Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

Hi everyone,

The fall plans are in effect! First order of business is building PVC pipe supports for the plastic sheeting that will become the temporary greenhouse I will be using to extend my seasons! The over night low yesterday was 45 degrees Fahrenheit so I better get this thing up. Last year we had one early frost mid-September. Never mind the unseasonably warm October we had, or the subsequent 80 degree days. Everything had died in the frost and I lost a good 1.5 months of natural growing season.

I am going to purchase 20′ sections of 1″ or smaller tubing and make some large hoops. I am not quite certain how to secure the plastic to the tubes. So far my ideas are zip-ties (which will rip the plastic over time)  or packing tape (which may not hold up in the freezing and wet of winter and spring. Ideally maybe I don’t have to secure it that well. I have enough to cover a very large area, so maybe draping and securing to the ground with rocks will be enough.

The other project that needs to get done is to move what used to be a nice border of small purple mums. These mums are on the outside, front edge of my veggie garden. They started out the size of a basketball, and are now over 2 feet across! They take up so much room in the front of the garden I am missing out on about 3″ by 10″ section of good soil. So they are being moved to the outside corners of the garden. I have a Victorian fence around the veggie garden with rose bushes in the corners on the inside. The mums will be opposite them on the outside of the garden.

This picture was taken last year. The rabbits has eaten every thing right to the ground. So I went to my local super store and bought this Victorian fencing and lined it with rabbit fencing on the inside. It is the Fort Knox of veggie gardens!

So the roses are on the inside and the mums will be on the outside corners 🙂

When I get it a bit cleaned up and moved around I’ll post more pictures. This year’s garden is 100 times better than this poor sad eaten over one.

Hi everyone,
It has been hard to keep the posts coming when there is so much to do in the summer! I found it much easier to post when I was trapped indoors just wishing it was summer. 🙂

That being said, I have started my indoor garden 2.0!

This garden contains things that I know will grow well indoors. These plants will be ready to harvest right around Christmas time or a little after. Once these plants are harvested I will plant starter seeds for the outdoor garden. (I am just starting to get a good harvest from the outdoor garden.)

I have planted Basil, Cilantro, Short Carrots, Yellow Globe Onions, Broccoli, and I will plant tomatoes as soon as I find a suitable variety. I am looking for a short bushy determinate plant!

I used old cardboard boxes, taped all over, and lined with garbage bags because I could not find a good size any where to buy. My original idea being to use window boxes. I am hoping to get one season out of them and also hoping that they don’t rot or melt before I harvest!!

Here are the harvest times for all of the above:
Basil (it’s still going from last winter so that’s up)
Cilantro 30 days
Carrots 68 days
Onions – says transplant at 8-10 weeks, so maybe 90+ days to full globe
Broccoli 48-85 days

I have found that it takes longer with artificial light to harvest. So we’ll see!

Planting the yellow globe onions was a breeze.

Watching the green shoots come up, also a breeze…

The trouble started when grass also sprouted around the green onion shoots. I could not tell them apart very well and when I tried to weed I inevitably ruined onions. So I stopped. 🙁

Combine that with a very rainy summer and the fact that birds will grab the onions right by the shoots and pull them up to eat them left me with only 15 or so ping-pong ball sized onions. The green tops have all fallen over and yellowed – which means they are done. They won’t get any larger.

Why won’t they continue to grow?? They are alive and well in there without the tops after all. There is an exchange of fluid and sugar which happens in the shoot/leaves and travels down into the bulb that makes it grow bigger.

So, onions do not like much water. Birds also like them. And the shoots look just like grass – so weed like crazy!

Plan for next year? RAISED BEDS with store-bought planting medium – this will hopefully tame the grass issue. For now they are coming indoors.