A Lot of Rain

The rain continues... Days and days of rain, thankfully with small breaks of sunshine, have been and will be here in Pittsburgh. This is good in many ways - No need to water the many seeds (spinach, swiss chard, carrots, lettuce...), newly planted potatoes and already sprouted pea plants. Everything is ridiculously green (except for the dandelions, which are aggravatingly yellow).

The bad thing is that it is nearly impossible to get through any one task before the clouds let loose. I did manage to get one of my trellises built today: 1/2" EMT pipe, placed over 2' rebar and connected with elbow connectors. Nylon netting finishes it off. The amazing thing is that I actually fit the 10' pipes into my Camry (with the window open, but still).

Now, only a couple more boxes to install and several more trellises to build... More seeds to get started, etc.

Sadly, several of my seedlings did not make it through the transition of being planted in the boxes, too much sun. For the next set, I'll try to do a better job of hardening them off (which I always thought was an odd phrase).

So, my newest thoughts on the Square Foot Gardening method is that it is very time consuming to set up. Of course, I did plan about twice as many boxes as the book suggested for one person. But, with one box full of strawberries and so many vine plants to grow, it only made sense to have at least six boxes. So, I'm hoping that the harvest more than makes up for the effort and that next year things go a little faster.

The exciting thing is that the "last frost" date for Pittsburgh is only a couple weeks away. Soon, I should be able to really get going with the bulk of the veggies. I can't wait to see how the tomatoes take to growing up a trellis and how all the rest of the plants grow.