Planting Veggies, as Busy as a Bee [Gardening]

This busy bee was spotted climbing on the arugula flowers. It found a sweet treat on top as it climbed the stalk to get a mouthful of pollen and nectar.

In this post I wanted to share a quick gardening update, because I was as busy as this bee working outside all day.

Today I got a lot done in the garden. Sowed a ton more seeds: carrots, radish, anise, coriander, cumin, green onions, and marigolds.

My friend gifted me with these little planter bags, and I filled them with super rich fish compost. These bags are interesting in that they only have one hole in the bottom, but the bag is lined with a clear plastic. That means it's going to keep the soil very humid with moisture. I think this will be ideal for herbs that love moisture and warmth.

As a precaution, I added a cup or so of pumice to the bottom, to help with drainage. Clumpy soil should be blocked by the top layer of rocks, allowing the water to drain without soil damming the way. Roots can also access some oxygen through the layer of pumice rock. This oxygen layer really helps to balance the bacteria and micro-organisms too so that anaerobic materials do not form under the base causing everything to rot.

On the left I planted coriander, and on the right anise. Through the center I peppered in a line of cumin. If I can get these all to sprout, I'll be eating delicious herbs all summer long. I'm hoping the compost aids the seeds in staying warm, moist, and protected.

After hardening off the peppers, I am now hardening off pumpkins, tomatoes, and even some melon vines. I decided to take the strongest looking plants that have been hardening off well, and plant them deep into my garden bags. Here, I laid them out close to the position they will be occupying.

Banana pepper and Ancho Poblano pepper.

Behind them will be the beefsteak tomato. It's a little bit lanky, and seems to need more root space in order to develop, because it has been discarding leaves for all the new ones it puts on.

Lots of arugula and clovers growing all around. It's all going to seed. There's a big lump of daikon radish next to the pepper I'll be planting. It's also going to seed, so we'll see what happens. I think growing things in succession like this will be a good thing for the garden, especially for plants that have different levels and needs. Think my plan will work?

Roots on the beefsteak tomato.

My soil mixture seems to have done exactly what I wanted. Roots are spreading out from top to bottom in all directions to hold the soil together. Tomato roots are thin and fragile. They are coiling around the pot slightly, so I pick them slightly to tease them away from the edges.

This is the pepper that was blooming. Checking out the root system.

Pepper roots are much thicker and very white. It looks slightly pot bound, because I see various roots running in parallel tightly together. Again, this pot and soil had done an excellent job of forcing the plant to incorporate the roots through the soil evenly from top to bottom. This will make transplanting very easy to do.

Another pepper plant, pictured above.

Above is a Roma tomato. Great for making spaghetti sauce that will taste very Italian.

Finished the first transplants in this bed. See the peppers in the front?

The tomato in this bed probably won't like growing under the brussels sprouts stalk, but there is plenty of space and nutrients to share. As soon as seeds can be harvested, the brussels sprouts will be removed in a few weeks.

Still reading? We're getting to the fun part for me. Pumpkin!

I've been growing this pumpkin up vertically to follow a wire, and it's been growing non-stop searching for sunlight in my windowsill. Now that it's been hardening off, I've been growing it horizontally. That big long vine is developing some sturdy strength because of the way I trained it.

The roots look similar to tomato roots to me. Very thin, fragile, and long.

Looking at the way the soil layer trained the roots is interesting to me. Most of the feeder roots seem to have formed around the middle layer where the moisture rich coir was resting on top of the pumice. And yet, there is also a thick mesh of structural roots that formed underneath the layer of pumice. If I had made three or four lasagna layers of coir on top of pumice, I think the roots would be been even more thoroughly distributed through the soil, with feeder roots and structural roots all over.

Never realized how much interest I would take in the roots system of plants until after I started studying bonsai. I am always making learning discoveries with trees that also relates to my tender plants too. These just grow a lot faster!

I planted the pumpkin vine on it's side so most of the leaves would be facing upward to gather sunlight. Hopefully the roots will be deep enough. I have plenty of compost surrounding the area that works as a mulch to keep the roots mulched. The wooden bamboo stake, I had to twist it out of the wire, as it no longer is being used to hold the vine upward. When the corn and bean plants start growing here, they will form the three-sisters relationship, I hope, and the pumpkin vine may even start to climb up the corn stalks or the fence.

Most years my pumpkins get thrashed after the first day by slugs, and anything weak that remains gets dug out by the squirrels. I haven't seen a single slug this week after we had a visit from some ducks in our yard. This could be very fortunate!

For my last transplant, I added a basil plant to my grow bed where I am growing cabbage and a new crop of brussels sprouts.

No rain in the forecast, and no slugs will mean this plant will have a fighting chance to become established into the soil. I haven't even seen an aphid in weeks! This is amazing for my wet climate.

I'll be running some tests this summer to attempt to propagate some basil cuttings. Last year I was not able to get cuttings to root in the soil. This year I'm going to try putting cuttings into a jar of water to see if that spurs some root growth.

#tomato #pepper #peppers #vine #roma #beefsteak #banana-pepper #poblano #ancho-poplano #roots #root-system #soil #compost #brussels-sprouts #radish #daikon #daikon-radish #marigold #seed #seeds #anise #coriander #cumin #black-cumin #cilantro #pumice