Vertical Gardening and Transplanting Day

Last week didn't have many planting days, so I spent my time trying to figure out supports for the things that would come. I was hoping for zero-budget vertical gardening, since, if all of my tomatoes and beans and peas, etc. grow, we will need many supports. $0 x $0 = $0, and $anything else x the number of plants I could end up with = quite pricey.

I am 100 percent pleased with my snow pea teepees. I found a very nice home-schooled 12-year-old boy with a pocket knife, who preferred time in my garden to time at a baby shower. I'd say it was a win-win. He was an amazing worker and refused to take a break from making teepees until they were completely finished. (Thanks Colin!) He made many more than this picture shows. I am very pleased with the result and think my snow peas will be too. In a couple of weeks, they should be tall enough to start climbing.

I was less satisfied with my tomato cages. I paid, I think, $8 for some chicken wire and stapled it, very crudely, onto some stakes I found left over from construction on our house and a couple of tree branches. They'll hold up the tomatoes, but they're quite unattractive. And if all of the tomatoes we planted come up, there will be many, many, many more to build. I'm hoping for a better (free) solution for these. For now, it is what it is, and my couple of flourishing tomato plants are very happy.

Today is transplanting day. I'll dig in my two pomegranate trees (and not plant them too deeply, like I did to my poor loquat tree - more on that later). I'll pot my tangerine and my lemon trees. And I'll put in the ground my tomatoes, eggplants, butternut squash and dill seedlings.

I'm trusting the Farmer's Almanac this year, believing that if I plant when it says I can plant, I'll have some success. It's all an experiment, but it's working so far.