My New Improved "Grow-Op"

This is my new condensed version of what I put together last year for my seed starting. I got an Aerogrow garden for Christmas that I put kitchen herbs in, and when I realized they sold a seed starter kit, I found a used space saver version that I transplanted the kitchen herbs in (top shelf), and used the larger garden to start my seeds (middle shelf). The bottom shelf just holds my supplies: books, my special guano hydroponic fertilizer, watering cans, etc. And also on the top shelf I have all my seeds, my planner as well as a thermostat. Off to the right I have plans for a eraser board to keep track of my planting, transplanting, re-transplanting, and direct planting. But that might be pipe dreams, I have a lot of those.

I don't quite have a plan for when I transplant into larger containers, maybe I can keep them in there until its time to plant into the garden. I haven't looked that far ahead, since I just got the first set of seeds in the Aerogarden yesterday. I am still going to keep my downstairs operation set up, and I really had plans for that metal shelving unit being a perfect aquaponics unit, and I have to admit I cringed a little when hubby brought that ugly thing upstairs, but honestly it will only be there until the melon and squash get in the ground, I don't plan on a continual planting of those crazy things.

If you're wondering what I started, I took an educated guess (since I knew I was running out of time, and there was none to spare for research, I figured I could trust 3 years of practice!) I started the Tigger Melon, Black Beauty zucchini, both tomatoes (Purple Russian and Fox Cherry), 5 color Peppers, Chinese Lantern, Both Little Gem and May Queen Lettuces and my Red Creole Onion. I think probably i could have started my cukes since I did my zucchini, but I think I just forgot. Maybe I'll go do that now. Those will be my favorite crop this year, as well as the popcorn/baby corn.

The ground still isn't dry enough to work up, and this year I plan on mixing in some "Mel's Mix" since I got that industrial sized bag of vermiculite, and my compost is looking wonderful this year. That's mostly why i started my onions indoors. I'm not sure if I plan on harvesting this year, as long as I get something to put in the ground, maybe I'll have a winter harvest at best, but next year they will be perfect! I have these new interesting strawberries that I'm looking for a safe place for... Last year I had my asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb planted along the garage, and protected by some wimpy decorative wire thing that only really keeps rabbits out, but not dogs. After my asparagus was attacked by asparagus beetles last year, if there was any hope at all for it coming back, it was erased by my psycho digging dog. Not even one sprig came back. Eck.

So that's where I am. My Dear Garden Diary entry for today. See you again soon!

April 13, 2009

Wow, let's see...
Apart from being horribly irresponsible with my garden updates, I really have been taking this thing seriously this year. It has been a little tougher, because, for one thing, decided to only plant a minimal amount of seeds. Meaning I wanted 2 Brussels sprouts, I planted 2 (but with 2 seeds in each pod). The other thing is, since everything has started from seed, I'm super nervous, over thinking everything, and have smothered several of my little plants with love. Literally.
So as it stands, in my garden, I have radish, carrots and beets coming up. Any day now I expect to see my peas start to peek. But I have actually planted my second rounds of radish, carrot, beet, peas. I also planted cilantro, and my first round of beans went in. Downstairs, in my "grow-op" I have all three types of tomatoes up, Brussels, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and onions. I'm terrified to start moving those guys outside at all because last year, even being careful to only do it little by little, when I tried to harden them off, I lost a lot of plants.
So hopefully sometime this week if the sun ever peeks out, I'll get up the nerve to bring them out.
This spring has been so mild. Before I know it it'll be summer, and I'll be up to my knees and thighs with this stuff! I can't wait!

Too........tired.......to write................

Tilled. Fertilized. Composted. Squared off. Planted: Carrots, beets, peas, cilantro, radish.

Back hurts.

Tired.

Night.

March 15, 2009: Part 2

I wanted to add that I also (finally) got my lighting set up. I'll have to take a picture and post it soon, but it's quite rickety, and my basement is slightly scary and dungeony, so it might be a little more embarrassing than my trashed garden before I cleaned it up! LOL! The basic premise of it is this: The light is attached to a pulley so that I can either move the light evenly up and down, or raise and lower each end separately if needed (for larger seedlings). I plugged the light into a cheap ($2) timer, and set it to turn off for 6 hours per day.
It was a bit more work than I'd expected and knowing I still had a lot of work outdoors to do, I didn't re-pot my broccoli today which is getting a little spindly and pathetic looking. Also, I failed to mention my lettuce (all 4 plants) sprouted probably Friday. I planted two seeds per pod, and every single seed came up. I still have a twang of sympathy every time I have to pull up an unneeded seedling... it's what this method has done to me. Waste not, want not.
Nothing else has sprouted, although I put my entire tray of potential and existing seedlings under the light. The basement tends to be a bit cold, so I brought in a small blowing space heater instead of a fan as I'd planned. It has an automatic shut off for 4 hours, so it shouldn't overheat. What I need to do is just bring up the non-sprouted pods and keep them warm as I normally do, but I just like my new little work space so much that I can't bring myself to unorganize what I just organized. It's the OCD.

March 15, 2009: Part 1

I was able to get outside today to do some spring cleaning in my garden... Unfortunately last year I didn't prepare for spring as much as I'd thought. Part of my problem is that I still don't have a stomach for killing anything by pulling it up, so I let id die off and by the time it's dead, it's too cold and I don't want to do anything when it's cold (I'm a sissy when it comes to winter). Hopefully this year I'll be better. I took some pictures of before and after the cleaning, maybe it'll make me feel as if I've accomplished something!

Looking west...You can see the remnants of my peppers, and those Japanese onions that surprised me early this spring. Also in the background is my hanging tomato project that was knocked over this winter by strong storms. What a mess.

After I cleaned it all up... Not sure how to get all the leaf debris off my stone. I have the same problem all over my yard, and it doesn't matter how much I rake, there's always leaves because we have so much fencing. I'll be honest, though, I didn't rake anything out of my garden last fall. The closest SFG has a lot of clay in it that I attempted to break up last year. I added quite a bit of peat but it's still very thick. The second has a little clay in it and the furthest garden has the best consistency out of the three.

Looking east...A shot from the other end. To the left of the picture is an area I had sectioned off for perennial food, such as asparagus, strawberries, and rhubarb. I asked my hubby to pick up some steel pipe last year for my trellis and he picked up PVC. I worked with it, though, and it worked alright. It did move with the wind quite a bit, but that never affected my peas.

All cleaned up. Hopefully now the soil will dry out so I can start planting soon. I'm scheduled to plant outdoors on the 18th. The weather report says it will be nice (in the 60's!) this week until Wednesday when it is supposed to rain. I may plant on Tuesday if I can get the soil dried up and workable. I'm still wondering what to do with those onions. They're a little soggy and sad looking but I'm having trouble just pulling them up...

March 8, 2009

I'm not feeling really hot, but I wanted to post a quick update before I pass out for the night.I noticed one of my broccoli plants poking up today. Otherwise nothing has grown yet. I planted lettuce today, 4 plants, because I plant 4 per square foot. I planted 2 of each of the tomatoes I chose: Brandywine, Earlygirl, and Beefmaster. Hopefully all 6 will take, but if not I'll be happy with one plant each. Especially since I'm sure Brandon will plant his own. It's his only garden contribution every year. All these I planted from seed in a peat pod.My plans for tomorrow were to hook up my fluorescent lighting setup. But we got so much rain this weekend that our basement is taking on more water than we can pump out. So with 4 inches of water in the basement, I'm not sure I want to fool around with electricity quite yet. But I'm worried I will get that started a bit too late to accomplish what I'd hoped. But we'll see. The rain is supposed to stop late tonight.I'm scheduled to plant outdoors on March 18th, so I need to get my garden prepared. If I can get the soil dried up enough, I'll dump some compost and peat (at least in the most clay ridden of the 3 SFG) so I can start planting in 10 days! Did I mention yet that I have onions sprouting from last year? Japanese onions that apparently have been kicking ass for the past month or so. But I have a lot of work to do on those gardens before I can accomplish anything, so I'm crossing my fingers for no more rain!Well, not much excitement, obviously, but a little progress, anyways. So, I'm off to bed... until next time...

March 5, 2009

This weekend, I started planting. Two weeks late, I might add. This slightly annoys me, because last year I started planting late and it screwed up my entire rhythm. I promised myself I would start on time this year. According to my Square Foot Gardening book, there technically is only one month I shouldn't be doing anything garden related. Well, obviously I'm not at that level, nor is my house set up to garden in my basement. But there are vegetables that I screwed up last year that all it would take to do it right is to just start early.I bought a new book, Guide to Ohio Vegetable Gardening, a little calendar, and a notebook, and sat down and came up with a game plan. Based on my successes and failures last year, as well as what vegetables I really got to enjoy and others I'd like to, I decided on the following vegetables: Beet, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, cucumber, green beans, lettuce, muskmelon, watermelon, onion, peas, habenero, jalapeno, and bell peppers, sweet and red potatoes, radishes, zucchini, and 3 kinds of tomatoes. I'm also planting cilantro, garlic and chives.The cool thing about the Ohio gardening book is that it suggests the best particular variety of each vegetable for an Ohio garden. Not only that, but I used what I learned last year to decide, for instance, that I wanted a pea that doesn't need a huge trellis, and that I liked my bushing zucchini so much that I'd like to try it again, and this time try bush watermelon and cucumber as well. Obviously it was too late to order all those specific seeds online so I had to go to several local stores to find what I wanted, and I still didn't find some of them.And because I felt so unorganized last year, I got my entire game plan all mapped out in my little calendar. When to plant seeds, when to transplant, and even when to expect a harvest. I decided this year's goal is to not buy a single transplant. Last year I transplanted some onions, a bell pepper plant, and some tomatoes. I want to do everything from seed this year. Because my ultimate goal is to know that I can do it if I ever had to.Because I'm planting everything from seed, I thought I'd step up my indoor planting by setting up an extra fluorescent light we have with a timer to help along the plants. Someone suggested also that while growing the seedlings, point a fan at them to strengthen them so they're not so spindly when you do go to transplant. I lost a lot of transplants last year because they were so puny and weak.Finally, in an attempt to actually make this cost efficient, I'm keeping my seeds. I've got them in a freezer container away from moisture so they'll keep the full 4-5 years. After it's all said and done, seeds really run quite expensive- the cost of seeds has risen, and not to mention I'm growing 26 vegetables. At $2 a packet, it adds up. I would like to compost as well as save rain water this year, but we'll see. That's a different blog.So after all that organization, I actually did get some planting in... I planted onion, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. I did plant a little extra, because inevitably some (most?) of it will die, but not nearly as much extra as I planted last year. It's odd, but I do feel bad killing off extra seedlings that I can't use in my garden. Almost as bad as killing a mouse or something! So I planted 8 onion, and 2 each of the others. I really only want one each of those, but will be happy if I get two.That was Tuesday. This weekend I'll set up the light so it's ready for when the seedlings pop up, and next week I'm scheduled to start a couple other vegetables. Believe it or not, soon I'll be planting outdoors. As soon as the soil is workable. A couple more days like today and it'll be ready to work.

My Backyard: Fresh, Focused and Dedicated

I'm pulling some old gardening blogs over to a new site, and dedicating it specifically to my 2009 Square Foot Garden. Partially for anyone who ever decides to read my updates, so they won't have to sift through my possibly offensive political rantings and personal stories... But more for myself so I can have a site to store all my gardening stories so I can use them and learn from my mistakes and successes. (Hopefully more successes than mistakes!) So if you're reading this, thanks for stopping by, and if you have any suggestions or advice, or if you see anything I'm doing horribly wrong, feel free to comment. (Constructive criticism is always welcome!)

This is my second year as a SFG'er, and probably fifth year gardening in general, but since I've been doing the SFG, I've enjoyed it so much that it's become more than just a hobby. The recent economic changes as well as my desire to be self sufficient pointed me directly to Mel Bartholemew's method of gardening. It worked out so well last year that I was immediately hooked.

So here we go, SFG round 2! I'm so excited!

Square Foot Gardening: 201

I'm ashamed at my lack of blogging this winter. It's strange...as much as I dislike this season, you'd think I'd be blogging every day just to get my mind off how lame I feel. But no, I really have no excuse.Now.I need to get focused. Last year, I started gardening- it was my "practice" year, but I still ended up having a very productive garden. I kept a logbook of my progress so I could see where I went wrong and things I could change. One of the things I realized that I did wrong was that I started waay too late. So, here it is, February, snow still on the ground, and my square foot garden still covered in snow, and I'm actively planning out my 2009 Square Foot Garden.
For anyone who hasn't heard of Square Foot Gardening (SFG), it's an amazing gardening method that combines space saving techniques and organic ideas to net the perfect quantity of food for your family. And with produce costs being what they are right now, as well as this questionable economy teetering on a new depression, who can scoff at the idea of being self sufficient. (Next goal: talk Brandon into letting me buy chickens! Ha!)
Last year, I borrowed my dad's book, Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholemew, and built 3 4'x4' of my own raised bed boxes. This took up about an 8'x20' plot of my back yard, along with a 2'x5' plot along my garage. In these, I planted peas, radishes, a bell pepper plant, 2 banana pepper plants, a jalapeno pepper plant, onions, cantaloupe, cucumbers, pumpkins, asparagus, strawberries, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, squash, green beans, celery, tomatoes, basil, mint, and beets. Offhand I think that's about it. I had some failures, which I'll try to fix this year, but I had a lot of successes. And all this was entirely organic.
First things first- the dog(s). I need to figure out how to keep them out of it. Or there will be no garden. (And maybe no dog, if I get mad enough...!) Last year, I put up a simple 2' chicken wire fence that did the trick. But only a decorative 1' edging fence around my asparagus and strawberries along the garage. This was a joke to Penny. I found my asparagus plants that I so tediously plucked asparagus beetles from and nursed back to health laying root up next to a dog hole. And (thankfully after my harvest) I found Penny inside my SFG, working on new holes. I'm not sure my temper can handle much more of that. But dogs are dogs, so I need to do a better job dog-proofing this year.
Secondly, maybe the most difficult thing, is that it takes just about an engineering degree to plan correctly to get the most from this garden. Every plant flourishes in a different growing season. When one is finished producing, you pull it, compost it, revitalize the soil, and start something else in it's place. You also have to take into consideration the size of the plant and the placement of it, because you pack so much into these small squares, a tall plant would block out the sun if planted on the east or west side of a shorter plant. Also something to consider is growing time. I used a 3'x3' square for my squash last year, but it took nearly all summer to grow. Had I been comfortable with this method, I'd have planted a quicker growing plant (maybe carrots or radishes) around the seedling that would be harvested long before the squash were big enough to steal nutrients or sun from it.
Thirdly, I want to start on time this year. I should be starting seedlings indoors soon. And along the same lines, I want to build a cold frame to garden earlier in the season, as well as later. According to the book, there should only be about a month out of the year that you're not actively gardening. (I want to smack myself for not snatching up some discarded windows I saw along the road last fall. They'd have made great cold frames... But I'm sure I'll find more.)
I also want to save rain water this year. Last year I talked about making a rain barrel to collect rain water for my garden. Maybe even hooking it up to soaker hoses under my SFG to supplement my watering. But I know rain water can be very acidic, and might do more harm that help. But something to try. Also along the lines of minimalism and conservationism, I have been wanting to start composting. I have to admit I'm a little nervous about this, because, well, it kind of grosses me out. But I know it's a great idea, so will at least try this year.
Lastly, my great idea last year was to hang my tomatoes. This wasn't from SFG, just an idea I got from a friend. I took 4 hanging baskets, cut holes in them, hung tomato plants from them, bought a hanging stand, and placed it in the corner of my garden. This might have worked wonderfully, had I not taken it to the next level and added a companion plant (basil and mint) to the top of each basket. I couldn't water it fast enough. Everything died. There were just too many ideas in that hanging display, lol.
So here starts my new project for the year. And probably the topic for most of my following blogs. I would love to hear your thoughts or ideas.

Green Thumb

My thumb just turned green.
Last year I did it for fun, this year I'm doing it functionally. Neither will be fruitful, I'm betting, but it's all practice for this inevitable depression. (And if not, at least it will help with grocery bills!)I'm reading Mel Bartholemew's Square Foot Garden. It's basically a method of gardening for people like me with little space, not much time and or patience to tend to. But it's supposed to put out tons of veggies. And we love veggies here.
Supposedly one 4'x4' square will yeild enough food for an entire year for one person. I have 3. Since I'm a kindergartner when it comes to gardening, I severely doubt I will be planting all year long, but I'm going to consider it practice, so that eventually I will be able to do that. I'm planting lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, onions, beets, radishes, celery, carrots, potatoes (hey, I'm Irish. We can live soley on potatoes in an emergent situation.) cucumbers, squash, peas and beans. Supposedly I can fit all that into just 48 square feet. And hopefully I can freeze/can some of this harvest (that may be 1st grade gardening, not sure...) There's just something about the smell of canning tomatoes that brings back some great memories.
But beyond preparing for the worst, it's therapeutic for the soul, it's rewarding, it's fun, it's exercise, it's outdoors, and it's good for a nice tan. Farmer's tan, but tan nonetheless. Plus the kids can get in on it. The only thing bringing me down is that the more I read, the more I learn about what a pain in the ass it is to be good at this. Last year when birds ate the strawberries, I said oh well, que cera, and didn't eat strawberries. This year, I have to find ways to keep birds, bugs and rabbits out and it's becoming much more tedious (and expensive). Not to mention I'm considering starting a compost heap. That's gardeneese for rotten food in a pile.
But just wait, give me a month and I'll have fresh produce growing out my ears. And a hellatious farmers tan.