thing I have on hand are 10-10-10 crystals that you sprinkle on the surface, but I don't top water so they have limited effectiveness. I've been working coffee grounds into the soil and I'll try some epsom salt, too, but I'm not sure what kind of nutrient deficiency I'm looking at, if any.

I know it's not bugs--there aren't even any aphids on it like there are on everything else. I checked for spider mites and it's clean.

Please tell me what you think.

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Finally put the mantis ootheca out on the broccoli a couple days ago... Fingers crossed. There might not be aphids on the zucchini, but there's a fine layer of them on everything else. :/

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Butternut squash is looking very good. I moved it today and noticed it's been rooting in the soil under the pot, so maybe that's why. I was about to put it on some pavers, but when I saw the roots, I decided to just put the pavers all around it. I'm training it to go up the trellis now. We'll see how that goes.

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I'm a little disappointed my broccoli is already starting to flower. I thought it would get a lot bigger, but oh well. Lesson learned. I'll plant more of them further apart when I try again in August. Also in a better medium.

The kale I was growing in the half barrel bolted. There were just too many in there, I think. I thinned them dramatically and now I'm hoping I get at least one more harvest before I have to rip up the rest. I also ripped out all the arugula finally. It was trying very hard to bolt and we've eaten our fill. It was time.

Our television broke yesterday morning. Just POP, dead. We're getting it fixed, since we love it and apparently Panasonic stopped making plasma displays this year. I guess the only ones worth making anymore are the low quality LED/LCDs and top shelf OLED/4K TVs. Omni directional, low input delay plasmas mostly only appeal to nerds like us who use them to play games. But uh... yeah, I was less upset than I expected to be. We don't have cable television so it's not like we always had it on or anything. But being free of it at all has actually been kind of nice. It was a break I didn't realize I needed.

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lakngulf
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Not sure about your squash. Actually looks like fertilizer burn but you say none applied. Down this way this time of year heat and humidity bring out a variety of problems. We just accept it and hope for some harvest



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