On 3/18/2016 1:16 PM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote:

Went out to peruse the gardens again this morning and it appears I have
98% of the black crowder seeds have come up. That's the best I've ever
had on store bought seed. These are from Victory Seeds so I will
probably order more seed from them as time goes on.
I planted a 3x8-foot block of 219 zipper cream crowder seeds from
Victory on 14 March and most of them are up as of this morning. They
began appearing yesterday morning. Germination rate (not percent) could
be better but, in fairness, the seeds are shaded part-day by remaining
mustard and turnips, which I remedied somewhat this morning by removing
some mustard leaves. Will give them another day or two before deciding
whether to fill in. The turnips keep my other half happy while the
mustard blossoms do the same for the fauna. This far along, the mustard
leaves are inedible but the unopened flower buds and their tender
supporting stems are quite good sauteed with garlic in a bit of olive
oil. Reminder: Timing of the garlic is critical—it can overcook between
heartbeats.

The cucumber seeds, so far, are about 50% above ground.
My yellow squash is up but the the cukes, planted on the same date,
have not responded and were re-planted yesterday. Not optimistic,
though: Seeds are 7 years old and finally died. More on the way and
plenty of time left in which to plant, so I'm saving the space. Down
here, in the constant humidity and with early onset "summer", the best
hope with squash and cukes against mildew, fungus and insects is to make
an early crop and try to maintain it until diminishing returns hits in
May or June.

All of the plants from the nursery are doing fine. We have tiny tomatoes on
some "free" tomato plants, ie. the seeds grew from the compost pit and are
doing well.
I don't even have any tomatoes planted yet, much less ready to
transplant. Guess I could get store-bought transplants but tomatoes
don't mean that much to me and they don't have a place in the garden
every year. Received a freebie with a recent seed order from Reimer, in
California, called "World's Smallest Tomato". Who the hell wants a
_small_ tomato? At least the seeds are small enough to fit into the
Dumpster and the package will compost if I can ever get that damnable
foil "lucky dog" seal off.
Damn, you could have sent me the seeds, my wife plants more !@#$%^
tomatoes than anything else. How do you make a BLT for lunch with tiny
little tomatoes?

Sometimes we just take the compost bucket out to the garden
and pot hole it as a faster way to make real compost. Poking around the
area of the free tomatoes turned up several earthworms so we're happy
that we do, indeed have some earthworms on the property. Possibly from
some we ordered last spring and put into the raised beds and in the
fence rows. At any rate, some worms are better than no worms.

Looks like there may be some rain today, we can only hope. Yesterday I
strung out one of those flat, green, three tube soaker hoses. It was
thirty feet long and was a gift from one of our neighbors who moved last
year, still in the package and much stronger than soaker hoses made from
recycled auto tires.
I tried using those flat vinyl hoses that have two or three rows of
holes in the 1970's. Those I used did not distribute water evenly along
their length and at low "drippable" pressure the water often did not
make it to the end of the hoses. About twenty years later, I had a bad
experience with those hoses made from tires. My wife still taunts me
with their packaging when I step too far out of line.... After a very
few years of contending with that crap, I moved over to "real" dripline
and wish I'd done so sooner. It's just the inexpensive 1/4-inch PVC
stuff with 1/2 gal/hr emitters on 6-inch centers. One gal/hr/foot makes
guessing at watering volume easy. To accomodate the budget, I made the
transition over a couple of gardening seasons. In the years I've been
using drip irrigation, I've simplified the installation a bit by
eliminating pressure regulators and the timer but a pressure guage is
essential. The shutoff timer is a great convenience but the clockwork
unit I bought only lasted a couple of years and I can't find a better
quality mechanical unit. If I'm going to use batteries, then the timer
app on the "smartphone" works well enough.--
Derald
Peninsular FL, USA
USDA 9b

I've got the plans and supplies needed on my desk for just about the
same thing you did. Will eventually get to do it when SWMBO decides all
the other ways don't really work well for us. Of course here I will have
to put in a anti-back flow device in according to county rules, not a
big deal. When I get to do the job there will also be a timer and a shut
off when it rains. Rains a lot here mostly, but some summers have been
pretty dry. It irritates me no end when I see neighbors lawn sprinkler
systems throwing away water in a rain storm. A rain shut off isn't that
expensive.

Right now we're awaiting a thunderstorm, at least that's what the
weather heads are saying. Just happens it is very sunny out here at the
moment.