My Gardens

The tomatoes are spaced 21" apart and each are in a square tomato cage 48" tall and 20" square with a two 5 foot rebar to keep them from falling over. For 2011 I am trying out 2 large varieties that are new to me, Believe it or Not and Chapman tomatoes.

 I have erected 4 six foot tall, three foot wide wrought iron trellis supported by 5 foot rebar for the cucumber to climb. With all of the vines vertically in an area 8' long and 4' wide and most of the cucumber not on the ground. In 2010 my production is higher and I lost no cucumber to rot.

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Before I planted the horseradish root, I buried 5 five gallon buckets with the bottoms cut out with just the top inch of each bucket showing. I then planted the horseradish root inside the buckets to keep the horseradish from spreading throughout the rest of the garden. In 2010, the first year I grew horseradish, I processed the horseradish root and replanted the "seed" root for 2011. When I processed the rest of the root and I got 8 pints of horseradish.

Flower & Vegetable Garden Layout	Vegetable gardens

I have built a cart upon which I have 2 Earthbox  with New Ace green pepper (see http://www.earthbox.com/)

Two days after transplanting the pepper plants (5/17/05)	Three weeks later (6/4/05)
Three weeks later (6/25/05)	First picking!!!  72 peppers!!!

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Here is the plan for my flower beds for 2011. The color refers to when the different flowers bloom. 

I start my own seedlings under a growlite in my basement. The first Saturday of February I start my green peppers and the third of Saturday of March I start the the cucumber and zuchini. The first Saturday of April I start the tomatoes. Here a couple of pictures showing my growlite and seedlings:

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		Growlite and seedlings February 2010. Underneath the seed tray I use a 40 watt heating mat to maintain a temp of ~60 degrees, the concrete floor was a 40 degrees when I checked the first week of February!
		Growlite and seedlings March 2010, peppers 5 weeks after seed planting, tomatoes 10 days after seed planting.
		Growlite and seedlings April 2010, peppers 10 weeks, tomatoes 5 weeks, zucchini and cucumber the day they were planted.

In 2003 I found the original plans for my growlite on Cornell University's "Garden Resource's"  page (http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/factsheets/growlite/index.html).

I built the double shoplite version of the growlite in 2003. The following year I made it wider by replacing the four 17" pieces of pipe with four 24" pieces and added a third shoplite.

The next year (2005), I added a fourth shoplite. I had originally planned to widen the stand but I noticed that my lights were not fitting thru (between) the legs on each side. So... what I did was lengthen it by 2".

I took the two 49" pieces off the bottom and cut them so that they were now 2" longer than the 2 long pieces at the top. Then I replaced the bottom pieces with two 51" pieces. This modification now allows a shoplite to hang between the legs making room for 4 shoplites. This allows me to have 4 trays side by side and 2 at the end (see below). Since 2006 (as seen in pictures above) I have used 5 shoplite.

Office Depot