Appeal's garden has a sparse beginning

Needed: some green thumbs.

It seems that the newspaper business doesn't translate to gardening very well. At least that's the way things are looking at the Nevada Appeal plot of the community garden on Beverly Drive.

Things started out well in the spring when we added several tomato plants to our garden, which had been pretty well prepared by the UNR Cooperative Extension Service, which runs the garden. But we failed to build up retaining walls around the plot at first. This allowed water to run off rather than penetrate the soil.

Alas, the tomatoes wilted. Some emergency repair work raised dikes about 3 inches high around the 15-foot plot.

The tomatoes came back nicely.

Meanwhile, we had added seeds - arugala, lettuce, cucumbers, muscalin. We staked them out nicely in neat rows. And we watered carefully. Regularly. And waited.

The tomatoes did fine, sprouting up loftily. But nothing else showed a green head.

We watered and waited.

Finally, one of us took a vacation. But reporter Maggie O'Neill and page designer Angel Dey stepped in and kept the water flowing. Angel noted that the seeds weren't sprouting and decided to plant anew. She added a wide variety of seeds, carefully labeled them and kept the water flowing. She also added mulch in the form of grass clippings, which helped keep the tomatoes watered.

Time passed, and we kept an eye on the spots where the new seeds had been planted. Nothing green sprouted. We kept watering and hoping, but earlier this month we gave up on the seeds. (Similar seeds had been planted at the home patio, and nothing had happened there. Well, not completely; we did get arugala after a second planting, and the muscalin is healthy. But that's all - no cukes, no lettuce.)

Meanwhile at the community garden, the eggplants were going purple nicely and the squash plants, added late by Angel Dey, are on their way to taking over one end of the plot. And the eggplants we added early on are healthy (earwigs almost did in the patio eggplants, but Bug Bait to the rescue at both sites) and the flowers are turning to slender veggies.

The tomato plants are ruling one end of the garden plot, healthy and green - but very few flowers. Are we in a replay of last year when the tomatoes started coming late in the season and almost never went red? High heat can delay tomatoes so we need a break in the weather.

We also need to be more indulgent on space for tomatoes. They don't just grow up, they also grow out. Our tomatoes are crowding one another.

Stay tuned and we'll report again in August.

• Contact Sam Bauman at sbauman@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1236.

What have we learned?

• Give tomato plants more room. They do branch out.

• We need to read up on planting seeds. Did we go too deep, too shallow, too late, too soon? Did we water the seeds out of the earth?

• Squash do very well in the community garden soil, but they too need lots of room.

• We need to keep to a regular watering schedule. Missing two days in a row hurt plants.

• Staking or caging tomato plants is crucial. We caged two, staked the rest.

• We need to build a better dike around the plot to keep the water where it belongs and not out on the walkway. Many others at the community garden used planks to enclose plots.