Woe is me....LOL. We are experiencing one of the coolest springs here, temps rarely going about 60F. My little plants are struggling. I planted one side of my 'tunnel' on May 18, about 2 -4 weeks earlier than last year:
Sadly, the photo above has come out sideways. But you get the idea. The first 5 rows are Hickory Pryor - the 5 rows in the back are burley. As of today, the plants look no different. I have difficulty with the left side of the tunnel - the soil is very clay-y and heavy, and last year, the plants on that side grew to only about a foot high and were useless. I suppose I could start lugging vegetable matter up the hill to the tunnel, and try improving the soil, as well as the drainage on that side - that is the side that the surface water from the hill drains into, even though we tried to divert the water before it gets to the tunnel. So, my pinhead came up with an idea, particularly as I saw all of Tutu's lovely plants in pots. I decided to take pots, cut out the bottoms of them, flip them upside down and bury them part way into the existing soil in the tunnel. The shape of them is kind of pyramid like, my thinking being that as the roots extend downward, they can move a bit further out as the pot gets wider. I set them up like this:
Again sideways - I don't know why...they are upright in my computer. And I expect the rest of the photos I put up in this thread (only a few more) will be the same. Pretend that you are looking at my photos from Google Earth - or a satellite....LOL. Anyway, I filled the pots with good compost, the thought being that at least for the 12 or so inches of compost in the pots, the plants will have decent soil before they hit the clay underneath - if they actually get that far:
We have had two days of 'extremely' hot weather - about 75F here, and sunny, and I figured this would not be a good time to transplant. Aside from that, we are having heavy rain today - I am using that as part of my experiment - to see how much rainfall actually gets into the soil in the pots. I fear not much, and that I will have to water them by hand. I set my pump up at the tunnel, as usual, and when using the sprinkler, the water does not get into the pot opening. I'm assuming that the rainfall will be similar. In any event, we are expecting cool, cloudy weather tomorrow, so I will be putting the rest of my plants up into the tunnel. Most of this will be LV, and then burley with whatever space is left over.
On a 'brighter' side, the farmer down the road has decided he no longer wants to take hay from the field in front of my house. Considering that I will now have to take care of this, I bought a little, used lawn tractor:
OK, I get it now - photos that you take in landscape will come out properly - if you use portrait, they will come out sideways. Another life lesson learned....LOL. So, I am now cutting the grass in the field in front of the house, and will be able to do what I want with it:
The field is about twice as big as what you see in the photo - it's raining, so I didn't go out to get a good shot. So, next year, I should be able to research whether or not planting some of my plants in the field is viable.
So, we struggle onward.....