Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man

Yesterday I wrote about the big city me. Today it’s the country boy me.

I just couldn’t hold out any longer. The warm weather, the garden area so bare and then seeing someone drive by with plants in the back of their truck just took me over the edge. Off to Lowe’s I went.

While there I picked up some replacement 1/4-inch tubing, some stakes to raise the drip line, a couple of odds and ends, and some plants.

The tubing is needed to replace some lines from last year that have cracked and broken. Our dry hot weather does a number on piping after a couple of years. My guess is I’ll need to replace the 1-inch tubing next year because it won’t be able handle any more holes in it for the drip lines. It has also become harder to even punch a hole in it. Replacing the big line will be a major undertaking, so I’m glad I can wait until next planting season.

The stakes to raise the lines are to help distribute the water a little better. The drip lines aren’t not really drip lines. Some of the holes are such that they actually become a bit like sprinklers when the water pressure hits them. This is okay as it wets a larger area, but I’d like to direct the water a little better to reach as many plants as possible. My thoughts are to just do this with the tomatoes and peppers this year to see how it works. Who knows though, if it seems to be working well, it isn’t that difficult to raise the others later on this season.

Speaking of plants, I know you are wondering what plants did I decided upon. There are now seven tomato plants of varying types (two containers had two plants in them, lucky me), three varying types of pepper, cabbage and romaine lettuce planted in my garden (plus a renegade potato plant has just popped up in one of the gardens). These don’t go in the straw bales since I have other raised gardens to put them in. Plus, I’m not really trusting yet the bales could support the tomatoes, and last year’s peppers didn’t do well in them. Again, maybe I’ll experiment a little next year just to confirm yeah or nay on the straw bales.

My only real concern is we’ll now get several snow storms making the early planting a folly. However, if we do get colder weather and snow, I will be able to cover the plants in their current locations to help protect them.

Let’s just hope this isn’t needed since our trees and other flowers are in bloom already too.

I’m curious, what have you planted so far?