Our journey continues, minus one blueberry plant. It came in a long baggie with soil and roots with two small shoots. This was Wendy’s idea, but it took her a week to plant it, which is probably the reason why it was our first casualty. Although, the hard clay ground could’ve had something to do with it. Once the hole was dug, she laid peat moss down, added the plant and finished with topsoil. It was dead in a week.
The inground pond is still holding after we drilled drainage holes in it, but Laura thinks we’re probably gonna have to replant everything as the soil is still pretty wet where the roots are. Laura added some marigolds to the garden because her friend, Amy, told her the strong scent supposedly keeps pests away. We’ll see.
We’re excited to add two more tomato plants, three pepper plants, along with a zucchini plant.
Our new friend, Derek Haynes aka The Crazy Botanist, is a great science communicator! He taught us how to repot plants during our Earth Day event. Here’s a link to the video and his presentation starts at the 1:44:16 minute mark.
He graduated from NC State, so he’s really a Botanist. Derek used the following mix to repot the bee balm: coconut coir (ground up coconut shells), peat, worm casting, compost, perlite (or miracle grow), and a little bit of Espoma Biotone which is a slow-release fertilizer with mycorrhizal. Mycorrhizal meaning, a fungus health to help these plants do what they have to do. And when you’re working with coir or peat, he always adds a smidgen of playground sand, otherwise, they can shrivel up and become very difficult to unshrink again.
And here’s the new blueberry plant. It’s more mature than the last one. It looks really big compared to the last one, but if this flourishes, it could grow to 6 – 8′.
We were gonna work on the garden today, but it rained and Laura heard that you shouldn’t touch vegetable plant leaves when they’re wet. Not sure if this is true, we didn’t want to take any chances. We’ll have that answer next week.
If you’re a gardener, please help us stay on course so we can grow a bountiful garden.
Please send your tips, tricks, suggestions to us via email.
Thank you!
Laura Johnson and Wendy Card’s “In the Weeds” column will arrive on Saturdays.