Thanks for sharing the shots. It all looks great! You are over a month ahead of us. Our corn is just about 1.5" tall and our cukes have just started climbing. We do have a few cucumbers setting in the greenhouse along with one tomato so far. I am bummed out though. We lost a whole row of carrots in the past two days. Not sure if this was sow bugs or slugs. I am going to spread diatomaceous earth on the remainder of the row.
What are the upside-down clay trays for? Are these bug traps?
I’m sorry to hear about the carrots. My cabbage and cauliflower have been getting eaten, and I just reapplied DE this morning since it had been washed off by recent rains. With the cabbage loopers and the heat, it may be hopeless, though.
The clay saucers are the lids to my “olla” clay pot irrigation system. Here’s an article about the concept.
Use of low-fired, clay ceramic vessels (ollas) and olla irrigation is an ancient technique for watering crops efficiently. First used more than 4,000 years ago, the technique has spread through arid regions of the world. The use of ollas (pronounced oh-yahs) can save gardeners time, energy, and...
wateruseitwisely.com
I don’t have fancy purpose built ollas, but I found some great unglazed clay pots that lacked drainage holes and buried them throughout my garden. (I collected them last year on various half price sales and hope to get some more, but it’s not essential now, and we’re not shopping for non-essentials.) They help keep the soil moist under the surface, and the plants actually wrap their roots around them. It was amazing to see the root mats at the end of the season last year.
I had some ollas that I recently lifted from some large pots when we transplanted the plants to the ground, so I went out and took a picture for you of the pots themselves. They each hold about two quarts of water.
The next picture is the hole where I lifted an olla out where the beet greens had been planted. Beet greens don’t grow the same kind of root systems that the tomatoes and cucumbers do around the pots, but I thought I could give you a little glimpse if you can see the roots along the wall, so to speak. I didn’t want to lift one where my plants are actively growing for fear of harming the roots.
Watering is a chore down here, and there are times I long for the push of a button or the turn of a faucet, but the water that comes from the community well is restricted, and my understanding is that drip irrigation systems clog frequently down here because of high calcium and magnesium. We collect rain water as much as possible, but we haven’t invested in pumps, so I fill my ollas and let them water for me as much as possible. I, of course, need to do some surface watering when I seed or plants are very young, but it’s nice to get away from that when the plants have more developed root systems.
My four year old loves to help me fill the ollas. He takes the lids off for me and loves to move the hose from pot to pot. Thankfully we were just able to refill the 250 gallon rain tank near the garden.