The Garden - Today I did a lot outside from organizing the garage, to cutting the lawn to working on the garden. A few things I did in the garden today should make a difference.
I went to Home Depot and grabbed 5 bags of garden soil, a container of slug / snail poison, and a couple tomato cages.
The soil was primarily because I dug out some existing dirt around the cucumbers, I would have really saved myself a ton of work if I would have made the mounds / berms prior to transplanting the starter plants. Instead I took the shovel and dug out around them because it seems that this would really inhibit growth and allow the water to easily able to get to the roots from the ground and not by just soaking down into the plant. It also allowed me to loosen up the soil which should help get the roots growing better. The other main reason I dug these out was because I wanted to add more dirt around the plants for nutrients but it would have caused many of them to get covered.
The cages should help with the tomatoes, although one bit of advice. I spent too long trying to get the legs down into the ground, kept hitting rocks. I ended up getting a pair of diagonal cutters from the garage and trimming off about half the length so they could get go into the ground and be secure.
I also used some more bamboo sticks to help guide the beans up their own poles. We'll see if they actually start to climb because I haven't seen them start doing any climbing just yet.
The next step will be to take a soil sample and test to determine the quality of the soil.
Finally as you can see in this picture there are some pellets that encircle the entire garden. These are hopefully going to resolve the slug problem, they are getting out of control. I also need to go to the guy in Seattle who sells the ladybugs and set them free to feast on the aphids.
