Something nibbled on my peas!

This morning I came upon a frightening scene -- nibbled leaf bits off of every (7) snow pea plants and one completely decapitated! Aha .. so apparently I had forgotten to enable the scarecrow last night. Drat, foiled by my thoughtlessness. I won't forget again!

Vermicompost Harvest ..

Tonight I harvested some vermicompost (worm compost) from the worm bin. It was time and a couple of people from work were interested in getting some worms. I harvested a good 1 gallon of fine compost -- fished out most of the worms and put them into shoeboxes for my coworkers. Ultimately, I added 1 part vermiculite and 1 part soil to 1 part vermicompost make a nice, friable potting mix. Final result was about 3 gallons of highly fertile potting mix that I will use on my seedlings in the coffee cups.

Pair of American Robins in the garden this AM..

I was a bit surprised to find 2 American Robins foraging around the mulch this morning. Robins are known for being almost fearless of humans and I guess that also means fearless of big scary predator balloons. They are too small to trigger the Scarecrow. I shooshed them off and went to verify their diet (hope its not seedlings...)

Phew, luckily, just as I thought, their diet consists mainly of berries (didn't know this) and bugs (knew this).

http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/Behavior/Spring2007/Frohman/Page02.html

Robins, you are welcome to return to our garden.

All the free recycled coffee cups one could ever want...

These have been rinsed with a 10% bleach solution and are sitting out to dry.

We got these free for the asking at our local coffee shop (Thinkers Cafe on 20th street in Potrero Hill.) The nice folks there left a basket with a sign out for the customers to place used coffee cups in a milk crate. They call us when the crate is full. This is the 2nd load of cups in a few weeks.

Roll Call

As of today we have (above ground) in our Square Foot Garden:
2 Musk Melons (Cantaloupe)
1 Watermelon
2 Spinach (of 9 seeds sown)
7 Broccoli (started indoors)
7 Snow Peas (of 8 seeds sown -- I actually pushed a snow pea seed into the ground in the place of the missing snow pea today.)
X carrots (16 seeds sown .. none sprouted but I had some sprouting indoors that I transplanted. I'll consider these a wash for now)
1 Zucchini
3 Cucumbers (of 6 seeds sown)
1 Coriander (aka Cilantro - of 4 seeds sown)
16 radishes (woohoo)

Went into the ground (date):
1 Chico III Tomato transplant (3/29, Determinate paste/roma-type)
1 Costoluto Genovese Tomato transplant (3/30, Italian Heirloom)

Separate, in 5-gallon planters:
9 Blue Lake Bush beans (Sounds exotic, almost, but they're just green beans. All started indoors and transplanted in their newspaper pots.)
1 Green Zebra Tomato transplant (3/29, green 'mater with stripes!)
1 Chudo Rinka Tomato transplant (3/29, a Ukranian Determinate -- bush-- tomato)

Into 2-gallon hanging basket: Tumbling Tom Tomato transplant (3/29, dwarf cherry tomato)

Elsewhere:
4 - Beauregard Sweet Potato Slips (taken from an organic sweet potato purchased at Whole Foods that happened to start sprouting)

Future (what is still under grow lights and sitting, pampered, indoors):
Eggplant
Sweet (California Wonder) Bell Peppers
Pumpkin (a lone seed -- but I have peeked and it has sprouted..)

The next set of seedlings: tomatoes, eggplant and carrots

For whatever reason, the top level of the grow center maintains temperatures of 75 degrees. The lower level only gets to 65 degrees. For this reason I've started using the top level to germinate seeds. (Center: eggplant seedlings and 2 young tomato plants)


Carrot starts in little fingerling starter pots. The carrot seedlings are so tiny and delicate that I developed this tiny starter pot to accommodate them. They also take up a lot less precious space under the grow lights this way.


Eggplant


Tomatoes (in 50/50 soil and vermicompost mix)

Saturday Morning, March 28 - Progress Photos

Snow Peas taking off -- now there are 6 of 8!


1 of 1 Zucchini Plant - these require 9 squares in the square foot garden. I'm sure they are worth it!


There's a little melon seedling peeking through here (1 of 2)


Cucumber (1 of 6)


Broccoli (7 total, started indoors)