Garth's Blog

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I planted the beans a while ago, but they seem to have exploded recently.

Early Alaska Peas

On our tour around Oahu yesterday, one of the highlights was seeing this huge male green sea turtle sunning itself on the beach. The volunteer that was there protecting the turtle from visitors said that the males seldomly beach themselves, it is usually females on the beach. Apparently they beach themselves to raise their body tempature in order to increase the activity of bacteria in their digestive system and kill algee on their shell. Test Link

The Shins cover breathe by pink floyd at Bumbershoot in the sun.

  Eddie Vedder joined Crowded House at Bumbershoot for World Where You Live 

I just finished creating a list of the seeds and plants in my garden.

Here are the seeds I have planted: [toolbox:seeds]

and here are the plants: [toolbox:plants]

Today I planted:

• Fernleaf Dill
• French Taragon
• Butternut Squash Seeds
• Zuccini Seeds

I liked the project part of building a vegetable garden, but after being chained to a sprinkler last year starting the lawn, I decided that I was going to put in an automated system for watering the vegetables so I would not have to run home at lunch when I forget to water in the morning.

I looked at soaker hoses and individual drip emitters, but for the rows of vegetables I decided to go with drip tape, which I was only able to find on the Internet. Drip tape is a plastic tube with 1 gallon per hour drip emitters spaced along the tube every 12 inches.  I purchased the drip tape as well as the compression connectors to attach the tape to the poly water line.  The compression fittings worked well to T off from the main line, but I don't really like the end cap compression fittings and chose to run most of the tape in a loop.

The vegetable garden is located in the back of our yard so to get water to the system I ran a hose inside of our hedge back to the vegetable garden.

Then I started laying out the poly line and attaching the T's for the drip tape where the rows were going to be.  At first I terminated each row of tape with a compression end cap but all of the end caps were leaking more than I wanted, especially the first ones with the highest water pressure, so I connected the tape for the rows in a loop so the pressure is more consistent.

Using a standard timer, a pressure regulator and a 3/4 inch hose to poly line adaptor the hose waters the garden each day.

If you add plants to the garden that are not along your rows, you can attach 1/4 inch tubing to the poly line to connect individual drip emitters. Now all I have to do is turn off the water when it is raining.

Today my dad and I went to the Seattle Tilth edible plant sale, and were shocked to see the line of people waiting to buy veggies!

Gas and food prices and the increased interest in all things organic and green seem to have converged to cause a lot of seattleites to stand in the rain.  The picture above is probably only half of the line, as just as large a line built behind us before it opened.

We came prepared with highlighted lists and no boxes.  The lists quickly became useless after getting rained on, and eventually my dad stood in line while I navigated the masses of people to get some plants

• Grapefruit mint
• Greek Oregano
• kohlrabi
• fancy greens
• all star greens
• cucumber
• Kale
• Broccoli Raab
• Bluecrop blueberries (from lowes)

I also bought some basil, but I had my dad put it in his greenhouse window for now.