Wednesday, April 10, 2013

I Couldn't Remove The Rock. Planted Kentucky Beefsteak

This morning I only spent a few minutes on the rock left by last night's digging. No luck.

My wife was too busy to plant or prepare any tomatoes. So when I got home from work I continued working trying to get the rock out.

As you'll see I was unsuccessful.


You can see the shovel next to the rock or concrete structure that I simply could not remove. To the right is a one gallon container filled with rocks and asphalt. Laid out in front of the one gallon container are several asphalt pieces that couldn't fit into the container. On one hand it's good to get the rocks and asphalt out of the ground. But it's a pyrrhic victory. The area where this dreck was removed isn't much of a plantable area.

Here's a closeup of the rock:



We planted Kentucky Beefsteak just west of the rock and called it a night.
 

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Finished Planting the Front Yard

Yesterday afternoon my wife planted Paul Robeson, Black Seaman, Berkeley Tie Dye, Brad's Black Heart, Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Speckled Roman in the front yard "koi pond". I assisted with the last couple of holes but my wife did a vast majority of the work.

In theory our front yard is now finished, though we may add one more in a shaded area of the "corner office".

Tonight I started my first hole in the back yard. I pulled out enough rocks and stuff (there was at least one shard of glass) to fill a one gallon container. But there was a huge rock to the east of the hole that I simply could not get out of the hole. I'll try again in the morning before I head out to work. I hope the soil around the rock dries out and I can dislodge it. If I can't get it out my wife will plant something just to the west of this rock.
 

Monday, April 8, 2013

Descanso Gardens TomatoMania was a Success!

On Friday my wife planted four more grafted tomatoes in the south garden -- Missouri Pink Love Apple, Michael Pollan, Gold Medal and Black & Brown Boar. She caged all the grafts with our homemade cages from last year. Also she added two layers of green ribbon twine across the bottom two holes of the cages to keep our dogs away from the seedlings.

In the evening I planted Vorlon, Black Krim, Black Cherry and Pineapple in the front yard "koi pond". My wife did help out toward the end of that planting, making sure we finished before the sun set.

On Saturday I helped out with the Descanso Gardens TomatoMania event. The Descanso Gardens location gets more popular and this year kept to that tradition. It was extremely busy in the early morning followed by a pretty steady pace throughout the day.

The tomato seedlings are kept on foldaway tables as opposed to being placed on the ground. I seem to be the designated person moving the stock forward and let me tell you, it's much easier on tables. I interacted with the customers a lot more than I did at the Encino location because I was (somewhat) less fatigured and there was simply less stock to manage. Keeping up at the main event in Encino this year was hopeless, but I did catch up with things at Descanso Gardens just before closing time.

We met some friends for dinner in the area and that was a lot of fun. I didn't get home until around 8:30 PM.

On Sunday I was back at Descanso Gardens. Our original plans were to have my wife working on Sunday but she changed her mind. So I worked it. It was a slower pace but by no means slow. Again, I got to talk with the customers more.

When I left for the day there were approximately 80 tomatoes remaining. From what I'm told, the Descanso Gardens event started with 370 flats (usually there's 16 seedlings per flat but a few had 25 per flat), or roughly 6000 seedlings. A successful event!

During the day my wife watered the planted tomatoes in the "corner office".

I check the planted tomatoes this morning and the plants were doing just fine!