Garden Update - September 2012

I've harvested a total of 23.61 pounds of produce, herbs, and flowers from the garden this year.  I haven't yet harvested cabbage or carrots and there are plenty of green tomatoes and peppers left ripening.

I haven't been able to keep up with the herb production!  I've been making a lot of pesto to use up a plethora of herbs.  I've been drying lavender for baths and mint for tea.  I've also been unintentionally rooting basil on my kitchen windowsill; I'm going to try to plant it in pots soon.

Herbs

 I've been picking zinnias like crazy and they keep making more!  They're a great combination of pink and orange.  My sunflowers have all been hacked down by creatures of some kind: birds, squirrels, chipmunks.  I have one tiny teddy-bear sunflower plant left hiding between some tomatoes.

Zinnias, Marigolds, Pole Beans, and Beefsteaks

This morning I picked a few more tomatoes out and 1.25 pounds of green/purple beans for dinner tonight.  I lost most of my cucumbers to beetles though one plant has managed to stay healthy and is producing a few more fruit for me.  I lost the powdery mildew battle with my zucchini and tore most of them out.  I left two plants in the ground and they've regrown as healthy plants but I don't think I'll get any fruit out of them for the rest of the year.  Fingers crossed.

In terms of preserving: I have 3 pints of green beans canned and a quart of diced tomatoes and a 1/2 pint of tomato paste.  (Along with my pinto and black beans, though those didn't come from the garden).  I also have around a dozen Serrano peppers frozen.  No jam, lemonade, or fruit this year.  It actually has been a rather underwhelming canning season for me.  We definitely won't have packed cupboards this winter.

I ordered my cover crop and garlic along with hundreds of flowering bulbs (hyacinth, daffodils, allium, and anemone).  I hope to get everything in the ground before halloween - wish me luck on that one!

Garden Planner

I have stumbled upon the greatest invention since stripped screw extractors.  Mother Earth News links to a Garden Planner - check it out HERE.  You get a free 30 day trial and then it is only $25 for a year's subscription (which is actually 13 months because it is added onto the free month you have already) OR $40 for two years.  I am having an outrageous amount of fun playing with this and planning our big bump in production next summer.

While I highly recommend checking it out (seriously - a free month without having to do anything shady like take a survey or enter your credit card information) I will still tell you about my favorite features:

1. The images.  I'm a very visual person so having little tomato or cucumber or basil pictures to represent each plant makes the whole page beautiful and easy to comprehend.
2. The spacing.  You can choose standard or Square Food Gardening spacing - but once you put a plant into your virtual garden you can multiply it or drag it along the edge of your garden and it will space the plants automatically.  This makes it easy to see how many plants I can fit into a given space and it even tells me (in the case of carrots for example) how many plants I will need to fill that space.
3. The timing.  I can arrange my garden according to seasons - so it will look different in May when I put out Broccoli or Baby Pak Choy than it will in July when I replace them with late lettuce or peas.  Even better: It will email me to remind me when to start seeds, when to transplant, and when I should expect a harvest.
4. The notes.  I can change the variety name...or not.  This means I can fill a garden with "carrots" or I can change each section and fill the garden with "cosmic purples" and "atomic yellows" and "dragons".  Additionally, I can keep notes on what I liked or didn't like about those varieties or how well they grew in a particular area.
5. The connections.  After planting my entire virtual garden, I can generate a list that contains every plant and variety I have selected for the season.  This list will tell me how many plants I need, when to start seeds, when to put outdoors, when to harvest.  It also will let me link to my favorite seed company (which happens to be High Mowing, but other companies are available as options) to buy the seeds I need.
6. The information.  In addition to automatic spacing, I can select any plant's information icon and a panel will pop up that contains a picture of the plant, its sunlight requirements, its soil preferences, companion plants, and other information.  Its all right there at my fingertips.  This helps me immensely in deciding where to plant.  It also remembers perennials and automatically plants them in next year's plan.
7. The crop rotation.  Each plant has a beautiful background color - at first I thought this was somehow related to the color of the produce but after some poking around I discovered that it is related to the plant family.  And here comes my favorite part: this program does crop rotation for you.  When you copy your bed to next year's garden (so you don't have to recreate it) - it will remember what you planted last season.  If you try to plant the same family in the same location, it will flash red, indicating that you have not rotated your crops (which can cause soil depletion and increased risk for disease).  Each year the red flash becomes lighter and lighter, indicating that the risk is reduced, until 5 years have passed and the soil is safe to host the same plant family.
8. All the other little things.  I can post my garden plan on social media sights.  It adjusts to my agricultural zone and frost dates.  I can ask it to only show me easy to grow plants or shade loving plants.  I can use a Square Foot Gardening mode.  I can visualize and get excited about my garden space.  I can virtually plant things without annoying all my facebook friends (death to Farmville).  It costs less per year than my cover crops.

Here is a glimpse at my ever-changing, not yet done, garden plan.

While I don't think I'm an important enough blogger to have to say this, I guess it should still be said: I am in no way affiliated or compensated by Mother Earth News or GrowVeg.com.  I just think their product is really really awesome and should be experienced by everyone (for at least 30 days).

Garden Update - July 2012

Stage 1: March

Stage 2: April

Stage 3: May

Stage 4: May

Stage 5: June

Stage 6: July

Ready for a few close-ups?

Beefsteaks growing nice and large

Cherry Tomatoes in the evening sun

Sunflower head forming

Cucumber-lettes and some red cabbage 

Herb section with soaker hose

Our first zucchini of the year and
some more summer squash

I also have more basil than I know what to do with right now.  I have several bunches in small jelly jars of water around the house - they smell great! and are starting to root.  I might have to share my favorite pesto recipe with the next basil trimmings.

Garden Update

Before: Can you believe this was in March!?

Garden: Mid-June

The transplants have adjusted after their moving shock and are starting to grow!

The New

I finally have my tomatoes in the ground (lots of beefsteaks, a mortgage lifter, some romas, and a few smaller varieties).  This year I buried them up to their waists in hopes of developing very strong roots.  I've also been clipping their first few blossoms while telling them they're "too young to think about babies just yet" with the hope of increasingly their yield later in the summer.

I also put my herbs in the ground last night (just before dark).  I have stevia, lavender, two parsley plants, oregano, and rosemary.  Basil and Thyme are interplanted in the beds.  I'm looking to obtain some cilantro and then the herbs section will be complete.

They're wilting from the afternoon heat

The spearmint that I put in two years ago, without realizing its strength, has invaded the pathways between beds.  It smells wonderful when I walk through it.  Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, I did NOT plant the rest of my mint (peppermint, orange mint, and chocolate mint) in the ground this year.  Instead I pulled a a few spearmint stems from the ground and planted all 4 mints in a hanging basket that I will keep in the garden but off the ground.

Hanging Mint

The Old

Cabbage Worm Egg

Baby Cabbage Worm

My collards and red cabbage have been nearly destroyed by cabbage worms.  They start with teeny-tiny eggs - about the size of a grain of salt - which I have been removing whenever possible.  Boy did I miss a lot!  Now I have little green worms who are tearing their way through my leaves.  I've been spending about 10-15 minutes each day finding them and squishing their tiny florescent carcasses on the bedside as a warning to other pests.  Image credit: Gardenerd

The sunflower seeds have been germinating and poking through the ground, as have the marigolds and zinnias.  I also have germination on my second sowing of carrots - I'll put a third set in the ground in July.

I was able to recover the black raspberry bush!  We have 6 berries ripening right now.  I pruned the blueberry bush down to almost nothing - and now new leaves are shooting out.  The red raspberry bush  seemed like a total goner.  As I was pruning it I couldn't find a pinch of green in any of the stems....but I see a few leaves at the very bottom starting to poke out.  We might not get anymore berries this year, but at least I don't have a $15 stick for the compost bin.

Speaking of compost!  There is a HUGE difference in the weeding needs given my compost choices.  The city compost, the one I was concerned about, is pretty much weedless.  I take out an occasional prickly lettuce but that's about it.  The compost I bought from Home Depot is absolutely filled with grass and weed seed.  I am constantly picking at it and almost "weeded" my carrot sprouts!  So far there does not seem to be a difference between the beds with weed-blocking cardboard and the one without.

The Future

I plan on creating one more hanging basket with my sad little strawberry plant as well as doing a lot of research on growing strawberries.

I'll be doing a LOT more weeding in the purchased compost beds.  As well as weeding in the pathways.  I'm not sure if I want to fill the pathways with mulch or just keep the prickly lettuce out of it.  I like being barefoot and the soft weeds feel better than mulch.

I will however mulch the beds soon.  I'm keeping my eye on the city mulch drop a few miles from the house.  Once there's a drop I'll go load up the truck again.

I'm also looking into soaker hoses and water timers.  I don't want to spend a lot of money on a good soaker hose just yet, so I'm looking for old hoses that have leaks in them (from friends and family members).  I can drill appropriate holes in them and DIY it.

Seed Camp

I signed up for Seed Camp.  Sammit is coming with me!  Seed Camp is an intensive weekend excursion in Sedgwick, Maine where we will learn how to save all kinds of seeds.  I'm excited for several reasons:

1. I really want to learn how to save seeds.
2. Sedgwick is the first city in the US to declare food sovereignty.  You can read more in this article, but basically that means people in the city are able buy and sell local foods while overriding health codes, bans, and regulations.  Read: raw milk is legal, canned goods are a plenty, cottage laws are obsolete. 
3. We are actually camping.  In tents.  In the woods.  With Sammit's hectic work schedule we are already missing more camping than I'd like.
4. We get 8 prepared (by someone other than me!) organic and local meals.
   
   

Garden Update

Seed starting went better than it ever has - but I still killed pretty much everything by the frost date.  I have a few lettuce heads and some thyme left.  Luckily, I live right down the street from a grow store called Northern Lights.  They specialize mostly in hydoponics but this summer they filled the parking lots with flowers, herbs, and vegetables.  I spent about $40 on two flats of plants and divided them out into my new beds.

Thyme, strawberries, mints, and basil

Carrots, Cukes, Beans, Peas, Lettuces, Peppers, etc.

Garden - finally in!

Garden layout (don't mind the crossed boxes).  Also, I inverted the right side beds so they are symmetrical with the left.

I'm planting several varieties of sunflowers, Beefsteak & Sungold tomatoes, Serrano peppers, sweet & thai basils, and successive plantings of carrots.  I also have pole beans, red cabbage, 3 types of lettuce (red leaf, green leaf, and romaine), and 3 types of thyme (French, English, and lemon).  I'm capping the beds with Zinnias and Marigolds because they attract pollinators but keep predators away.  I used my little knowledge of companion planting to create some kind of a plan for placement.  For example - basil & tomatoes work well together.  Having collards & cabbage, which are cool weather/shade loving plants, next to climbing plants like cucumbers & beans will help keep the former from bolting.  

I look forward to sharing more pictures as they take off - and can't wait for the first taste.

PS - I think I killed the raspberry, black raspberry, and blueberry bushes.

Garden Beds - Update

Today, instead of cleaning the fridge or picking up the dining room I dug and moved 2 truckloads of city compost to our yard.  Royal Oak drops its compost and mulch a few miles from our house and it is free to residents.  I have been waiting in the shadows for a drop since I finished the beds and today was the day!  It happened to be raining but that hasn't ever really stopped me.  Each bed is about a truckload of compost so I'm half-way done.

March 2012

April 2012

June 2012 with a rose photobomb 

May 2012

June 2012

Because we're hoping to move by the end of the summer I'm trying to avoid getting too attached to this garden.  We might be giving most of it away to the new neighbors (hi neighbors!).  I've decided to use this season to experiment and put my years of research experience into agricultural play.  Each bed will have the same plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, peppers, etc.) but different conditions.  Beds 1 & 2 have a cardboard weedblocker and city compost.  Bed 3 will have a cardboard weedblocker and composted manure.  Bed 4 will have composted manure and no week blocker.  This is a last minute experiment so there will be some flaws (Bed 2 should have city compost but no weedblocker).  I'm going to play around with nutrients and watering schedules.  I did not sift the compost (lazy) but I'm curious to see if that makes a big difference.  I'm going to look into cheap sifting set-ups, maybe Bed 2 will be sifted.

My favorite things about today: 

1. The compost was warm.  It felt good on my hands.  The steam rolled up from the pile when I lifted my shovel.
2. Even though I kicked my shoes off outside I still left muddy footprints through the foyer and kitchen.
3. After pouring the last bucket of compost I took a short, dirty nap on the couch with a very snuggly cat.
4. My shower was a-maize-ing.
5. Scratch bison stew for dinner with grain-free peanut butter cookies for dessert.

Garden Update

I've been itching to get the garden beds together and get my plant starts in the ground.  Three things have been holding me back: time, illness, and fear.  I'm still interning at my field placement so I haven't had the lounge-like summer I had envisioned.  Also, the whole house has had a cold for a little over a week now, bringing everyone's energy and motivation down.  Finally, I've never really built anything before and the lumber section of the hardware store is intimidating.  It isn't rocket-science but its completely foreign to me and there is so much I don't even know I don't know.

In order to mitigate my fear I sought apprenticeship from my stepfather, Fred, who knows about this kind of stuff.  He proved to be quite difficult.  Even though he's a wonderful man, I don't think he fully understands that I'm not afraid of manual labor.  As I was explaining my plan to him and sheepishly showing him my electronic image of said plan, he just kept asking why I wanted to do this.  I'll paraphrase:

Stepdad: Why are you doing this?  You're moving soon.

Me: I already dug up the fence.  I have to do something.

Stepdad: This is a lot of work, why not just throw the plants in the ground.

Me: Well, you see, I already dug up the fence; I have to do something with it.

Stepdad, after thinking for some time: Do you have a chainsaw?...This is going to be a lot of work - I don't think you want to do this.

Me: What? No, of course I don't have a chainsaw and can we just operate under the assumption that there will be beds in there by the end of the week.  How should I do about doing this and are you always going to be such a Debbie Downer?

We compromised.  I make the plan more simple and he took me to the store and sorted through the landscaping timbers to find 24 of the straightest boards there.  He was even patient when the half of those 24 boards fell onto the cement floor, twice, before we could pay and get them in the car.

Today I bought a box of 3 inch outdoor screws and a handsaw - both of which are much better than the 2 inch drywall screws and hacksaw I tried to start the project with yesterday.  (I'm impatient).  I've been measuring and sawing away, stacking timbers and drilling holes.  Tonight when my lovely assistant gets home from work he's going to help me screw everything together.  I'll make sure to post the project when I'm done, but until then - here's a progress picture:

Before

During

I'll work on my before/after photo skills.

Seed Starting 2012

I read on a wise homesteading blog that it takes 5 years to get the hang of starting your own seeds.  I'm on year 4 and I think 5 might be about right.  I'm making great improvements each year, but I've never had anything that really resembles the plant size or strength of the farmer's market flat.  

Year One: I tried starting a few seeds in my apartment in college (sunflowers, beans, tomatoes).  I grew them in odd and end containers.  They germinated but without drainage and enough light they became spindly and weak.  

Year Two: I started seeds in my new apartment.  I used a starting kit I bought from Home Depot that came with pucks which expanded into a starting medium when warm water was added.  I had more light and some drainage.  But I also had a vacation planning in April and two cats who loved salads.  Nothing was really salvageable.

Year Three: I am generally pretty frugal and this year I tried starting seeds in natural egg cartons that I had saved and collected from friends.  I had significant light from a southern facing window and made sure to have some drainage in the bottom of the containers.  I also protected my stuff from the cats.  But in the end, there was not enough light and not enough room for roots to really develop.  I ended up with a few plants in the garden but depended mostly on starts from the farmer's market.

Year Four: Sammit gave me an actual grow light system for christmas so I have a significant amount of light (though I'm thinking I'll get one more for better coverage).  I used potting soil but I'm experimenting with a coconut coir and vermaculture blend.  I'm using yogurt and grapefruit cup containers from our regular grocery list with several holes drilled into the bottom.  The cups are stored in disposable aluminum baking pans to catch runoff water.  All of the containers are clearly labeled and stored in a spare bedroom away from cats.  I do not have a seed mat because they upstairs stays pretty warm.  I do have a fan that I turn on from time to time to help the stems strengthen in the artificial wind.

Year 4 - Week 2

Year 4 - Week 2

Year 4 - Week 8

Year 4 - Week 8

Year 4 - the whole system

I also updated my seed storage.  I used to hold my seeds in their original packets, the corners taped, and stuffed into this very adorable and very big box.  The packets would slide all over the place, making any attempt at organization pointless.

My new system is held in three stackable boxes (made in the UK).  I transferred the seeds to small envelopes with resealable flaps.  The envelope itself shows a lot of information about the seed inside.  The front shows the variety, whether or not it is organic, and the company from which I ordered the seeds. The back shows the year the seed was saved, its planting depth, and any information about the variety or planting tips.  They are organized in alphabetical order with a section labeled "flowers" for the handful of bachelor's button, sunflower, and marigold seeds I have.  Now I can find seed varieties easily and store them in properly in the off season.

The New Garden Plan

I've been wanting to update our garden plot since the last season but I haven't really been able to figure out what I want to do...until now!  It's pretty ambitious.  Right now I'm in the (slow) process of digging up the black metal fence that previously surrounded our 5x20 foot garden, which involves lots of screws and 8 concrete posts buried 2 feet deep.  Once the posts and fencing are removed I'm going to construct a series of raised beds.  The front beds will be low (4-6 inches) and the back bed will be high and doubles as a bench and has trellises in the back.  Either end of the beds will be capped with trellised arches.

Here is the general idea in 3D:

and in 2D:

We'll lose a little square footage, but I think it will be worth it when we can sit in our garden and we don't have to look at that hideous black fence.  I'll make sure to post before and after pictures in these next few weeks (hoping to get everything established by May 15th in order to get plants in the ground.

Note: The website I used to create these sketches has limited plant images so it looks like a hodge-podge of flowers when it will really be herbs and vegetables.

March - The Garden Start

January brought food changes (an eliminate/challenge diet, reduced gluten and sugar consumption, etc.)

February brought The Great Declutter (removing unnecessary items from the house and adopting rules for new acquisitions)

March brings the start to gardening.

www.gardeninggarden.com

I'm going to attempt to start my garden from seed this spring.  I made a valiant attempt last year, forgetting that I would be leaving for India 3 weeks after starting, that resulted in dried up little cubes of dirt.  But with no travel plans and a much larger space to grow (our 4 bedroom house rather than our 1 bedroom apartment) I smell some success brewing.  Despite my confidence, I have set aside some money for plant flats at the farmer's market again because, well, there's a chance I'll fall flat on my face again.

Having started seeds last year, I should have plenty left to start again this year, right?  Well, not exactly.  I was not careful when storing my seeds which resulted in an accidental spill and caused a proverbial seed orgy within my little plastic baggie.  I have no idea what is what.  So, I started anew.  After some price checking, I placed orders with three online heritage seed companies.

• Baker Seed Company is providing me with some of my produce and most of my flowers and herbs.
• Sustainable Seed Company is provided me with the majority of my produce, a few flowers and a few herbs.
• Stargazer Perennials is providing me with softneck garlic and 3 kinds of potatoes (fingerling, yukon gold, all blue)

My seeds came today!

I'm going to attempt to build two new beds in addition to using the space from last year.  One 4'x4' bed will be in the sunniest spot in the backyard, the second will be on the side of the front yard.  I'll wait until I have pictures to show before telling you all the gory details of my plans.  But I will say that I have a colored spreadsheet - that's how excited I am.

I will say this - I'm going to attempt succession planting this year.  Meaning, I'm hoping to get nearly 3 times the produce from roughly the same planting area.  I've done a lot of reading on spring vs. summer vs. fall crops.  I've made spreadsheets of planting and maturation rates for each of my seeds.  By starting my seeds indoors, I'm given a greater window of opportunity and can have a set of plants waiting to be put in the ground while the initial set is finishing up.  For example...

In one bed I'm going to plant an early crop of baby bok choy, which will be started inside and is fairly tolerant to cooler temps.  This plant matures for harvest in 30 days.  In the mean time, I start Leek seeds inside.  When the bok choy is harvested, the leeks and be planted in their place (with some restoration to the soil).  The leeks will grow most of the summer and harvested in September or so.  When the leeks are harvested, I can slip one more crop of bok choy in because a) it was given a head start indoors, b) it can handle the cooler temps into October, c) it matures very fast.  Now expand this idea across most of the garden.

Some plants will be preceded and succeeded by different crops, some by the same - carrots, for example, will just be planted every two weeks or so to ensure a regular crop of mature carrots throughout the summer.  Tomatoes will be planted with beets - by the time the beets mature and are harvested the space they took up will be needed by the tomatoes - leaving the tomatoes plenty of room to grow but not wasting space early in the growing season.  I'm also going to attempt to grow basil among the tomatoes - they like each other and have different root systems, so they should live well together.

2011 Goals, #1

In 2010 I made a long term goal that in 5 years I didn't want to have to set foot in a grocery store.  That spring I joined a meat CSA and planted my first solo-outside garden.  I include "solo" and "outside" because my first garden experiences were with my mother when I was 4 years old, helping her plant and weed while she was pregnant with my little sister - and because I attempted some container gardening in my apartment during my college years; those attempts failed.  You can see my first "big-girl" garden in earlier posts on the blog.

Going grocery-store free in 5  years is, in my naive opinion, very doable - but it won't happen over night and it won't happen on its own.  While I think I made decent progress in 2010, also familiarizing myself with 3 of the nearby farmer's markets, I also could've done a lot more.  It is that thought that spurs this post - and a list of 2011 goals to keep my on the path of thrivalism.

In 2011 I would like to...

1) Expand our garden.

My first garden was 100 square feet and consisted of 5 "plots" each divided by a foot wide path of red brick for easy access.  In it, we successfully grew several varieties of tomatoes and peppers, cucumbers, summer squash, herbs, carrots and a cantaloupe or two.  We unsuccessfully grew broccoli, cauliflower and green beans.  And straight up failed at watermelons, zucchini, and brussel's sprouts.  (The failed watermelons and sprouts are a no-brainer, but the zucchini is still a mystery).  I can honestly say that I have never been as happy or proud as when I was in that garden.  (I was terrified for most of my wedding day, so the garden still wins out, despite my undying love for my partner).

In the last few months of fall, I watched our back yard, filled with beautiful but aggravatingly shady-providing trees, to try and map out another prime location for planting.  It seems that the only ideal location is a bed that existed when we moved in - and in the summer it blooms with purple irises and pink & white peonies.  I don't particularly want to tear into it, though I'm going to see if I can't rearrange it a little next year.  After all, my first garden shared a bed with a beautiful rose bush - so who's to say we can't have aesthetics and function? I'm convinced, again naively, that the perimeter of our garage would be promising for some partial-sun loving plants.

The next few months I will be reading up on gardening and plotting out my beds.  While I have a lot to learn, I sometimes think my lack of education allowed for some great innovation on our first garden.  Had I listened to my seed packets and much of the reading I had done, I wouldn've have been nearly as successful (or just damn lucky.  I'm convinced our success this year came from two factors: 1) Neglect.  I lived an hour away from my garden last spring and it had to learn to live on it's own.  It wasn't over-watered and it developed strong roots of its own.  2) Wasps.  We had a family of wasps living in our fence near the garden.  The more I read about organic gardening, the more I learn that wasps are wonderful for keeping pests at bay.)

In this year's garden I want to...

a) Double our tomato production, especially the sungolds we planted (little orange bursts of awesome).
b) Double our carrot & cucumber production
c) Succeed at the plants that were sub-par last year (Zucchini, Watermelon, Green Beans, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Lettuce)
d) Plant pumpkins in the back (for our 2nd annual pumpkin carving party)
e) Attempt to plant garlic and potatoes
f) Double the herb garden (and preserve by either drying or freezing)
g) Attempt collard greens

Long term (read: When Sammit and I move to our own house) I would like to add corn, asparagus and other greens to our veggies as well as strawberries, raspberry & blueberry bushes, and apple & cherry trees. I'd also like to attempt lemon or limes trees (to be kept in the house during winters).  I dream of pears, grapes, & pinto beans.

Garden Y1-W10

Another [quick] garden update - week 10 is rounding into the end of June/beginning of July.

Week 10 Beefsteak (and my photographer's distorted hand)

Cherry Tomatoes, ripening in the sun

Sungold tomatoes - our first ever!

That large dark spot in the back is our 10 week old cucumber -
picked just a few days later and enjoyed with some salt and pepper

Summer Squash - enjoyed by Su-mama (my soon-to-be mother in law)