Jane & Ken's Patio Plantation

 The potatoes finally showed up. Here's what everything looks like today. Carrots, scallions, and peas Grass??, carrots, and scallions Cucumbers Potatoes and onions

I stay so busy, it’s hard to keep up the garden, let alone the blog. Now that I’m on vacation, maybe I can catch up a little. When I’m not in the hotel room or ship's cabin with my keyboard available, I’m going to dictate on my phone like I’m doing now. I’ve lost track of where we are with this blog, so I will go on with our status as of May 1 st . The mushrooms did OK, but we didn’t harvest them before they dried out, and we can’t use them. I’m going to get another kit and take another swing at it.  With the patio garden, I’m going to post some pictures that’ll show where we’re at as of May 1. On May 8, we’ll be leaving for 10 days, an Alaskan cruise. I’ll be busy getting ready for that. I return to work the day after we get back. That means I won’t be doing much in the garden for a couple of weeks. Jane has a few days after vacation that might allow her to do a little in the garden. I won’t be able to post an update until two or three weeks after this post. Just a few words...

4/17 I started the mushroom kit. It’s pretty simple to do. Open the package, soak in water, then put aside. Moisten twice daily for ten days. 4/26 Here is what it looks like. Theoretically, the mushroom should be ready to eat tomorrow. Have to be washed and cooked. I’ll give it a try. In the future, I think I’ll try something a little more adventurous like growing them in a pot on the front porch.  

  Created by Copilot Last week, we started some vegetable seeds in a starter tray. We planted snow peas and cucumbers. They started sprouting promptly, maybe just a few days, but when we took the cover off, some of the cells had hairy-looking fungus in it. We wanted to eliminate the fungus, and I proposed using a small amount of spray mold killer in the cell. However, the mold killer we possessed was not food-safe, and Jane was anxious about proceeding with that approach. She searched online and discovered an unexpected and interesting treatment, which we decided to try. Here is a link that describes the use of chamomile tea to treat fungus in the garden How to Use Chamomile Fungicide to Stop Plant Diseases in Their Tracks Jane tried it, and it worked. On doing some of my own research online, I discovered other methods for treating mold on seedlings. Unsurprisingly, a dilute bleach solution was one of the suggested treatments, though I wondered whether it might pose a risk of t...

  Onion

 Today we did our first serious Patio garden work. We planted potatoes and onions in the raised bed and carrots and scallions in a couple of containers. Later in the day, we planted peas and cucumbers in the starter beds . Here’s what it looked like. Getting the soil ready A row of seed potatoes Planting seed onions Seed onions Done out The deer proof planter Finishing up for the day: peas and cukes WYSIWYG      

Made a list of what to plant and when. This is what I came up with: ·         ToTomatoes o    plant in May? o    Any time indoors or 5/4 outdoors o    In cabinet ·        Corn o    plant in containers o    3 rd week of May ·        Potatoes o    Plant in raised bed o    Any time now ·        Onions o    Plant in raised bed o    Any time now ·        Scallions o    Back porch o    Container o    Any time ·        snow peas o    back yard o    container w trellis o    May 1  ·        mushrooms o    indoors o    any time ·         cucumbers. o    Cabinet o ...