Please prune me.

I love pruning tomatoes. My dad showed me how when I was a kid. Here's how I do it. Below is a photo of a little shoot growing in the upside down armpit of a tomato plant's stem and leaf branch. I just use my fingernail to scratch it out while it is still small. If you don't prune these out they will grow and create a wild and messy plant that is hard to contain.
I like my tomato plants with a single stem that I train around a support. I'm sure there are other benefits to pruning tomatoes like better quality fruit and an all around healthier plant, etc.

Harvesting

I have come to find that I eat more of what I grow if I pick it when it is ready and not when I am ready for it.
Here's what I do with my spinach. First, I don't pull out the whole plant. I just cut the big outer leaves. Then I wash them with a little dish soap.

I fill the sink with water that's on the cooler side of warm until all of the spinach are submerged and then let them sit for a few minutes so I'm sure all the bugs are dead.

I let the soapy water drain and then refill the sink with cold water. Grabbing handfuls gently, I dunk the spinach again and give them a little swish before piling it on a clean kitchen towel laid out on the counter.

Here they can sit for a little while and drain. Next, I put them in a clean plastic bag and then into the fridge. I put them in when they are still fairly wet as I think this keeps them fresher longer.

Now they are ready to use anytime. All you need to do is spin them dry and eat.

My favorite thing, ever!

Is when seeds sprout. It is so exciting to me. When I first see that bump in the soil that tells me something's going on down there...oh man!
The little sprout in this photo is Minnesota Midget cantaloupe.

My scallion/green onions also sprouted a few days ago. I like how they are bent down with their heads still caught in the earth.

Garden Help

I thought I'd share with you my favorite gardening book ever. It's by Ed Smith and it's called The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. It's rad. If you like growing food you just need to get it and read the whole thing and have it on hand to refer to.
Also, I like this free garden planner.  After you specify the dimensions of your garden you can drag and drop various veggies and when you’re done it gives you a pdf to print or save. Not all the plants you are growing are probably going to be there but I just used similar ones to represent.

Water Issues

Not my garden but me. I think I have water issues. It started raining this past Saturday night and it just stopped about an hour ago. That's about 24 hours of rain.  I live in semi-arid country east of the Cascades and we get about 9" of rain a year here. Whenever it rains I'm usually finding a way to save a little of it. I just can't help it. I haven't gone all out and planned to collect it, which is what I'm sure I'll end up doing some day, but I toss a bucket or a rubbermaid tote under the dripping eaves. I'll go out in the pouring rain when the bucket fills and frantically look for some other container to dump it into.

I have a lot of totes outside right now from my ugly greenhouses and now they're all full of water.

Irrigation

I wonder why I am so proud of myself when I get my irrigation hooked up? I buy fittings and distribution line, etc. and then I sit there and think and think. It takes me SO LONG to finally cut the first  length of distribution tubing.
A couple days ago I fished in the 1/4" tubing into my potted vegetable garden on my patio. I didn't think ahead to put the length of tubing in first and then fill the dirt up around it. So, I got a length of wire and had to poke it in up through the bottom of the pot through the drainage hole and pull the tubing up along behind. I hooked it up to a circle of 1/4" soaker hose. I didn't like the idea of using a little spray emitter because I thought if it hit the stems and leaves of some of the plants growing in the pot then the water wouldn't be distributed evenly. It's probably weird that things like that bug me but anyway, I like how it turned out.

Yesterday I hooked up my in ground vegetable garden. I agonized over this as well. I decided to go with soaker hoses. They actually fit quite well into 5/8" fittings even though the soaker hose was 1/2".

Ugly Greenhouses

I think this is the best thing I've done so far for starting my own plants. As you can see, I'm putting my seedlings outside in totes covered in plastic. I've had to keep a careful eye on them as they heat up fast when the sun is out. When the sun comes out I go outside and pull the plastic back in places or take it off completely if it's really warm out (70 or so).
My plants are getting adequate sunlight so they are not long and leggy and will already be hardened off when I am ready to plant them in the garden. I've also noticed increased germination rates.