It's feeling like Fall

Ok, maybe we are still in the 90's but it's the LOW 90's now and the Fall garden is taking shape.  Friday, I made 32 soil blocks and I let my little girl plant flower seeds in them.  We had some hummingbird flower mix left over, some lavender, and some thyme (has a nice flower and makes a nice herb).  She will get to pick out a couple of seed packets on her own but I wanted to get hers started now.  She picked out where she wants me to make a hook to hang her hand shovel and hand rake and talked through how she would water her stuff.  Probably in the evening but she might try and get up early with Dad to water in the morning.  I sure do love my little girl.

Planted 24 tomato plants in soil blocks yesterday, 6 beef steak and 18 Roma.  They went into a 4x8 bed that I turned the soil in and added a 3 inch layer of homemade compost.  This is one of the beds I had tested at the county extension.  Before planting the soil blocks, I made 3 troughs the length of the bed and filled that with potting mix.  This will help hold moisture around the plants without filling the whole bed with the potting mix.  The eastern side of the bed has part of an old concrete pool 6 inches beneath the surface and I'm hoping that doesn't interfere with the tomatoes growth.  I'll keep an eye on that side of the bed for comparison, but this is why I didn't use this bed for carrots.  Hoping to plant carrots today or tomorrow.

Black eyed peas have almost run their course.  I will pull up one patch next week to make room for my daughters flower patch and the other will come be taken down probably the following week. 

Other seedling updates. 

I had a couple of potatoes "hidden" away in the pantry that started sprouting. It's probably too early, but rather than put them in the compost I decided to experiment. I cut a wedge off and planted it in some potting mix. I am a complete novice to growing potatoes but I plan to in my winter garden so I figured it was better to fail now. One of the cuttings I planted cut side down and covered it completely. One of the cuttings was cut side down and the sprout is out of the ground. The third is cut side up and completely covered. It'll be fun to see the results, stay tuned!


No sign of the jalapeno seeds emerging.  No sign of the cayenne seeds emerging.  Looks like 2 of the 3 ghost pepper cuttings died (to be fair they were brought to me on a plane from Phoenix by a co-worker).  The first ginger cutting looks healthy enough to transplant.  One of the celery plants is doing great and the other 2 haven't done anything, I'll try soil blocks for them going forward.  Chives are emerging, I'll do another container of them.  Need to read up on Swiss chard, it may be time to make soil blocks to start seeding them.