Spent all weekend working at the Camrose plot. Got all the beds finished up with added peat and perlite. We discovered the compost pile belonged to the city and they weren’t at work when we went to see about getting it. maybe we can get some this week sometime and top dress it in just before we plant… Now we’re at the stage of building all the trellises. so next hours will be spent on affixing mesh to the frames and finish cementing the frames together. We’ll have to put up some chicken wire to deter the dogs from the south side of the garden though, as they like making ‘deposits’ there!
I’ve decided for all the bush-type determinate tomatoes to do the California/Florida weave method of support for them. That was more cost driven than anything else since the wood posts were cheap and the metal ones I wanted were hideously expensive. $1.64 vs $9.50 or so and since I needed about 34 of them…the math came out to a huge hit on the pocket-book. Now of course we’ll need a ladder to drive the 8ft poles into the ground several feet…
All the soaker hose is in…but I guess the manufacturer was serious about you can only have 150′ of hose before you have psi issues. The leader hose is too long so our last 50ft of hose doesn’t push out any water! Gonna have to get a shorter lead hose and then we’ll get at least half of that last hose working. The rest of the garden will need to be hand-watered. We got the timer working so it’ll water for an hour, every 8 hours, ie 3 times a day. That should be enough? We’ll see I suppose. I don’t think the Camrose water is metered so we should be able to water cheaply as much as we need.
It never ceases to amaze me how many worms are in the dirt. I found one the thickness of my little finger and about 8 inches long! It wasn’t very happy it got accidentally dug up either, so I replanted it before I thought, hey, maybe a picture of that would’ve been smart!
I’m hoping to be ready to plant this coming weekend for both gardens, so it will be a gruelling haul to get all the rest of the work done. Mon-Tues, Thursday-Friday at the Millwoods garden and Wednesday and Saturday/sunday at the Camrose garden.
Things to be done at the millwoods plot this week: determine if there has been a car drive through our plot or not (there was a report that one had randomly clipped the gardens); frame our planting areas; Buy 2 bales of peat, and mix it, the remaining perlite, and some compost into the planting areas; setup trellises; install upside down watering bottles where needed; mark out the plant spacings; plant the plants! and put on row covers for the ones that need it; and last but not least, help dig more sod up in the area needing digging. We dug 25 sq ft already of the 500 or so that is there.
Here are some pictures of the peat and perlite going into the Camrose plot. We used 4 bales of peat total, and 2/3 a huge bag of perlite. There’s also a picture of Darren cutting metal pipe for some of the frames. I discovered the flat rebar I had will not fit into the 1/2 inch metal pipe, but it will fit into the pvc pipe. Good thing I have a lot of round rebar too.
Peat and Perlite before mixing it in
Giving new meaning to the term double-digging!
Darren Cutting conduit for the vertical frames…note the safety glasses!
A shot of the garden showing how much peat was used and perlite. The perlite bag is on the right. Perlite application was easy using a big chunk of pipe i found as a scoop. Darren said it was off a snow blower…
