K&R+X

I took this photo a few days ago.

The Cocozella di Napoli & straightneck squashes today.

The Porch garden

From this angle it’s easier to see the smaller squashes. There will be two more in the box.
The porch garden continues to do well. Everything is growing. The basil are starting to grow more and the bell peppers have started to get more leaves. In our seed-starter the last Napoli is already up and will be ready to transplant soon. I’m starting one more straightneck and a half-dozen more bell peppers. Since we lost one basil plant I’m going to start another lettuce as well.

It’s exciting to see the plants doing so well. We’ve had a nice mild spring so far which has helped. Plus we were able to set the plants up outside early because temperatures around the porch stayed warmer than the rest of the area. There were a couple frosty mornings after they went out — but the frost line didn’t reach the porch. They get sun most of the day but we had wondered if it would be enough or not. Over at the Path to Freedom site they have bananas developing! It’s so much warmer there! Not that I want to move to California but bananas would be nice to grow. Maybe in a greenhouse someday?

This weekend I’ve been catching up on issues of Mother Earth News, Countryside, & BackHome. I love reading the magazines but it sure does make me look forward to the day when we can move out of the apartment into a house. I can’t wait to have some land and be able to expand our efforts. At this stage, looking at our progress paying off debts, it might happen next year.

The first bell peppers have been transplanted into the final Earthbox. I’ve also transplanted another Cocozella di Napoli, another straightneck, and the final basil plant. In our seed tray I have planted the final two squash and the rest of the bell peppers. It’s up to 81 degrees out on the porch right now. Warm day. I’m sure the tomatoes just love the weather we’ve been having.

I didn’t have our camera at the moment. This picture was taken with my Clie. Not bad but the camera takes a better picture.

Overall the plants are doing well. The Little Gem lettuce is growing fast. The basil hasn’t done much but they are growing. Both types of tomatoes seem to be doing well. The champion plant at this point is the Napoli. It’s been growing so fast! It’s by far the largest plant we have right now. It takes plants awhile to grow but I do plan to post updates fairly often.

Today I also added more bedding material and food to our worm bin. There aren’t a ton of worms but they seem to be recovering since the population drop we saw last year.

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It’s a sunny warm day today. I took a few more pictures of the porch garden. Everything seems to be growing well. The warm weather will probably encourage them to develop more.

This morning I planted another straightneck and another Napoli. That’ll give us a couple weeks at least between the plants. Two of the bell peppers are up and doing well but I’ll need to get some more planted soon. Maybe this weekend. Another basil has come up too. The plants outside are doing well and keep growing bigger.

Today I transplanted our Thai Pink Egg tomatoes and the Straightneck squash into their containers. It’s been cloudy but the sun is just coming out now. They should do well. We have four of our five Earthboxes out now on the porch. One more and the porch garden will have everything growing. I plan to start some more squash soon so that they can be transplanted before the others get too big.