Of course, as a gardener, I am driven by the weather, and today was no exception. I ordered a bunch of seeds for my fall crops right after I got back from Vermont, and got some of them into a seedling bed where the early squashes were before the squash bugs got into them...but I also bought some broccoli and cauliflower plants while I was there. They were in pretty bad shape, but I figured when I got back here to Bakerton I could put them in slighty larger containers and give them a shot of fish / seaweed mix and see if that would put them back on track.
It seems to have worked, at least well enough that I decided to put them in the now empty garlic bed ahead of today's forecast thunderstorms and give them a few weeks to prove themselves. If they do, well then I have another crop, and if they don't, I'll just replace them with the ones I started from seed last week. Either way I come out ahead.
I decided to document the process to go with the post I put together on starting summer seeds, and this time I decided to do it as a sort of gallery, with commentary, so scroll down and check it out. The whole thing is from this morning.
So: Once the garlic was gone, I took the garden fork and turned over the part of the bed where the shallots had been a few weeks earlier and re-formed with the bedding rake. Once it was roughed in I spread about a pound of NCO Pro-Start (2-3-3) granular organic fertilizer so that the finishing process would work it into the top 2-3 inches of soil.
After that I got a wheelbarrow load of compost from the pile I keep under the tarp over by the garage and spread that evenly across the surface, which with this 3 ft by 16 ft bed gave about a half inch depth.
With the bed formed and the compost and fertilizer applied, the next step wa sto hook up the drip irrigation (we cannot count on rain this time of year, though a thunderstorm might dump an inch two any given day).
It's a relatively simple process to put in a line to a new bed: just cut into the solid header that runs along the ends of the beds and install a tee fitting.
If you have more money than time (time to check the drip lines frequently during use to make sure they haven't popped loose) you can assemble the whole system with hose clamps on every joint, but the system works at about 10 PSI so that really isn't absolutely necessary
Myself, I just cut into the header with a utility knife and insert the tee with hand pressure and use a much cheaper and simpler fitting to hold the drip line on.
Here is a closeup view of the finished fitting. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.
Looking at this picture it is hard to imagine just how bad the plants looked two weeks ago! They are perfect now, but it does look like they have been set back to their juvenile, vegetative state, so if I can protect them from too much transplant shock -- not a done deal with sunny, dry days and a heat index hovering around 100 F, then they ought still to produce a decent crop...but only time will tell.
This closeup of the root ball shows that they are the ideal stage for transplant, with tender, white, threadlike roots just reaching the margins of the pot. This is really what you want to see when you buy plants, too, even more than the size of the tops.
A quick count of the available transplants tells us we have 31 to work with, not counting doubles (we don't really want to split doubles -- like we did with the okra -- unless we have to because it just adds to the stress.
I decided to segregate the broccoli at one end and the cauliflower at the other, rather than interplant them, so that if one does better than the other (broccoli is much more tolerant than cauliflower of tough conditions) I'll be able to clear a solid half-bed for some other use...
So, the simplest way to arrange them was in a 2:1:2 Hex Pattern. I always lay out all the transplants before setting them so that the pattern works out and the spacing is consistent. That makes cultivation a lot easier later on.
With the plants set (slightly deeper than they were in the pot) I mixed up a four gallon can of seaweed / fish emulsion mix according to the label instructions to give them a good start and make sure there is some available moisture right around the roots even before the drip lines can percolate water out to the edge rows.
I put the fan on the can to apply the mix, and I do hesitate a bit longer on the edge plants because they will be the last to be reached by the drip line. A single four gallon can gives a pretty good drink to the 30 plants that ended up in the bed.
As soon as I finished the watering I took the shade cloth and hoops off the seedling bed planted last week, which has sprouted to whatever extent it is going to, and re-installed the hoops on the new brassica bed.
Then I took a piece of floating row cover slightly longer than the bed and placed that over the hoops. It will raise the temperature inside a little bit, which is a problem, but it will also keep out flea beetles, which can really damage young brassica seedlings, and cabbage butterflies, which are constantly looking for a place to lay eggs -- eggs that hatch into cabbage worms and would pick up where the flea beetles left off.
The easiest way to counteract the heat increase caused by using the floating row cover for pest control is simply to add a layer of shade cloth over it. Fortunately for both these processes, it was a calm morning so the whole affair only took about fifteen minutes.
The finished project shows the new fall brassica bed neatly protected both from the heat of the sun and the pests that would harm the planting. The drip irrigation is on, and if these plants are going to make it at all, this is just about the best situation they could be in!
Interesting to note in the precediing photo are all three variations on this setup: on the left is the second squash planting; it was started from seed so needs no protection from sun, but does need to be protected from squash bugs and cucumber beetles. In the center is the bed of transplants we just set. On the right is the lettuce we direct sowed the last time we had a few days of temperatures below 80F (so it would germinate), with a row of struggling broccoli down the center. It needs only shade to beat the heat.
Finally, here is a closeup of the fasteners for the covers. The clip at the top is just a folder binder bought in bulk at an office supply store. It is clipped directly to the hoops once the cover is tight. At the bottom you will see a red plastic "mulch peg" that you get from a garden center or building supply store. It is used to keep the sides from billowing in the wind and allowing insects to sneak in.