B/CS Gardening

February Todo List

2010-02-13T17:25:35Z

This is probably the coldest month this winter, but the garden is pushing through. I definitely didn’t get done everything I wanted to in January, but that’s because I was battling something digging up the garden. It was hard to do much when every time I came home there was a new hole in one of the beds. No clue what happened to the seeds I had there.

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This month will consist of replanting a few things and taking care of what’s growing. The onions, cabbage, lettuce, and arugula are thriving even if growing a bit slowly.

I’m not sure if I’ll have time to build any of the extra beds I had planned on building in January. Those may have to wait until March. I have about as many free weekends in March as I do this month, but I have less going on during the week that month and can spend more time on the garden.

I did plant some in January, but I misplaced the diagram of what went where. We’ll have to wait a few more weeks until things are recognizable. At this point, I know the following are growing in the garden: lettuce, arugula, oregano, rosemary, peas, cabbage, onions. I think I have carrots and beet greens sprouting. Today, I planted brussels sprouts, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, and fennel.

I’m keeping a few squares open for planting in a few weeks. I hope that I can harvest a few things around spring planting and open up a few more squares. Building an additional bed or two will help with the rotation as well.

This month, I need to start planning for March plantings. This means that I need to start seedlings indoors: at least tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. Those seemed like they could have used a bit more time last year before the summer heat hit. I can worry about squash and other faster growing plants around the first weekend in March.

January Todo List

2010-01-02T17:20:07Z

It's a new year and a new month. More to plant and a bit more construction are on the list for this month, but first, let's review what I accomplished last month.

I planted brussels sprouts, onions, and greens. I didn't plant carrots because I don't have a bed deep enough, but I'll ignore that for this month. I cleaned out the old plants that didn't survive the first frost (tomatoes, peppers, egg plant), and trimmed back the oregano. I dried the oregano trimmings and put the leaves in a jar for later use. I also cleaned up the garden by pulling out most of the weeds and tilling the unused squares before planting.

]]> On to January's todo list.

According to the calendar, there's a lot that I can plant over the course of the month:

Immediately	January 5th	January 15th	January 20th	January 25th
Garlic	Beets	Turnip Greens	Mustard Greens	Radishes
Cabbage	Bulb Onions	Leaf Lettuce	Kale	Edible Pod Peas
Brussles Sprouts (through the 15th)		Asparagus	Kohlrabi
Carrots			Broccoli
			English Peas
			Spinach

With all of those options for planting available, here's my list of things to get done this month:

Build a frame for holding plastic (winter) or a shade screen (summer) over the beds,
Build a third 6" bed and a 12" bed,
Plant: garlic, carrots, spinach, peas, radishes, greens, beets.

I think that will be enough for this month. I'll hold off on any kind of drip irrigation or soaker hose system until later. We're getting plenty of rain right now.

Last Planting for 2009

2009-12-23T23:06:04Z

I thought Sunday’s update would be my last for the year, but I think I can sneak one last update in before the new year.

Before leaving town Monday, I ran by Producers and picked up some onion sets and seeds for some greens and brussels sprouts. The onions and sprouts should do fine with the cold. The other plants in the garden that are similar to greens did well through the recent freeze, so I’m trying the greens.

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Something’s been digging around in the garden (I suspect the neighborhood cat), but it doesn’t like to dig where plants are growing—only the clear areas. Unfortunately, some of those clear areas have seeds waiting to grow. I went ahead and outlined several of the squares with the onions in the hope that the onions will discourage the digging. I also put a few onions in the middle of some of the squares, even if I had planted seeds there.

I planted only one square of the brussels sprouts. I enjoy them in small quantities, but this is my first time to try growing them. I’ll let you know how things go.

So over the next month or two, we’ll be tracking cabbage, brussels sprouts, onions, greens, arugula, lettuce, radishes, and whatever else I’m not remembering at the moment. I plan on tracking down some garlic in January as well as plant some carrots. I only have 6-inch beds, so I will be harvesting the carrots a bit early, before they need more than the 6 inches of soil. I might build some more beds in early spring/late winter, including a 12-inch bed for potatoes.

Garden Update - Dec 20

2009-12-21T03:44:28Z

It’s the week of Christmas. Here in Texas, we don’t usually expect a white Christmas, and this year is no different. Our first freeze was a couple weeks ago. I took that as an opportunity to clean out of the garden anything that couldn’t survive a really cold night. What was left were the various greens: lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi.

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Since the freeze, everything’s been growing well. The second square of radishes are peaking out of the ground now. The lettuce and arugula seem strong. One onion that seemed to find a second life is still going.

The photo doesn’t really show the entire garden (I focused on what was already above ground), but I did do a second round of weeding today. I only have so much time in a day that I can spend on the garden, and most of that time was spent this summer on keeping alive what had a fighting chance against the heat. Now, the garden is much nicer. It should be good for the next few weeks while I’m running around the state and country for the winter break.

I planted some more arugula, cabbage, and lettuce today. If everything goes well, they should start peaking out in a week or two, though I won’t be able to post an update until the second week of January when I’m back in town.

I’m hoping to have something to harvest (perhaps a small bit of lettuce) the week or so after I get back from winter break. The funny thing about gardens is that the lettuce and tomatoes don’t like growing in the same seasons, so a good garden salad is a real treat. I’m going to try and get tomatoes in a bit early and stretch the lettuce out so I can have a little overlap.

Until next year, then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

December To Do List

2009-12-01T23:43:35Z

The weather is finally getting cold. It’s been drizzly all afternoon and in the upper 40s. Current forecasts indicate a 40% chance of snow Friday. Looks like I’ll finally need to pull out the last remaining plants from summer.

This is also a good time to put together a list of things I need to get done this month. I won’t have much time to get outside around the new year, so I need to make sure everything’s done and ready for January. I can’t wait until the last minute this time.

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According to the calendar, I can plant:

Carrots
Brussels Sprouts

January will see Garlic and Cabbage added to the list. I have cabbage seeds. I’ll need to look around town for garlic seeds or starters.

With that, here’s my list:

Clean out tomatoes, old cabbage, kohlrabi, and eggplant
Trim back the rosemary
Clean out weeds
Hand-till unplanted squares (easily done since the dirt hasn’t been compacted)
Find garlic starters or seeds
Find brussels sprout seeds (and plant a square or two)

I’ll save turnip greens, onions, and other January plants for next month. I don’t have a twelve-inch deep bed, so for now I’m not planning on anything that needs that depth.

Maple Glazed Carrots

2009-11-22T21:26:22Z

Today is the Thanksgiving dinner at Friends UCC, where I sing in the choir. I was out of town for most of last week, so my partner signed us up to bring a side dish. Saturday morning, we stopped in at the farmers market and picked up four pounds of carrots and a bottle of olive oil.

Carrots aren’t that different from parsnips, so I like to try parsnip recipes with carrots. Today, I made maple glazed carrots using a recipe from Joy of Cooking (1997 edition, page 394).

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With a vegetable peeler, strip the skins from:

4 pounds carrots

Trim the root and stem ends. Cut the carrots into medallions a quarter- to half-inch thick.

In a large pot, combine the carrots with:

4 1/2 cups water
8 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

Bring to a slow boil. Cover and cook over medium heat until tender. They should suggest a thoroughly cooked sweet potato in texture. Uncover the pot, increase the heat to high, and boil the cooking liquid down to a syrupy glaze that coats the carrots, stirring often. Be careful not to scorch.

Add:

6 tablespoons maple syrup

Cook for about 1 minute more, stirring gently to coat the carrots with the syrup. Add a pinch of freshly grated or ground nutmeg.

This should yield 10-15 servings.

Taking Stock: Planning for the Spring

2009-11-08T01:27:22Z

The weather is getting a lot cooler now. My utility bill arrived the other day and it’s under $200 for the first time since the beginning of summer. My garden is liking the cool weather and rain, too. I don’t have a lot growing right now, but what is there seems to be a lot less stressed than it was during the summer.

It’s a little early to start working on the spring planting, but I think this is a good time to look back at what worked, what didn’t work, and what I want to do differently.

]]> The okra survived the best over the entire summer. Even with the heat, it grew and produced, unlike the egg plant, peppers, and tomatoes that survived but didn’t thrive. While in the spring I’ll probably plant okra at the same time I put everything else in the garden, I won’t need to start it ahead and hope it produces before the summer heat hits. I’ll also plant two or three times as much as I did this year.

Quite a bit did well before the June heat blast and drought. The squash produced well, giving me a couple spaghetti squash, a butternut squash, and quite a few scallop squash. I think these will better if I plant them a few weeks earlier (or even start them in-doors at the end of February) so they have more cool spring weather for growing. Two plants per square seemed to work well. When the scallop squash was producing, I was able to have a couple each week. I don’t need more than that or I’ll get tired of eating it, unless I venture into preservation by freezing or canning.

Image by Jim Linwood via Flickr

Some of the herbs did well. The dill grew and went to seed. It takes so little room that I plan on planting it in quite a few squares around the other plants. Hopefully it will start self-propagating. The rosemary and oregano are doing well. They were overshadowed a bit by the tomato plant, but they pulled through. The cilantro grew well, but it needs to be succession planted. I had the most wonderful cilantro for a week or two before it bolted. I might be moving herbs such as those out of the square foot garden and into some beds next to the house—turn the flower beds into an herb garden.

Unfortunately, the lemon balm and basil never grew. I’ll be planting some mint in the pot that holds the small lemon tree. I can manage the watering and shade much easier when I can pull the pot under the porch. The fennel tried growing, but the heat was too much for it. I’ll be trying it again this winter when I get back from Thanksgiving.

The radishes did well up until June. I was able to harvest a square in two or three weeks and they are promising to be similarly quick this fall. I’ll start them earlier as well and try to keep three squares rotating so I have a fresh dozen radishes each week.

Those are the highlights of the spring/summer seasons. Next spring, I’ll focus on the okra, tomatoes, squash, radishes, herbs, and peppers. I may try a few new things, but I won’t plant colder-weather vegetables like cabbage or kohlrabi.

What are your plans? What are you going to do differently this time ‘round?

End of Summer Update

2009-10-03T19:24:39Z

We’ve finally had a few weeks of less than scorching temperatures. Almost nothing in my garden survived August. The beans, squash, radishes, and spinach all withered away eventually. I was out of the state for most of June, so I wasn’t able to give the garden the daily attention it needed. The heat hit while I was gone.

The peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage, kohlrabi, and greens survived, though they didn’t thrive. With the cooler temperatures and intermittent rain, they should get back on their feet and produce something.

]]> I’m running a little late with planting for fall. I put in a fresh round of radishes, another cabbage, some lettuce, and arugula. Today’s rain should help them get a good start. Radishes only take a few weeks from planting to picking if it’s not too hot. The greens should do well until it freezes sometime in December. I’m thinking about putting some onions in as well since those seem to like colder weather.

You may have noticed that the website has changed. My hosting company decided that I needed to move servers on short notice, so I’ve moved this site to StableHost, the same hosting service I started using for my personal blog. I’m also using them for the Brazos Valley Chorale website. I’ll be getting entries and widgets back into shape over the next week and change up the theme a bit. Sorry for the confusion the changes cause for newsreaders or links to articles. We should be stable for a while now.

Homemade Yogurt

2009-05-25T01:10:16Z

I started making my own yogurt a few weeks ago. I had thought about doing it before, but I figured I’d need an incubator and a lot more time than I could spare. I also wasn’t sure what to use for starter or what I needed to do regarding sterilization of jars and milk. Would the yogurt be sour? Would it be too liquid? Lots of questions and no answers (though I could have asked Heather over at Simple-Green-Frugal since she’s been making her own yogurt for a year or so).

]]> Over the spring semester, I took a once-weekly tutorial session on Japanese (日本語). Our sensei sings with me in the Brazos Valley Chorale and in the same church choir. She is vegetarian and makes her own yogurt. Somehow the topic came up and she offered to bring a couple of us starter from her own yogurt along with a brief description of what we needed to do to maintain it.

About once a week now, I spend five or ten minutes and set everything up to make a quart of yogurt: about a half-cup of starter from the just-eaten batch along with three cups or so of milk (about a 1:5 ratio of starter to milk). For this particular strain, I’m able to set it out on the kitchen counter for 24 hours and then stick it in the refrigerator. No mess. No fuss. No incubator to worry about. I just make sure the jar’s as clean as I can get it and it seems to work out pretty well.

That said, if you decide to make yogurt for yourself, make sure you follow the directions you’re given for the particular starter you use. Otherwise, you could have something else growing that isn’t good for you. The only reason I’m doing mine the way I am is because that’s what I was told to do from someone who’s been making their own that way for a long time.

Why bother making my own when I can buy it in the store easily enough? Making my own yogurt lets me put into it exactly what I want instead of having to read a lot of labels to see what someone else thought should go in. It’s also half to a third as expensive as the good yogurts that don’t have lots of gums and other additives—-and that’s even accounting for the time it takes me to make it. With it this easy and cheap, I tend to eat a lot of it. Besides, it’s pretty good. I use 2% milk and end up with a creamy yogurt that isn’t very sour at all. I never add sugar to it.

I tend to take my own lunch to work. Right now, I have a dozen bean, rice, and cheese burritos to eat. I also have a half-dozen cups of soup in the freezer to finish up. Along with this, I try to have a cup of yogurt and fruit each day. Between lunch and dinner, I can go through a quart of yogurt in a week.

Besides eating yogurt as it is, I also have been cooking with it. I use it in place of buttermilk in quick breads (now I don’t have to worry about buttermilk going bad because I don’t use it quickly enough). I also have made soft yogurt sandwich rolls, which are wonderful.

For more information, see Making Yogurt, a good general writeup on the process.

Garden Update - May 10

2009-05-10T21:12:48Z

The heat of summer is coming. We’ve been hitting the the high 80s and even 90 the last week or so. Everything is blossoming though, adding a nice bit of yellow in the morning—-no blossoms have come in yet that aren’t yellow and can still be seen from a distance. The lemon tree’s blossoms are a nice white with some purple coloring. The beans, squash, tomatoes, and lemon tree are all blooming. Even the volunteer prickly pear I’ve been avoiding the last few years when I mow has produced its first blossom.

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The heat and lack of rain mean I’m keeping a close eye on the garden. Each day after work, I usually walk around it picking tomatoes and pulling a few weeds. In the morning, I glance out the window and see the huge yellow blossoms on the squash plants. Not enough is at the point where I can go out in the morning before work and pick my lunch.

When I am outside near the garden, I check to see if the plants need water. I look to see if the plants are as rigid as they usually are. If they might be wilting slightly or if the ground looks dry, I dig down a few inches in an unused square and see how dry the soil is. If that’s dry as well, then I pull the hose over and give everything a good soak. I don’t run a sprinkler—-I want the water in the garden, not running away from it. I try to water away from the edges of the beds as well so I don’t have a lot of water running out into the area I walk in. Right now, I’m watering every 2-3 days. As the heat increases, I might be watering every day or two.

The cherry tomatoes continue to produce about four tomatoes a day. They’re set to explode soon. There are quite a few bunches of green tomatoes just waiting to turn red on me all at once. The other tomato plant isn’t doing quite as well. Some of the lower leaves are turning yellow. This could be an iron deficiency or a disease. It could also be a lack of water because the healthier leaves seem not as turgid as the cherry tomato plant.

The squash are coming along. All three squash varieties have little baby squash with blossoms attached. The cucumber vines have blossoms, but no noticable fruits. The beans have a few pods almost ready to pick and a lot of small, white blossoms that look like little beans.

I harvested some of the khol rahbi leaves and swiss chard. Combining that in a sauce pan with some olive oil and small tomatoes was a very nice light dinner. Total produce: 30 grams tomatoes, 17 grams khol rahbi, and 22 grams swiss chard. Total monetary equivalent at $2/lb ($4.41/kg): $0.30. Not much, but that’s the best I can do for a report on the week’s garden savings and local/non-local spending. My iPhone in which I was managing that information was replaced a few days ago because it stopped charging or syncing.

Garden Update - May 1

2009-05-02T01:34:23Z

What a difference three weeks makes! The last photos I posted showed almost all dirt with a few green things. After a near freeze and a near deluge, the garden is looking healthy. I’ve harvested a bit, replanted a few, and added some more plants. For now, the rain is coming in about the right intervals to prevent the need for much watering.

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The arugula is out and in the compost heap after bolting. I was expecting it to bolt since it weathered the near freeze. The fennel is in the compost heap as well after it somehow pinched off near the surface and died. I’ve replanted another square with arugula and the same square with fennel. The arugula was sprouting only a couple days after I planted it. I’ll see how the fennel does.

The original square of radishes are gone, of course. The second square looks like it will be ready in a week or so. I went ahead and planted a third square with radishes so I won’t have to wait three or four weeks again. When I went to plant the third square of radishes, the ants had made their home beneath the mulch. I turned it all in, including the ants, and planted the radishes.

I hate ants. My first reaction was to buy ant poison and try to get rid of the ants, but I’ve since decided to let them be. If I need to do a lot of work in the bed and the ants make it a pain (perhaps even literally), then I’ll consider using the poison. Until then, I’ll let them live around the garden, aerate the soil, and take care of some of the pests. As long as the plants are happy and I can harvest, I’m happy.

A friend of mine had too many onions, so I got 20 or so and planted them where the first square of radishes had been. They demonstrate well what I’ve seen in a few other plants (e.g., the sweet pepper in the south bed): living things will do almost anything to keep living. The pepper plant had almost all of its leaves munched off and now has a completely new set. It’s probably a month behind everything else, but it’s pushing on. The onions were all dried up with only a small bit of green, but they perked right up and are thriving now.

In the small pots are basil and sage. I decided to put a few herbs in pots so I could move them around. I also wanted some of the space in the garden for vegetables. My successful herbs so far: oregano, rosemary, celantro, sage, basil, and dill. I expect the dill to volunteer next year if I let it go to see this year. That’s how it was back home. It grew in amongst the blackberry vines.

My larger pot which isn’t pictured here holds a small lemon tree. I decided to grow it in a container so I could bring it indoors if I had to in the winter. I’m thinking about planting some herbs around it though—perhaps a mint or two. In that case, I’d probably just bring it in under the porch and cover it with something if it threatened to freeze.

The tomatoes are doing well, especially the small cherry tomato plant. I’ve harvested eight tomatoes (about $0.17 worth at $2/lb for those keeping score), four of them today. I expect it to accelerate until I’m bringing quite a few in each day. The greens are growing nicely as well. I should be able to begin harvesting in another week or so. The spinach is still small—the slowest growing, it seems. I went ahead and planted some lettuce today in a couple empty squares. We’ll see how it does.

The spaghetti squash is growing the fastest of the squashes. It’s grabbing onto anything within reach, even the tomato plant a few squares over, which makes me think it should be trellised. We never did when I was younger. I’m not confident a trellis would handle the weight anyway. It will make mowing a bit of a challenge, but I might be able to just move it around as I mow. Worst case, I can get some straw or other material and make a bed for it outside the garden bed—something to allow good drainage so the squash doesn’t rot on the ground.

Eating Locally

2009-04-25T17:12:13Z

I’ve been meaning to start a series of posts documenting my own attempt to increase my local buying and how my garden impacts my expenses. I spent about $300 on the garden to get the tools I needed and some other one-time purchases as well as the actual soil components, boards, and seeds that I needed for each bed. For some reason, I can’t find my itemized receipts so that I can give a breakdown in expenses between one-time purchases and per-plot expenses, so that part will need to be on hold for a while. Almost all of the $300 was spent at Home Depot, a non-local, non-regional box store.

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Part of my goal is to see if I can get enough food out of the garden to make up for the expense of putting it in. I can also see which plants give more value for the space they take. I suspect tomatoes and spaghetti squash will be more valuable than radishes. So far, I’ve harvested 168 grams of radishes and about 30 grams of arugula. At $2.00/lb (today’s price for squash and tomatoes at the farmers market), that works out to about $0.88 of food. Not much against the $300 I spent, but I still have quite a few things maturing.

Today on Salon, Siobhan Phillips posted a wonderful story about her adventures in organic, ethical eating: “Can we afford to eat ethically?” She and her partner try to get by on a monthly budget of $248, the government’s stated maximum amount required for two people to eat healthy, buying sustainable, organic, local, and ethical (SOLE) food. They managed, barely, with $1.20 left over.

We tend to flourish when we have constraints. A novelist who must tell her story in a single day will probably produce a much richer experience for the reader than if she had all the time in the world. Forcing a story to take place in a day makes the time of day essential to the plot. The colors of the clouds and the wetness of the grass become integral parts of the scene. The way to work is a journey rich with memories.

So it is when we constrain our food budgets for whatever reason. When we are forced to have pasta every day, we find new ways to spice it up. We explore other cultures to see how they work with common ingredients. What are the ten ways to cook cabbage? The five ways to fix eggplant? The three ways to can pears?

When we plant a garden, we are committing ourselves to having a lot of whatever we planted. If we get bored quickly by it, then it is worth nothing more than the little we eat and the time we spend tending the plants.

I put in two spaghetti squash plants knowing that one is probably more than enough to feed me through the summer, but I also want to feed my partner and have some left over to experiment with. I plan on using it in place of pasta for some meals. Since canning isn’t recommended, I’ll probably freeze quite a bit of it. I’ll be looking for a chest freezer at some point this summer, I’m sure.

Between my garden, the farmers market, and local stores such as Village Foods, I suspect I’ll be able to spend most of my grocery money locally, providing a much larger impact on the local economy than if I spent my money at the regional or national chains. The garden will have little to no impact on my personal contribution to the local economy beyond the expense of building it, but it will have the indirect benefit of allowing someone else to make local purchases instead of having to spending money at the chains because I bought the “last” of something.

Future posts in this category will detail how much I spent in each of the categories: garden (hypothetical based on harvest), farmers market, local, regional, and national. This will include both groceries and restaurants since each impacts the other.

Do you keep track of your food expenses to see how they impact the economy? What tools do you use? I’m looking at a few iPhone and desktop applications, but haven’t found the perfect tool yet.

Garden Update - April 11

2009-04-11T18:13:58Z

It’s only been a few weeks since I planted everything, but I’m already starting to harvest. I expect everything to slowly ramp up over the next few weeks until I’m bringing in enough to eat most of the time. Hopefully I’ll have more than enough and be able to store some away for the winter. I’m going to try some canning, pickling, and freezing. Freezing is the easiest, but also the most dependent on modern technology—canned and pickled items can survive a power outage. We have pretty dependable power in B/CS, but we have had it out city-wide for most of a day before.

]]> [caption id=”attachment_120” align=”alignright” width=”225” caption=”Bed 1: the radishes are bursting out of their square!”][/caption]

The arugula was ready to pick almost immediately since I bought it as a seedling. It produces a few leaves each day that I pick and store away for the weekend. That gives me enough each week to do something with—add to a salad or flavor a soup. Picking the arugula stimulates it to grow more.

My radishes have been growing quicker than I expected. I picked one this morning. Quite tastey. Reading up on them, it seems the leaves are good in salads or cooked as greens. I tried the leaves of the radish I picked as a test—a little bitter, but not overwhelming enough to throw them out. I went ahead and picked nine others for use in a salad tomorrow. This thinned the square out a bit so the remaining ones should grow a bit bigger. I also planted a second square this morning so I should have more to harvest in a few weeks.

Several squares haven’t sprouted yet, so I replanted a few. Basil and thyme were complete duds. One cabbage withered away, so I replanted that one. The other is going strong. The dill almost all died—one plant is hanging on and growing—so I planted a few more dill.

We almost had a freeze early this week. I ran out to Home Depot and got some .7 mil plastic drop cloths (they’re hidden away in the paint section) and plant cages. I used to cages to hold the plastic up and used some old lumber from the shed to hold it down along the edges. I also got the tomato cages at the same time since I was starting to need them. I don’t have anything for the beans yet, but I have a few weeks before they get big enough to need support.

[caption id=”attachment_122” align=”alignleft” width=”225” caption=”Bed 2”][/caption]

The sweet marconi ross pepper plant took a beating right after I transplanted it. Something ate all of the leaves off. Fortunately, new leaves are coming out and it looks to have survived.

After taking these photos, I placed mulch around most of the plants that are large enough to be above the mulch. Digging down an inch or so, the soil is moist. The mulch should raise the moisture line a bit and help reduce the frequency of watering. If we get the rain that is in the forecast, we should be doing good.

The spinach, kolh rabi, and other greens look like they should be harvestable in a couple weeks. I’m looking forward to making my lunch each morning by going out and picking what looks good. I’ll be doing a parallel series of posts that discuss the cost of the garden, the value of what I’ve harvested, and how much I’m spending (or not spending) at local markets over the next few months. Hopefully, I’ll see money saved in the end.

The Do's and Don'ts and the Micro-garden

2009-03-30T19:37:14Z

Texas A&M University published a list of do’s and don’ts for home gardening. These seem aimed at the general gardener who uses the old rows method. How do these play out with a micro-garden that uses raised beds that are small enough that you can reach everything without stepping on the garden? Let’s look at the list.

]]> The following items on the list have nothing to do with the micro-garden. These gardens are designed not to use fertilizers other than compost and can be planted with bug-repelling plants. For example, I planted marigolds in each bed as general pest repellents and placed the cabbage next to the tomato plants. Micro-gardens also don’t plant too many of each kind, so thinning isn’t generally needed.

(Do) apply preplant fertilizer to garden area in recommended manner and amounts.
(Do) thin when plants are small.
(Do) avoid excessive walking and working in the garden when the foliage and soil are wet.
(Don’t) plant so closely that you cannot walk or work in the garden.
(Don’t) cultivate so deeply that plant roots are injured.
(Don’t) place fertilizer directly in contact with plant roots or seeds.
(Don’t) apply chemicals or pesticides in a haphazard manner or without reading the label directions.
(Don’t) use chemicals not specifically recommended for garden crops.
(Don’t) store leftover diluted spray.

That’s nine of the twenty things on the list. Forty-five percent of the things we need to watch out for are gone just because we are using raised beds, close plantings, and no chemical sprays or fertilizers.

What’s left on the list are things that we still need to pay attention to, but that I expect will be mitigated by how a micro-garden works.

Things that might take a small amount of time but shouldn’t be a nuisance:

Examine garden often to keep ahead of potential problems.
Keep garden free of insects, diseases, and weeds.
Keep records on garden activities.

Weeds aren’t going to grow much when you use the proper mix and plant everything close together. Weeds require unwanted seeds and sunlight, and the micro-garden is designed to minimize both for everything you don’t plant yourself. The micro-garden design also makes it easier to mix plants together so they protect each other (e.g., tomato plants with cabbage). I also find that the small plots make it easy to take quick photos with my iPhone, so I can keep a visual record of how everything is doing.

As far as I can tell, the rest of the items on the list (40% of the list) are just as important and take nearly as much time as any other garden design. Proper moisture, mulching, timing, etc., are the same regardless of how you space out the plants.

By micro-gardening, we’ve cut nearly in half the amount of stuff we have to worry about. Instead, we can focus on relaxing and enjoying the garden, as it should be.

First Light

2009-03-24T20:58:02Z

I went out to the garden yesterday evening to see how it was doing and got a nice surprise. The first radishes were poking their way through the soil only four days after planting. This afternoon, I found that the marigolds and cucumber had their first leaves above ground as well. Unfortunately, the marconi ross sweet pepper looked like something had nibbled on it. A few leaves remain, so we’ll see if it pulls through.

]]> [caption id=”attachment_90” align=”alignright” width=”225” caption=”Radishes five days after planting”][/caption]

I’m a little worried that things are sprouting this quickly. The radishes, for example, are supposed to take a week or two to germinate. They only took four days. I hope the soil mixture isn’t too hot and making them grow faster than is healthy. Worst case, of course, is that they die before they mature. Best case, I get food more quickly.

All of the other transplanted plants seem to be doing okay. The tomatoes are shooting up — especially the sweet 100s which had fruit on it already when I bought it at the farmers market.

I won’t be able to put any trellises in this weekend because of AggieCon 40, but I should have the first weekend in April free. The beans haven’t sprouted yet, so I should be okay.