Planting Beets in Rows

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Beets are a great vegetable for a garden. A fresh beet drips with flavor. There is nothing like a sweet fresh beet. By the time you buy them from market, they have lost a lot of moisture and simply aren't as sweet and delicious. Beet leaves are great in salads too!

Planting a beet is best done in rows. You can plant them around 1/2 inch down and 2 inches to 4 inches apart. At 2 inches you will have to pick some beets on the smaller end to allow other beets to get to full size and sometimes that is as big as a baseball. Your choice.

Beet Seeds - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

Beet Rows and Spacing: Gary Pilarchik

I am plant a round variety of beet that gets large, so I space my seeds visualizing how mature beets would look or at the size I want to pick them. I plant my seeds accordingly. If you are planting cylindrical beets than you can plant them closer together.

Remember the beet seed in the picture is actually a pod or cluster of beet seeds. You will have to thin them to one plant per spot.

Beet Seed Spacing - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

Frost Damage and Effectiveness of Clear Cups: Celery

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As science would have it, one cup blew off my celery during the night of the frost.  I was glad I decided to cover the celery because it is not very frost tolerant and it did get below 32 degrees. I also put cups on peas. I found that peas can take a frost. The difference between the peas that had a cup on them and the peas that where left uncovered were negligible.

The celery was damaged through the protection of the cups but not nearly as bad as the unprotected celery plant.  The final thought... plastic cups will buy you a degree or two of frost protection.

Celery Before the Frost - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

Here are two pictures of celery that were covered by the cups through the frost. A little damage can be seen but not too bad.  The pictures were taking 36 hours after the frost so the damage would be visible.

Minor Frost Damage on Celery - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

Minimal Frost Damage on Celery: Gary Pilarchik

The above pictures are of celery that had the cups on them. Here is the unlucky celery that was victim of wind. The wind blew the cup off during the evening hours. Although it looks bad... the core of the plant is fine and it should be fine.

Celery Damaged by Frost - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

My Indoor Tomato Grow Station: Grow Lights

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Here is a picture of my grow closet. The tomatoes are doing very well. It will give you an idea of size and height for placing lights in case your are interested in building your own space. Notice the lights are only a few inches above the seed trays. Germinating seeds not only like the light but like the warmth of the lights.

Tomato Grow Light Closet - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes: It is Getting Close!

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If you haven't started your tomatoes indoors yet, don't worry. You still have time. I wouldn't wait much longer though. Here are my tomatoes I started around March19th. The pictures are from around the 26th. Everything is up now and doing nicely.

Tomatoes Started Indoors - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

Tomatoes Vary on Their Germination Time: Gary Pilarchik

The 'Sarah's Galapagos' are slower to germinate but they are now fully germinated and doing well. Look for your tomatoes to germinated between as few as 4 or 5 days and as much as 10 depending mostly on warmth.

Variation on Tomato Germination Speed: Gary Pilarchik

Germinating Tomatoes - The Rusted Garden: Gary Pilarchik

It's Not Only Birds Tweeting in the Rusted Garden Now-A-Days!

Who would have thought gardening would have taught me something about blogs? I enjoy designing and maintaining my blog and actually find it relaxing to read about HTML and all the support stuff.

I didn't think gardening would teach me about tweeting. I just signed on to Twitter. I am not sure what I am going to do with it that is fun and garden related. Maybe seed give-aways. Or a way to communicate garden events through out the world. Think big!

Anyway... I am looking for followers and The Rusted Garden can now be found by searching (one word)

TheRustedGarden

on your Twitter home page.

Friend the garden if you would like to help a gardener out. As soon as I figure out how to use it, I bet I can put some link here that friends you to the garden as a follower. But I am new to this!

Thanks
Gary