Tidying up

We have maters!
So far this is it though.
These are the only plants we bought, the rest were all started from seed so they still need some time to grow yet.

I pulled out all of the strawberries and replanted them on the hill. Now we have about 40% free room in there so we went and got some more plants.

A few herbs...

And a bunch of sweet peas...

That's pretty much all we could find being so late in the vegetable season now.

We have Dill trees!

I noticed a big problem with the Grow Camp cables, they are rusting from the inside. I don't give them much more than a year before they start breaking. I tried to get some good photos showing this problem...

I had to let the camera focus on my fingers to get clear shots of the cables.

The first reaction was "it's because of your sprinklers in there", but that can't be the problem because you are going to hose the thing down one way or another, plus it's sitting out in the rain, it's going to get wet!

These are obviously steel braided cables and they have a thick rubberized jacket on them but either moister/humidity is wicking it's was down inside the jacket from the ends, or the jacket is semi-permeable allowing moisture in. Since the rusting is pretty even all over the cable I'm leaning towards the semi-permeable idea. So apparently the jacket is not air tight and oxygen free like they should be. Probably a manufacturing fowl up on China's part I'm guessing, but these are going to need to be replaced with something that holds up much better. I'm not sure what I am going to do about it at this point, probably wait until one breaks and then contact Grow Camp and or the US distributor again. These are part of the frame so they should have a lifetime warranty.

In other news, we have a bunch of Pillbugs...

Not a big deal, they are just eating the rabbit poop from when the rabbits snuck in there over the winter.

10 Cool Facts About Pillbugs

I'll get some pics of Strawberry hill if all those guys make it after the move.

July 2011

Everything is growing great! We have...
On the porch.
2 Cucumber plants. 2 Green squash. 12 or so tomato plants of different variety, including cherry, roma, beef-steak, money-maker and one I simply called "Big" (probably canning tomatoes). 4 jalapeno's started. 2 habanero plants. 2 Big black seed - loose head lettuce that I pulled from the grow camp. And a bunch of onions that came pre-started from a local farm and are only called "sweet".

I built a little shelf I call the "tomato shelf". Tomatoes have been a problem, they overwhelm the grow camp and they don't ripen or produce much on the hot tub due to they don't get sun until about 1pm. They need more sun and some wind, so this location solves both of those requirements, hopefully! This spot gets sun at 10am. It's just a test this year, but if it works out I'll build a better shelf.

In the Grow Camp.
Gourmet red lettuce and several black seed - loose head lettuce. Strawberries (more on them in a minute). 4 Spinach plants. More "sweet" onions. 2 or 3 green pea vines. 3 or 4 green beans. 6 carrots. And basil, dill, chives and sage for herbs.

 Herbs

 Strawberries everywhere!

 Onions, carrots and spinach.

The strawberries are doing too well in there and taking over, so I think I'm going to pull most if not all of them.

There's a steep hill on the other side of the porch that I want to populate with plants to cut down the erosion, so I might try moving all the strawberries here and see how they do...

This thing has some sickly looking tomato plants hanging out, but they all have tomatoes on them, surprisingly.

I don't much like this system, but we'll see how it does over time.