GardenHacker:
not your typical seedy site...

Weekend Update 05-28-2007 Out to the Garden with ya!

The plants are heading out after hardening off in a semi-protected area in our back yard. It's semi-protected because there's no way to shield the plants from our labridor's tail.

The Vitamin greens are ready (put another way, I'm ready to eat them and start some other crops). In the background is Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato plant, still doing great. As the plants move out, more "vessels" will be put in place (and my wife thought this would be a clear space soon...). These hydroponic "vessels" or "vats" or whatever you'd like to call them will grow cool weather crops and start some of the later plants for transplant out to the garden.

Don't know why, but the blue light's taking the lead. As they were transplanted, there may be other factors involved. They'll be moving out to the garden and a different plant will be tested in their places.

In the morning sun (approximately 10:30am), the one plant's out of direct sunlight, but still enough ambient light to keep it growing. There are so far three plants around the ring: Early Girl, Beefsteak, and Black Prince. The same are around the second ring, and in the garden without any "ring" in the same formation as a control. The summer and fall will tell whether it works with the horse manure/straw/woodshaving/lime/fertilizer layering of the ring will work any better than typical garden planting (they do look ugly - I've dubbed them my "muffin stands"

As a final(?) experiment this year, I'm trying another hack for potato crops: bagged potatoes. Drainage holes in a 30 gallon bag, several inches of garden soil, several potato eyes planted "looking up". As the plants grow, hay is added to mulch them 'til there's only a couple of inches showing. Since potatoes grow above the "seed", adding the mulch is supposed to increas the crop, and the bag makes it easier to harvest. If it works, I think a more "environmentally sensitive"container will be substituted (such as a burlap sack or other recycled object like a tub will be used, or perhaps just use one of the compost heaps, as they're supposed to like them as well).