2011 Early Sowing

We broke out the salad bar Kyle build last year out of a rubber-maid style storage bin. It is self watering and we will post some how-to's when we convert our now defunct recycling bins now that the city has changed to big city-style garbage and recycling cans. The concept is basically a perforated shelf lined with landscaping fabric (to keep the soil from washing out) and landscape fabric lined wells that go down into a water reservoir. The soil wicks the water up as needed and they usually only require weekly refills making gardening in the high desert a breeze.  Homemade self watering tubs are great because they don't cost much, you get to say you made it, and you can move them around to meet the needs of your plants.  

The PVC pipe is the watering tube we drop a funnel into for weekly fill up. The set up worked so great last year we decided to keep this one a salad bar. We have several varieties of leaf lettuce, three varieties of radishes, and some scallions.  The idea is to broadcast spread the seeds and then eat your way through it to thin it as the plants get older. Radishes are fast so they usually get chomped up by me right out of the box, I just brush them off and enjoy. Kyle washes his thank you very much. Then you pick baby lettuce greens foe each dinner salad. As you thin your way through some of the lettuces get to grow to full size and then the onions mature.  To be honest, we were a little sick of the salad bar by the end of last season and started gifting bags of very fresh, very tender, tasty lettuce. I liked our little cherry bomb radishes last year so much that I couldn't resist adding two new varieties. I'm sure you get right from the dirt photos as they mature. I chose Burpee Fire and Ice, and Watermelon. Photos courtesy of Burpee below.

I also planted more of the radishes in the big raised bed and started some successions of beets as well. I am trying again with Detroit King and have a new variety Beet Crapaudine. Yeah the name doesn't work so well in English, but it is supposed to be one of the earliest of beet varieties known to seed collectors. 

O.K. since the photo of the ugly crapydine beet just suckered me in to a malware scam, we won't have a pic of said beet, although I've heard of them looking like ugly witch's noses.  They are a more cylindrical beet with a pointed end and gnarly skin that helps them last through winters in the ground.  Since I have tons of scans to make sure the malware didn't tag me. I need to end this post. Who the hell uses a photo of an ugly beet for malware? I thought that was more likely tied to nekkid photos of celebrities. I would like to personally see them tortured though. Not the celebrities, the malware jerks.