Kurt and I went over to the garden plot yesterday to view our plot. This past week the Department of Recreation roped out all of the plots, and I saw online that they were ready for planting May 1st. So today we went over and dug our beds and paths. We have a path all the way around the 20' x 20' square, and 2 paths down the middle, so it's going to be 3 rows of 4' x 20'.
We started this morning at about 10:15, and left by 11:30. It was super hot, humid, and sunny, and we were working like crazy! I seriously haven't exercised since high school, and it was like jumping back in. My body is so tired!!!
But we got a lot done in that little bit of time. Later tonight we're planning on going back over (once the sun starts to wane a bit) to mix in some organic soil we purchased yesterday. If we have time we'll plant some of the seeds as well. Hopefully Kurt will be up to it - he's at an outdoor picnic for work this afternoon and I don't know how excited he'll be to go BACK outside tonight!
Two things that have been worrying me about my seedlings are that the kale is looking too leggy and they are falling over, and the cucumber leaves are turing yellowish. One is really bad and might die (see the left side of the picture).
From my researching online and in my organic gardening book tells me that the cucumbers are going through one of the following:
Over-watering
Under-watering
Too much nutrients
Too few nutrients
My guess is that they are big and over-crowding their little peat pots and have sucked up all of the nutrients that the soil provided. Tonight I'm going to conduct an experiment and use the organic plant food I bought, and see if one or two of them turn around.
Regarding the kale, I feel that they probably somehow needed more (or REAL) sunlight, and that they strained themselves to get closer to the light. I'm going to plant more from seed directly into my garden anyway, so I'm not too worried. It will be interesting to see the differences once the garden-planted ones grow.
Our garden plot "neighbors" are nice. One side is a couple with two young children who seemed like they've got some experience - they have the narrow rows with the black paper covering them for weed control, and were already planting seeds today. I think that they have 2 plots. The other side is a nice man named Gary who talked with us about how his tomatoes didn't come in last year because of all the rain. He complimented us on our rows, which was nice.
Hopefully we'll have everything in the ground by the end of this week, tomato and pepper transplants included!! They're shipping tomorrow, I think, from Wisconsin.
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