Bales planted and potting mix topped - Friday May 3
The bales were ready on Friday May 3, so in went the plants. Today is day 3 and everything looks happy. It’s been pretty consistently rainy - not downpour rain, but light and occasional. The mushrooms are really popping right now.
I only slightly adjusted my plant numbers. There are 16 tomatoes growing in my yard - two varieties are sharing a strawbale, three are in large containers, and the remaining straw bales now host 2 eggplants and 2 peppers. One bale is ready for cucumbers, four for bush snap beans, and four for summer squash. The avid mushrooming through the potting mix means seed planting is delayed.
The potted tomatoes are the three new dwarf X dwarf hybrids created last year - Dwarf Walter’s Fancy onto Dwarf Zoe’s Sweet, Dwarf Walter’s Fancy onto Dwarf Blazing Beauty, and Dwarf Walter’s Fancy onto Dwarf Choemato.
One of the new dwarf X dwarf hybrids - this one will be fun to work on - possibility of variegated chartreuse leaves!
Indeterminate tomatoes living singly in the bales are Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Green (from 2016 saved seed), Abraham Brown, Captain Lucky, Polish, Earl, Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom, Lucky Cross, Potato Leaf Yellow, and Sun Gold. Sharing a bale are Mexico Midget and Egg Yolk.
Lucky Cross on day 3
One bale has peppers Pinata and Shishito. Another has eggplants Twilight Lightning and Mardi Gras.
Once the mushrooms cease their energetic arrivals, I will plant 1 seed in each of the four squash bales - two will be Zephyr, with the other 2 zucchini, varieties TBD. The cukes will be varieties sent to me by my UK garden friend Sam. The beans will be Goldilocks, Marbel and an additional variety TBD.
Lots of ink cap mushrooms where the beans will eventually be planted on May 6
One of the new raised beds now has nice looking leaf lettuce, basil, chard and oregano. The other has Rosemary, Parsley, Thyme, Chard, basil and various Zinnias. The older raised bed on legs has garlic and spinach. The older ground level raised bed has garlic, bloody dock, collards and kale. The potatoes sent to me by Bill Minkey, in large black containers planted in last year’s straw bale leftovers, are up and growing well. A container has some Fowler bush bean plants dedicated to seed saving.
Potato plants already appearing
At the Veterans Healing Farm, 60 tomato plants were set into 30 strawbales on Monday April 29. The bales there are also mushrooming like mad. I removed the side plastic from 5 of the bales so we could do a performance and water retention comparison.
covered and uncovered bales at the Veterans Healing Farm garden