Month: July 2010

The work on the bathroom is progressing well.  This week had a few more updates.  The floor has been fully put in place, insulation was replaced/added, some plumbing was finished – and lastly – the new tub was installed!

Part one of the reconstruction is under way with the tub being mostly done and in place.  There is still a little bit of work around the tub that needs completed – in addition to starting to put up the concrete backer board on the wall.

Installing a tub takes longer than one might expect.  The bathroom is exactly five feet wide – as is the tub.  It took some maneuvering to get it into place.  The drain and overflow pipes all had to be cut to perfect size and the trap and drain all needed to be installed.  The tub then needed to have a support wall (in the bottom of the picture above) added to the one side – and a 2×4 had to be put on the opposite wall to give the tub some support.  Lastly, we had to put down some plastic and sandwich some mortar mix between the two pieces of plastic under the tub to provide support at the bottom.

The cabinet and vanity has been getting finished as well.  I prefer the natural oak color – so I don’t use any stain on the wood – and just purely varnish the cabinets.

And now for the cabinet being finished.

Moving on to gardening things, the corn has mostly been picked.  As I pick the corn, I’ve been taking down the stalks.  All of the corn should be done and harvested within the next week – so I planted another 50 Greencrop green bean seeds in the area where the Silver Queen corn is at.

A little time after picking the corn, there was a visitor in the garden.

Darn deer is feasting on the corn leaves that I put in the garden!  I went out there afterwards and saw many of the leaves from the green bean plants stripped off.  I didn’t have any kind of problem with deer when the onions were still in the ground – but now that they have been pulled, they aren’t staying away!  That means I’ll unfortunately need to get the netting out soon and put around the area to keep them out.

Speaking of onions, all of the Copra onions were pulled this past week.  There was a total of just about 20 pounds of onions from about 70 total onions.  Just over 100 onions were planted outside so 70% of them made it to harvest; others rotted or never grew after they were transplanted out.

We chopped the tops off and the wife filled a gallon ice cream bucket with chopped-up green onions – that were then put in a bag and went into the freezer.

A few more green beans were picked.  This year the bean production is down substantially.  Last year we had about ten 1-gallon freezer bags full of green beans.  We haven’t filled up one yet!

The back garden is still it’s usual self; very overgrown.  The potatoes seem to be dying back now so it is getting easier to walk back there.  But now the weight of the cucumber plant is pulling the fencing down.

I’m not impressed with the Straight Eight cucumber plants.  They are very small and while they do have some blooms on them, very few – if any – cucumbers.  Below is a photo of one of the Burpee Pickler cucumber plants.  All three of this variety are huge and growing well.

There is even a cucumber started here.

Unfortunately with as busy as I’ve been, I haven’t been keeping up with things as well.  When I was taking the pictures, I saw two large cucumbers that were already turning yellow.  Maybe we can still use them for something.

The patio garden has also been growing very well.  The greencrop green beans in this bed are by far the largest of the plants so far.  I’ve also pulled all of the cilantro out from the patio bed – and the basil is still growing very well.  The parsley – which is at the bottom of the photo – are doing well too.  I’m just not sure when to harvest the parsley – or what we’re going to use it for!

One of the potatoes beside the patio garden was harvested.

Above is one of the buckets that was pulled out.  It yielded just a bit more than a half a pound of potatoes.  They were all quite small and all were less than two ounces each.  They will be good for mashed potatoes but otherwise not much else can be done with them.  They look big in the below photo, but they are not at all.

The side garden with all of the tomatoes is still producing well.  We’ve picked over five pounds of tomatoes this week.  We still have a lot more that we need to make some salsa.

And the tomato harvest of Best Boy tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and Red Cherry tomatoes.

And lastly – going to the front garden.

As you can see, almost all of the corn has been taken out in one part of the garden.  This was the Sugar Dots corn that did not yield very well.  The Silver Queen corn is still there and has yielded quite well – but I’ve found a few ears that have been ripped off by the deer as well.

The celery is doing very poorly – but I just cannot get myself to rip it out of the ground quite yet.

The peppers have made a bit of a comeback and do have some peppers coming along, but we are not getting nearly as many as we did last year.

It is quite sad; I increased the garden square feet by almost double this year and the output may be less than what we had last year.  The question is still out on the amount of potatoes we get.  Last year there was about 250 pounds of produce from the garden.  This year I bet we are at 50 pounds or less so far.  But, on the other hand, there is still a lot that needs to come out.  The carrots need to be picked still (estimating about 10 pounds of carrots) and I’m hoping we’ll have 80 to 100 pounds of potatoes.  A lot of tomatoes are still on the vines and I’m betting at least another 50 pounds of tomatoes.

The thing that caused the issue this year is the heat.  The heat basically put a stop to the cool weather crops.  The lettuce had a very poor showing and only yielded about 1/6 what we got last year.  Same with the peas; we had maybe two pounds of peas and last year we had over 12 pounds.  Then the heat is causing havoc on all of the plants.

The other issue this year is that I used basically a full 20 x 4 box for corn – and the corn is doing alright, but not nearly as well as expected.

But on the positive side of things, we are getting produce and filling the freezer.

We finally got some rain!

We had a big storm front finally make it through our county yesterday and dumped about two inches of rain on us.  The first wave came through around 1:45 PM and lasted about 45 minutes to an hour.  I checked the rain barrels after this and they were completely full!  I don’t know how much rain we got in that storm, but it was enough to fill nine 55 gallon drums full of water.

Unfortunately, the one barrel that I just added last week still has a leak in it!  I had to use some silicon caulk sealant around the hole where the PVC T-adapter connects the barrel to the main line underneath – and then it cured for about five days before the storm yesterday.  Still, somehow the water made it through and there is about a one drop per second leak coming out of it.  That means something else to fix down the road.

Then the next storm came through right around 10 pm and lasted another hour or so.  That one also dumped quite a bit of rain on us.

They are predicting rain everyday this week through Saturday – and we are getting some rain today (Tuesday) as well.

I failed to write my blog entry over the weekend – because it was a busy weekend!  More work on the bathroom is progressing.

The first picture shows the tile we will be using on the floor and around the tub.  The tile near the bottom of the picture is the tile that will be on the floor; the tile near the top of the picture will be put around the tub.  Also notice the old flooring that is a bit rotted out (which we replaced this weekend).

My dad came up to help on Sunday and we got the old cast iron tub out.  I was doing a lot of reading online on how to remove a cast iron tub.  Well, everyone had the same idea – take a large sledge hammer and just it up!  We put a blanket over the top in order to keep the porcelain from flying everywhere – because it is extremely sharp and would have went flying everywhere!  My dad basically began in the back of the tub near the middle and in essence – cut the tub in half right down the middle so we could take it out in two pieces.

It took less than an hour to fully get the tub out.  Cast iron is actually quite brittle – even though it seemed the tub was about 1/4 inch thick.

After that was done, it was time to remove the old 1/2-inch flooring.  Before doing so, I had to run a couple of additional supports between the joists because one of the walls was not sitting directly on top of a joist.  Luckily this wasn’t a load-bearing wall, but not very good to have zero support under the wall.

Now the floor is removed and you can see right through to the basement and the A/C unit right under the bathroom.

And lastly, we got the new OSB 3/4-inch flooring laid down.  It has tongue and groove in it so the pieces interlock and help to strengthen it even more.  Amazingly enough, this took a good four hours to put in with all of the cut outs and snugly getting the pieces in place.

Last night I then removed the rest of the drywall that was around the but.  In the picture above, you can see at the very back wall at the bottom of the wall there is the studs and black insulation showing – then above that is the drywall.  That was all taken out so the demo is almost fully done!  Today I plan to put the new insulation in and maybe work on making some additional supports between the joists.

Let’s get back to gardening!

I believe in the last post I mentioned how two of the tomato plants fell flat on the ground.  Well, all of the plants kept leaning more and more and I was afraid they would fall over.  I made some posts out of 1/2-inch PVC pipe and filled it with concrete and put these in each tomato cage, but they simply cannot support anything and it was a waste.  So I had to cut two 10-foot pieces of rebar I had into 5-foot pieces and drove them in the ground – and then tied all of the tomato cages to them.  This should be quite enough support to keep them going for now.

In addition, we had our first Best Boy tomato that was picked last week as well!

Then we had a couple of little cherry tomatoes that joined the party.

I also picked one of the Ventura Celery plants last week as well.  Well, it wasn’t anything like I expected.  There just wasn’t much of anything on the stalks and it only weighed in at about 2.5 ounces of usable celery.  The celery was a bit fibrous, but I sort of like it that way – makes it more crunchy.  But, it had this very sweet, sugary-like syrup flavor to it.  I don’t know if the weather this year caused the issues with the celery (since it turned very hot incredibly quick).  But I will try celery again next year and see what happens.

The four new trays for our dehydrator showed up two weeks ago.  I immediately put them to use and filled all eight trays with basil that was drying on the table for a few days.  It took about 3 – 4 days to fully dry all eight trays and there was quite a bit of basil that we got out of it!

On Saturday, I picked our first few ears of corn.  These are Sugar Dots corn and it is a bi-color variety with both yellow and white kernels.  One of the ears was very good size but the other two left more to be desired.  The Sugar Dots corn was quite stunted and didn’t seem to grow well.  In addition, only about half of the corn managed to have some silks – but that doesn’t mean we’ll get much of an ear from them.

After picking the corn, I removed all of the Sugar Dots corn stalks that were in the garden bed that didn’t have any silk on them.  No reason to continue feeding them and taking good nutrients out of the soil without any results.  I then back-planted about 50 Greencrop green beans in this area; they were spaced six inches apart with about 18 inches between the rows.  Our bean harvest this year isn’t very good thus far.  We had over 50 pounds of green beans from the Bush Blue Lake variety last year – but this year we might have two or three pounds from about 40 Greencrop plants.  However, the playing field isn’t “level” because these beans are being shaded by the potatoes in the back garden all day long.  We’ll see how these new green beans with full sun produce.

And for the last couple of pictures – onions!

I noticed that several Copra onions had the “leaves” that were bent over near the top of the onion bulb.  I asked on GardenWeb if this meant they were ready – because the leaves were still green.  I was told to pull them!

I pulled them – and although there were maybe a dozen that were rotten already (roots were completely off and the bottom was rotted out – because they continued to get water when they were done), there was over 20 pounds of onions so far!  I still have yet to pick the onions in the back garden that are in the foundation blocks – but I will do that in the next couple of days.

Some of the onions have pretty large bulbs – like the size you buy at the grocery store.  Others didn’t produce quite as well – but they are by far much bigger than the onion sets that I planted last year.

Well, that is all for this update.  I would have liked to take all of the general pictures of the garden beds but just haven’t been able to do that lately with the work in the bathroom.

Yep – so we haven’t had any good amount of rainfall for probably 2.5 weeks now.  We did have a quick downpour last weekend that gave me about 100 gallons.

But, today I used all of the water up.  No more in supply.  So I took the opportunity to get on the ladder and use the “As Seen On TV” pressure sprayer that the wife got me from Walgreens.  It has a tip on the end that is very small so the pressure pushing the water through there is fairly good.  It worked well for getting the algae off the side of the white barrel – which I couldn’t see through at all.

After doing that, I put up the barrel that had a couple of holes in the bottom and tied it in.  In the picture below, you can see how on the white barrel there is still some area of darkness at the very top.  I couldn’t get this area of the barrel during cleaning – but you can see the difference.

The sixth barrel in the sequence from the left side is the one I put in.  I then backfilled some water into the rain water collection system.

Welp, it didn’t take long for me to see a leak from where the PVC T connector connected that barrel to the main PVC pipe underneath.  So I had to disassemble everything and use some more silicon sealant caulk around that T connector.  That means I won’t be able to remove the PVC connector from that barrel now.  Oh well – I just don’t want any leaks because water is sparse and I can’t afford even a slow drip at this point!

Alright – moving on to the next stuff.

We’ve been getting quite a few Red Cherry Tomatoes recently.  Not too terribly much, but we’ve maybe had about a pound so far for the year.  That is already more than we had last month!  Unfortunately, I woke up this morning to go mow the lawn.  Walked out the back door and saw the huge cherry tomato plant and the adjacent Roma tomato plant flat on the ground.  I didn’t take a picture of it, but I was a little devastated.

I had a small 3-foot piece of rebar in the garage so I drove it in the ground behind and in the middle between both of the plants.  I then had to take some more twine and attach both plants to it to pull them back up.

As seen above, it is still leaning a bit, but it is better than being on the ground.  All of the other tomato plants are also reaching forward as well – I suspect to try and get more sunlight.  It doesn’t help that the tomato plants are all fully loaded with tomatoes – so the weight is substantial.

There is one Best Boy tomato that is ripening!  Won’t be too much longer before this is done.

A few days ago I picked another handful of Greencrop green beans from the back garden – where it is well overgrown and the potatoes are in charge:

I put the beans up to a small tape measure so you can see how large they are.  I think that the Greencrop bean is my favorite bean thus far – over the Bush Blue Lake 74 and 274 that I planted last year.

Speaking of the green beans, these things are doing well in shaded conditions between the corn.

And they are doing well in the patio garden by the herbs.

In addition to getting a few beans and cherry tomatoes, I have had a load of basil!  I actually ordered four additional trays for the Nesco / American Harvest FD-80 dehydrator from Amazon on Thursday.  They were basically $14 for a set of two – and so I got two sets of two and it qualified for free shipping!  Basically it was like getting the second set for free because shipping was the same cost as one of the sets.  This will make the dehydrator have eight total trays – which is the maximum it can have.  They will amazingly be delivered tomorrow – but it looks like they were sent out of Indianapolis which is just a couple of hours away from us.  Anyways, all of this Basil is drying on its own right now – waiting for the new trays to arrive.

That should be good for about one herb/spice bottle.  There is about five ounces of leaves there.

Why so much basil?  Well, it started putting on it’s flower stalks and when it does that, production stops.  So I cut off all of the flower tops.  When doing so, this makes basil become more bushy and put on new stems of growth.  With the great taste of this basil, I don’t want it to stop now!

Alright – let’s look at the flowers up front.  The marigolds have filled in very well and there are hundreds of flowers in the patch!  I should sell some marigold seeds next year because I’ll have thousands of them!  Last time I mentioned that we were going to put in tulips and daffodils in this area – but I’ve decided against it.  The bulbs would have cost over $200 for all of them that we needed.  The marigolds are just fine up in this area and they fill in well.  We may add in some additional annual flowers into the mix for next year, but I think it looks fine already.

The Rose of Sharon “tree” in the front landscaping also has several flowers on them as well.

So what’s left?  Oh – the front garden!  Before there, here is a small cucumber that is growing on one of the Burpee Pickler Cucumber plants.  I walked through the area where the six cucumber plants are – and so far I’m not fully impressed.  The leaves and vines are huge already – but there simply is not a lot of cucumbers on the plants – probably because the back garden is completely overgrown with potatoes!

How’s the onions doing?  The Copra onions are doing well!  I’d say about half of them are pretty large – larger than any of the onions that we planted from sets last year.

The Ventura celery – well, I just don’t know about it.  I was hoping to see one or two of them put up some kind of seed stalk to see how it multiplies.  No such luck.  It is well into the growing period and they were started back in March.  That is about 170 days that they’ve been alive now – and they still just are not very big.

The Silver Queen corn has made a comeback!  This week and last week there have been dozens of ears that finally shot out some silk.  Many of them have two ears of corn on one stalk.  A few of them were planted a little later and don’t have ears started yet, so I just hope they stick around long enough to get some pollen.

How about those clothespins by the ears?  Yep, I put a clothespin near the ear with the date on it that the silk came out – or maybe the day after the silk came out.  After 20 days from this date, I will then pull the corn.

Down to two more pictures – first off, the California Wonder peppers.  This little pepper plant looks like it is just trying to mature – but the peppers aren’t nearly as big as what they were last year.  Last year the peppers were the typical bell shape and were as big as those in the supermarket!  It has just been a bit of an odd year for the peppers and even folks on the GardenWeb forums around my area are complaining about them as well.

And lastly – the strawberry patch.  I have neglected this patch for two weeks now.  A few nights ago the wife and I went out to pick some strawberries after it cooled down.  We found half of the patch laying over like it was dead.  Woops!  I haven’t given them any water for quite some time and we’ve been in drought-like conditions for 2.5 weeks!  All of the strawberries looked like dehydrated strawberries since the plants were stealing the water from them.  So needless to say, I messed up with the strawberries and probably caused pounds of strawberries to be unusable.

Same thing yesterday; I was watering yesterday and they looked pretty bad again.  I watered them and overnight they spruced up a bit, but they still look like they need some attention.

Well, that is all for this week.  We are supposed to get some rain tonight, but we’ll see.  Last week they said rain two or three days with 50 and 60% chances – and we only got a small sprinkle.  All of the rain seems to be going north or south of us.

Well good Fourth of July to everyone!

I missed getting the pictures taken yesterday.  The past week I have been dismantling the upstairs bathroom because we are going to fully re-do the whole thing with new drywall, flooring, tub, mirror, and all (except the toilet which was purchased a few years ago).  Yesterday I spent most of the day putting the old vanity and sink in the downstairs bathroom to replace the bad one that didn’t work well down there.  In order to do so, I wanted to do it right and put up a wall around it.  The vanity/sink would have been sitting against a foundation brick wall – but the water lines and drain line prevented it from sitting flush with the wall.  So I built up the wall behind the vanity/sink, made a wall to the left, and then hung up a new mirror.  Several years ago we purchased some paneling that looked like tile specifically for this reason – to make it look nicer.  I got enough of a wall up to put the vanity/sink in permanently so it doesn’t need taken out again – but the room isn’t done.

Below shows an older picture of the bathroom with the old toilet in (also replaced this when we moved in a few years ago to match the one upstairs).  The old paneling on the left side of the picture has all been redone since.  But, this was the only older picture I had of the bathroom.

Now, here is what it looks like after the renovation thus far.

Eventually I will have a wall around that vertical sewer pipe so it is completely hidden and then another wall behind the toilet.  That will full enclose the bathroom.

Alright, let’s get back on topic for what this blog category is really about – gardening!

It has been over a week now without any rain.  We have a 30% chance of rain today and a 20% chance for the next couple of days – but we really need it!  The beginning of the week was great – around 80 degrees and humidity of 40 – 50%.  Big change from the 90+ degree weather with 80% humidity.  Well, the hot weather and humidity returned yesterday.

After a week of no rain, I’m almost out of water in my 500 gallon rain barrel system.  Cannot believe how fast it went!

Today I harvested a couple of cherry tomatoes, a few peas, and then almost a half pound of Greencrop green beans.

All last week the basil has been drying in the dehydrator.  I tried to leave the leaves out on a plate for them to dry out, but it simply didn’t work.  It did seem that they dried out a little bit and therefore made for less time in the dehydrator.  From all the basil that was picked, the herb container is now about 3/4 full.

I have been using a little bit of the basil on things- like a potato yesterday.  I have to say – it is amazing at the difference between store-bought basil and basil out of your own garden!  Although after I crushed the basil, the chunks are much larger than what the store has, but the flavor is at least twice as good as what the store-bought provides.

The cilantro still seems to be slowly drying out in the kitchen.  I tried to crunch some of it a few days ago but didn’t get anything; so I’m leaving it alone for a bit.  A few people have commented that it smells like urine!  Hmm.. I sure hope it doesn’t taste like that!

Next year I don’t know if I am going to plant cilantro or not.  Just didn’t seem like we got a whole lot before it bolted and is going to seed.  I definitely know we’ll be planting basil next year – and hopefully I can get some oregano to grow better than it did this year.

While speaking of herbs, here is the herb garden.  First up is parsley.  It isn’t doing too much.  When we had the cooler weather the beginning of the week, it seemed like the plants were trying to put on new stems and new leaves.  Now that it has warmed up again, they have stopped.  I am not sure if we’ll plant parsley next year; we haven’t even clipped anything off of it yet!

Here is the oregano that has managed to grow.  I did a lot of reading this morning on oregano and it is said that it can grow 30 inches tall.  Well, mine just seems to be spreading out like a ground cover or a weed!  With as small as these leaves are, I can’t imagine trying to pull each leaf off and put in the dehydrator.  I’ll probably just leave it on the stem (when the time comes) and dry the whole thing.  Basil and oregano are by far my two favorite herbs and I use them quite often.  I don’t really use anything else except garlic salt.

Here is the cilantro in bloom with its white flowers.

And the basil continues to grow.  It is now also beginning to flower.  I plan to allow one of them to flower so I can gather the seed, but I’ll clip off the others so we get a lot of basil.

Also planted in the herb garden was some Greencrop green beans.  16 were planted and only eight came up.  I had to re-plant eight a week ago and none of them have sprouted yet!  Just seems that no matter what kind of green bean that is planted – only about half of it germinates.

Kennebec potatoes are doing well – still.  Nothing much going on with them – but this patch is heavily flowering now.

Figured I’d take a quick picture of the Granny Smith apple tree.  It only has one apple on it now since all of the others were removed; the branches just cannot support them.  But, most of the leaves have been completely eaten by the Japanese beetles.

The back garden is still just how it was – can just barely walk through it.

This is one of the Burpee Pickler cucumbers.  While you can’t really see it in the picture, there is a small cucumber starting on it.  Lots of flowers on the plant.

And one of the Sugar Snap peas.  I am leaving the rest of the peas on the vines so I can save the seed for next year.  Hopefully it turns out to be a success.

The side garden with the tomatoes still looks the same – overgrown and out of control!

The Red Cherry tomato plant still keeps on climbing and won’t stop!

The Roma tomato plant has dozens of small tomatoes starting.

And the Best Boy tomatoes also have large fruit on them as well!  Going to be a good year for tomatoes I’d say!

Going to the front yard – let’s look at the marigolds.  These things just keep growing and putting on more flowers!  Looks very well and has filled in the area beside the road very well.

A total view of the front garden:

And one of the best-looking California Wonder pepper plant:

Here is the one large radish plant that I’ve let go.  I’m waiting for the seed pods to ripen so I can save this seed as well.  You’ll notice green little pods; these hold a few radish seeds in each of them.  They’ll turn brown just like green beans of peas when they are ready.

I’m going to see if I can get anything out of the Green Goliath broccoli as well.  This plant was left in place and it has a large shoot on it now.

What about the Copra onions?  Well, the onions have really taken off and they are bulbing well now.  Here is a photo of one from the front garden:

And one from the back garden where it sits in a foundation block:

Now, moving on to the next part – the corn.  I posted on GardenWeb about being upset that the Silver Queen corn was losing much of its pollen before any silk even emerged on the plants.  Well, FINALLY yesterday a few Silver Queen corn had silk on them!  Today there were another six that put on silk as well.  I have been babying these things lately and have been giving them all a good amount of compost tea for the past three days.  Hopefully all of this extra ‘fertilizer’ is what is causing them to spurt up and add the silks.  It was going to be really bad if – just like last year – all of the pollen was gone and we didn’t get much of any corn.  Now, we still may not get very much – since only eight of 36 Silver Queen plants have silks on them.  Most of the plants also have two – or even three – areas where ears of corn are developing.  Would be nice if we get an average of two ears per stalk for a total of 72 ears.

Something i am going to pay attention to as well is these suckers at the bottom of the plants.  This one alone has three suckers coming from the bottom!  If there are not any ears that grow on these suckers, I’ll know for next year to cut these off so it doesn’t steal nutrients from the main plant.

Now – the Sugar Dots corn.  A guy on GardenWeb mentioned that they are stunted because of nitrogen deficiency.  I already figured this was the problem – but what is interesting is the area the Sugar Dots was grown in is NEW soil that was just all added this year.  However, it was tilled in with the underlying clay soil which may be causing part of the problem.  The Silver Queen corn is HUGE and doing very well (minus the silking problem) – and that soil was all put in last year.  Below is one of the ears from Sugar Dots.

That is all for this week.  Now I need to go get started taking out the cabinet from the upstairs bathroom and some of the sofet that was built (like a box of drywall up near the ceiling).