Gardening On The Rocks: Today is Tuesday, October 16,2012. I spent most of...

Gardening On The Rocks: Today is Tuesday, October 16,2012. I spent most of...: Today is Tuesday, October 16,2012. I spent most of this day burning piles of brush and junk leftover from building Chicken roosts this past ...

Today is Tuesday, October 16,2012. I spent most of this day burning piles of brush and junk leftover from building Chicken roosts this past Spring. I have been cutting a Big Bowlful of Greens from the Fall Garden for Lunch/Supper everyday for the last 2 weeks. Lettuce, Spinach, Collards and Kale are all doing well. Swiss Chard is coming on a little more slowly than I expected. It should be coming in about the time the lettuce is done. Believe it or not I am still getting Summer veggies from the garden. I picked a half bushel basket of Peppers last week. I picked another Watermelon and gave it to the chickens and ducks for a treat for them. They devoured it in less than an hour. Basil is still blooming and looking no worse for wear. We have had our share of rain over the last 2 weeks. Seems like it rains every 2 or 3 days. No complaints except the fact that it is very muddy in the garden and hard to pull weeds. I cleared a spot behind the chicken/duck pen that I plan on planting Blueberries this Spring. I would like to have about 6 to 8 Blueberries in 3 foot raised beds. It will require cages around them to keep rabbits out until they are large enough to be out of reach.

Well believe it or not it is time to plant for Fall crops. The summer garden is really starting to fade. I pulled up 1 whole bed of squash and zucchini last week. I then reworked the bed with my garden rake and planted beets, spinach and mixed greens in that bed this morning. It is drizzly this morning so it is a perfect time to plant seeds. I also pulled up some lettuce that had bolted and started to flower. I decided not to save any of the lettuce seed because I'm not sure if it is hybrid or not. It came in a pack from Burpee that was a mix of different varieties. I scratched that bed up a little and then planted more mixed greens. All of the seeds I planted this morning are Heirloom seeds and I am planning on saving the seeds from these for Spring planting. I started some seeds in homemade flats last week. Some of the seed germinated in 2 days. I have the flats in the garden in a bed that is covered with shade cloth. I think the seedlings will need some shade from the hot August sun before it cools down some in September. I thinned the seedlings out some this morning so they will have room to grow on. I've been feeding them with 1/4 strength Organic fertilizer. They are doing nicely so far. I will give them about 2 more weeks before I transplant them into their new homes. Peppers and tomatoes are still producing great fruit. Cucumbers are pretty much done though. Next year I will plant the Cucumbers in succession so we will have them all the way through until Frost. Several Watermelons are still growing on the vines. The vines are starting to look tired though and if we don't get enough rain they will never make it to finish ripening. Corn is done and I will pull the stalks for decorating. The corn did very well this year despite record heat and dry. The key was keeping it watered during this time. Sunflowers are looking tired and I may pull them by the end of the month.

I suppose you can say the drought of 2012 is somewhat over. We've gotten rain nearly every day for the past 4 days. I estimate nearly 3 inches of rain has fallen. There is more predicted for the next 2 days but rain is usually hit and miss this time of year. Either way I am grateful for the rain we've gotten this past weekend. The garden has really responded nicely. Sunflowers showed their first blooms this weekend. Have found only one watermelon so far but it is growing like crazy and already bigger than a softball. I picked 6 squash/zucchini this morning before work. Cheryl picked several Peppers Saturday and made homemade hot sauce. It is steeping in the fridge for 2 weeks before we eat it. Lots of tomatoes on the vines but very few ripe ones. Of course with rain comes the weeds and grass. I suppose I will devote lots of time later this week hoeing weeds and cutting grass. No complaints here! I received the seeds I ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. today. I mainly ordered greens for the Fall garden. Should be planting them in late July or early August.

Well I guess I wasn't quite ready for record setting heat this past week. The hottest day on record in Middle Tennessee was this past Thursday June 28,2012 officially recorded at 109 degrees F.( many folks tweeted temps at 113-our guage read 110  at the hottest part of the day) Worried about the Chickens and Ducks with this record heat. I have been putting ice in their water bowls as often as I can. The garden looks relatively unscathed but I have been watering with Soaker Hoses early in the Morning most every day. Cucumbers still coming in about 2 or 3 a day. Soaker hoses and mulch is the secret. Our Air conditioner inside the house went "kaput" last night around 7:00PM. I thought it would be a sleepless night but we ran fans in the bedroom on High and stayed fairly cool. We both slept pretty well considering. Put in a new unit this morning with help from JD. (your the bestest JD!).House is nice and cool today. I think I may have waited too long to water the Witch Hazel and The Stewartia. They do not look happy at all. We caught a raccoon in a live trap last night. My neighbor wanted to kill it and have it stuffed so they came and took him (or her) away this morning. Poor thing was on death row and didn't even know it. I'm gonna go up to the Veggie garden to water late this afternoon when it cools down a bit. It is now 6:00 PM and the temp is still 103 outside. Maybe 7:30 or later before I water. Soaker hoses Rule!!!

Today is Saturday, June 23,2012. It has been quite some time since I last added a post. I have been busy trying to keep all the gardens alive with the extreme weather we are having. Very hot (97 the last 3 days) and very dry since Mothers Day in May. I am watering the Vegetable Garden about every 3rd day, even with mulch on most all the beds. Watering the  flowers about once a week, sometimes more. 

Water bill may be $100 next month but I have too much time invested in these gardens to just let them shrivel up and die. I suppose I will continue to water until it rains or we run out of water. Cucumbers, Squash and Zucchini are all coming in at a steady pace.

 I pulled the onions this past Wednesday and they are curing in the screened-in porch. We have dehydrated 2 cuttings of Basil. It is so incredibly good when it is dried this way. We also dried some Dill this time. Have not tried it yet as it is still in the dehydrator. We are also trying to dry Jalopenoes for the 1st time. They should be good. I planted 2 varieties of Hatch, New Mexico chili peppers last week from seed. They still haven't germinated yet. I also planted some Stinging Nettle seed this week to take the space the Onions were occupying. No germination there either as it is way too early.

Will It Frost? April23,2012
  Planted 2 Genovese Basil plants in the new raised bed in the Veggie Garden. My Wife and I dehydrated the Basil we grew last year and have been using it  throughout the Fall and Winter in all sorts of great dishes. She asked me to plant some more this year so we can have some to dehydrate again. I purchased them at Home Depot today. Unfortunately the Weatherman has said (at the last minute I might add) that we should expect patchy frost in the outlying areas of Middle Tennessee. That pretty much includes our garden so I covered the Herb raised bed and the Cucumbers. Hopefully they will make it through just fine and this will be the last time we will have to cover anything in the garden. Our average LFD (Last Frost Date) is April 19th. So this may be the last one for the Spring anyway. Ready for warm sunny days to stay until Fall.

Transitions:April 22,2012
I've decided after 7 years on this property that raised beds are the way to go to successfully have a vegetable garden. My Father-in-law has built me 5 raised beds this Spring(thanks JD). I filled the 5th one this morning with herbs I bought at Lowes. 10 bags of Topsoil, 2 bags of Black Cow,Tarragon, Basil, Thyme, Cilantro and Dill all went in to the garden.

The other beds contain Broccoli and Potatoes, Cabbage, Onions, Lettuce, Spinach, Arugula,Parsley, Rosemary, Kale and Cucumbers. I think I will cover the cucumbers tonight after losing an earlier crop to frost. Tonight's low temp. is forecasted to be 37. Too close for comfort.

           
A beautiful morning after an all day light rain yesterday. Not a cloud in the sky today. Yesterday was a perfect day for the garden. It was beginning to get pretty dry and I already had to water it once. Shouldn't have to water in April but it has been a strange weather year. The Veg is really popping after the rain yesterday. Pulled some Buttercrunch Lettuce to see if it was too bitter to eat. The inner leaves are still very sweet but I can tell it is starting to bolt. Cut some arugula, spinach and parsley. Everything seems to be doing very well. A little rain is all it needs most of the time.

It is a rainy,cool morning here in Middle Tennessee. This is my first attempt to blog but I have always wanted to have a Blog about gardening.I live in Rockvale, TN and I have a little more than 6 acres of property. Unfortunately most of it is on top of large outcroppings of what I suspect are Limestone. When we first bought this property I thought gardening would be out of the question but I learned to adapt and have had more successes than failures thusfar. The secret to gardening on top of rock is simple yet a lot of work. Build enough soil up so the plant can spread it's roots out enough to survive. Lots of raised beds involved especially in the vegetable garden. As far as i can tell I have about 8 to 12 inches of topsoil to work with in the vegetable garden. The first 5 years I just raked the soil in to natural raised beds. This worked fine until about July/August every year. Then the water bill went through the roof. So last year I built 4 raised beds out of scrap lumber I had laying around.I then filled them with 1/2 Potting Soil and 1/2 Composted Manure. The results were amazing. Less watering and weeds were practically non existent. I have added 5 more raised beds this year.

 Most of our 6 acres is wooded. I would say we have about 1-1/2 acres that we can garden on.  I added 2 new shrubs to the landscape last Fall. Another Purple Smokebush (my alltime favorite shrub) and an Oakleaf Hydrangea. Not sure of the named varieties of either of these. They both made it through our mild Winter very well. I planted a Purple Smokebush 5 years ago. It is the easiest but most beautiful shrub I have ever seen. And it grows really fast. It is now 12' tall and about 10' wide from about a foot tall when I planted it 5 years ago. I found it at Home Depot around the side of the Garden Center all by itself and gave $11.00 for it. The bargain of a lifetime!

Close up of Incredible leaf color!

About 5 years ago I ordered some unusual trees and shrubs from Forest Farm, a Nursery out of Oregon. They have a million varieties of trees and shrubs. These included Stewartia Pseudocamellia, Paperbark Maple, Witch Hazel and an Asian(kousa) Dogwood.  The Stewartia and the Maple are both slow growers but they are coming along nicely. The Dogwood has grown much faster than I thought it would. It has yet to bloom but it should be getting old enough now to start to form buds this Fall (fingers crossed). There have been a couple of failures.  A Hydrangea that was planted too close to competeing tree roots and a Katsura tree that I could never get to do well no matter what I tried. Give Forest Farm a try if your looking for hard-to-find varieties. I have never been disappointed with the product or the service.www.forestfarm.com

     I've discovered through trial and error that there are some spaces in between rocks that are large enough to grow anything. But these are very few and far between. I use a metal probe to put in the soil and if i can get it at least 12-18 inches into the ground, I figure I can plant something there.