Author farmeramyPosted on

Garden Report: May 6

This weekend was all about getting the garden in good shape before we go on vacation in a few days.  I setup a sprinkler with a timer to make sure my young plants get plenty of water.  Despite a few fails, things are going well.

This weekend, I planted:

  • Corn – I planted a 7’x3′ plot of corn in bed #2.  In 2 weeks, I will plant the pole beans that will climb the corn stalks (along with the spaghetti squash that will be my ground cover).
  • Tomatoes – My 3 ailing Rebekah Allen tomato seedlings didn’t make it (but all of my other varieties seem to be doing great).  So, I planted some more from seed.  If those don’t come up, I will buy 3 seedlings at the store to replace them.
  • Tea Herbs – I have a small ladder planter that I built using left over fence pickets a couple years ago.  I planted seeds for mint, lavender, thai basil, and 2 types of lemon balm.
  • Zucchini & Yellow Squash – I put some small mounds of dirt in the spinach and kale space to start the summer squash.  By the time it’s big enough to take up the space, it will be hot and the spinach and kale will be done for the Spring.

I harvested: lettuce, kale, spinach, and radishes.

I still have growing: lettuce, spinach, kale, boy choy, cabbage, carrots, radishes, tomatillos, tomatoes, peas, sweet potatoes.

I am still planning to plant: beans, green beans, spaghetti squash, blackberries, sunflowers, cucumbers.

Photos from Around the Garden

Look, it’s me being weird:

Greens & radish harvest:

Planting corn:

Planting zucchini & yellow squash (amongst my spinach and kale):

First tomatillo flowers:

I do grow some flowers (at the behest of my wife).  I spent some time treating our rose bushes this weekend, and one of them has already started blooming:

Author farmeramyPosted on

First Fails of the Season

Lest ye think I’m the best gardener ever, I fail constantly in the garden.  It’s the beginning of May, and I have already failed at the following.

Blackberries

Despite my research and planning, my 3 blackberry seedlings are dead.  Our last frost came later than expected in April and wiped out my blackberries.  I’ll have to buy more and start again.

Bed #2

Bed #2 continues to be challenged.  This is the bed that I double-dug in addition to digging out a border and filing it with planting soil for my carrots.  The double digging already had one bad side effect – surfacing a ton of rocks.  But this past week, I discovered another side effect – clover.

The bed is covered in clover.  This weekend, I removed a lot of it with a hand cultivator so I could plant my corn.  I read a lot of conflicting opinions on whether or not clover was beneficial to your garden.  But since I am doing 3-sisters in bed #2, squash will be my ground cover.  So, I definitely don’t need the clover, and it seems to be colonizing.

Pea & Tomato Co-Planting

I thought my peas would be mostly done by the time I was transplanting my tomatoes.  But the late-lasting cold delayed my pea sprouts while my indoor tomato seedlings were going gangbusters.  So, my pea and tomato plants are about the same height right now and are trying to co-exist in the same place.

In the image above, there is a tomato plant behind each pole – the poles will support the tomatoes as they grow.  But I used the same poles for the pea netting.  The pea plants are the row in the very front.

Most likely, I am going to need to pull out the peas before I get much off of them or I’ll be sacrificing my tomato plants.

3 fails down, more to come!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Start a Garden

Starting a garden is easier than most people expect.  There a few key things you need to get started.

  • Pick a Location
  • Choose Your Bed Type
  • Enrich Your Soil
  • Know Your Zone
  • Select Your Plants
  • Plan Your Layout
  • Plant!

Pick a Location

You have to put your garden somewhere.  That somewhere should have:

  • Sun – Your garden should ideally get at least 8 hours of sun each day.
  • Water Accessible – You’re going to need to water your garden. A lot.  So, make sure it’s easy to get water to the garden.
  • Critter Free – This isn’t easy – there are animals everywhere.  Even in DC, I have possums, raccoons, community cats, birds, and squirrels that visit our backyard.  Our wild animals are few and small enough that some natural animal repellant around the garden does the trick.  But if you live somewhere with more and bigger animals, you might consider some sort of fencing and/or netting around your garden.

Choose Your Bed Type

Your garden beds are where the magic happens.  There are a few options based on your space.

  • Directly in the Ground – Classic, simple.  The ground is made of dirt.  Block out a section and grow things in the ground.
  • Raised Beds – Raised beds have a border that lifts them above the ground.  They can range from a few inches to a few feet tall.  The biggest benefits of raised beds are that they have built-in drainage that keeps plants from drowning and you don’t have to bend over as far to tend them.  I have slightly raised beds that are framed by 2×6 pieces of lumber.  I recommend getting some pressure treated lumber or another weather resistant material (like corrugated steel) and building your own.  You can buy kits, but they will generally be smaller and pretty expensive.  I have 3 low beds that cover 100 square feet. I only used some decking screws and 9 pieces of 2x6x8 pressure treated lumber (about $70 – less than the typical $100 I have seen for one 4’x4′ kit), and they have lasted over 3 years.
  • Containers – If you have a very small or awkward space that doesn’t lend itself to big beds, there’s a lot you can do with containers.  I still do some container gardening for my potatoes, and I just use cheap 5 gallon buckets.  If you want something more attractive than that, there are lots of options for containers and grow bags.  My first garden in Indianapolis was on a porch in a courtyard using grow bags similar to these.  And even in that little garden, I was able to grow tomatoes, zucchini, and other large vegetables.

There are other options like hydroponics and aquaponics that have their own benefits, but my knowledge is limited on these, and for me these would be much more difficult of a lift than growing things in the dirt.  Probably not the right fit for a starter garden.

Enrich Your Soil

If you are growing in the ground, you should test the soil to make sure the pH is acceptable for growing vegetables. I don’t have a favorite test, so just grab one at the hardware or garden store or search Amazon. If the soil isn’t rich enough, the cheapest option is to add some fertilizer.

Or if you’re lazy (like me), looking for something quick, and/or you need to fix a raised bed or containers, the best option is usually to source some planting soil that you can add as a top layer of soil to the ground or fill your bed/container.  Garden-ready soil is rock free and doesn’t need to be tilled.  You can buy bags of soil or you can look for a cheaper local option.  I usually buy a few bags at Costco each year to add a top layer.  Buying dirt can get expensive though – especially if you are filling new containers or raised beds.  When I first built my beds, I made a bunch of trips to the Fort Totten Waste Transfer Station, which provides free mulch and soil to DC residents.  Look for a similar option in your local area.

Finally, your soil needs to be loose so your plants can easily extend their new roots as deep as they need to.  So, use a hoe, shovel, or tiller to break up the dirt at least 6-8″ down.

Know Your Zone

Climate is critical.  When you plant and harvest your vegetables depends on the weather in your area.  You can get guidance based on your garden zone.  You can consult the USDA site here to learn your zone.

Then, just Google search “zone # garden schedule” and you will find a lot of great information on when to plant in your zone.  For example, I am in zone 7.  One of the first search results I get is this very helpful schedule.

Select Your Plants

This is where the fun really starts!  What do you like to eat?  Now that you know your zone number, you can do some googling to get all the info you could ever need about when you should plant and any special considerations you need to know.  For your first time gardening, I would pick a few favorite things and focus on those.  My garden now contains around 20 different fruits and vegetables, but my first garden only had 4-5 things in it.

If you want, you can make this process really complex (like I did this year with the Reitz Farm Value Index), but it doesn’t have to be.  Just pick some things you like and try to grow them!

Depending on the time of year, you can grow from seeds or seedlings.  Seeds are cheaper and work best if you are starting early in the planting season (based on your zone).  Seedlings are baby plants that you can buy at your local hardware or garden store.  They are a little more expensive, but they are easier to grow and have a jump start (which helps if you are planting later in the season).  If it’s your first time growing a garden, I highly recommend using seedlings.

In my opinion, some of the best plants for new gardeners are:

  • Radishes – They grow super fast!  If you plant seeds, you will have radishes ready to pick in 30 days.
  • Lettuce & Greens – Also super easy and quick to grow.  And you always need fresh lettuce.
  • Tomatoes – These take a little more work, but there is nothing better than fresh, homegrown tomatoes.
  • Corn – I can’t believe how few home gardeners grow corn! Corn doesn’t really work in containers, but it’s great in garden beds.  I usually do a small 4′ x 4′ patch, so you don’t need a lot of space.  And one of the highlights of the summer for me is picking a couple ears of corn and throwing them straight onto the grill.

Plan Your Layout

Seed packets and seedlings will come with instructions for planting.  Most of these instructions assume you are planting them in long rows.  If you have a lot of space, this makes a lot of sense.

If you are planting in small plots in your backyard, I recommend square foot gardening.  It’s an easy way to plan and maximize your space.  The basic premise is breaking your beds into square foot sections and then planting a maximum number of each plant type in each square foot.  You can Google “square foot gardening” to learn more.  I liked this simple overview.

Plant!

Now you’re ready.  Plant your seeds and/or seedlings!  If planting seeds, pay attention to the instructions on how deep to plant them.  But don’t worry too much, no need to measure exactly, just approximate.

Water your new plants regularly.  For seeds and seedlings the ground should always be damp – don’t let it dry out.

As your pants grow, you’ll need to do things like fertilizing, thinning, harvesting, etc.  But you’ll figure it out as you go.  And some of your plants will do great!  And some might not do so great.  But that’s ok – as long as you’re trying, you will only get better with time.

Happy gardening!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Project REDO

I have to imagine that most people’s wives do not text them out of the blue to ask if they are interested in acquiring elephant waste.

Apparently, the Smithsonian has partnered with a group at Cornell to figure out how to better dispose of all of the elephant waste that is created daily at the National Zoo.  So, they setup an industrial composter at a Smithsonian facility (conveniently just a couple miles from our house) to compost the waste.  They’ve dubbed it Project REDO – Recycling Elephant Doo Organically.

A week ago, they had a day during which Smithsonian employees could pick up some compost.  So, of course we went.  We put some buckets in the back of my car.  I also brought a shovel and paper bags to cover my car mats.  I didn’t know how much of a mess to expect.

But it turns out, there was no mess!  Some nice gentlemen filled our buckets up directly from the industrial composter.

I only got enough to put on one bed.  Bed 1 is full of greens that constantly touch the dirt, and Bed 2 has root vegetables.  Neither of those seemed like things I would want in elephant poop.  So, I added it to Bed 3, which is  where my tomato plants were just transplanted.  Hoping for some elephant-sized tomatoes this year!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Garden Report: April 30

The weather has been all over the place for the last month.  Our last Spring frost came a little over two weeks later than usual.  That’s made it very difficult for my poor little seedlings to figure out what’s going on.

As of last weekend, everything has been transplanted outside.  My indoor seedlings did amazing!  Turns out all those years of poor results were because of the lack of sunlight.  So, the UV light was the perfect addition.

Currently, the following crops are growing outside:

  • Lettuce (red leaf, butter heads, romaine) – Have harvested some red leaf lettuce and head lettuce is getting close.
  • Spinach – Have harvested baby leaves a couple times.
  • Kale – Have harvested baby leaves a couple times.
  • Bok Choy – Planted seeds last week.
  • Radishes – 1-2 weeks until harvest.
  • Carrots – Seedlings have sprouted, still tiny, have not yet thinned.
  • Tomatillos – Transplanted last week – nearly a foot tall.
  • Tomatoes – Transplanted last week – all in good shape except my red variety – Rebekah Allen.
  • Peas – Finally starting to climb the trellis – vines around 8″ tall.
  • Sweet Potatoes – Transplanted last week.

Sweet Potatoes:

I’ve been able to harvest greens a couple times and have more to be harvested over the next couple days!  Things seem to be going well now as the weather is steadily, if not slowly, warming.

Author farmeramyPosted on

Grit

No, not Grit magazine – although I highly recommend it if, like me, you like to dream about having a wonderful little farm.

I’m at a conference for work listening to a keynote by Angela Duckworth.  I’ve been familiar with her work for a number of years because it has been very prevalent in the student success circles I’m active in.

She started with a couple of statements that are indicators of grit, such as “I am a hard worker.”  But then moved to some that were less obvious, such as having persistent interests that span years or remaining invested and committed during a project that takes longer than 3 months.

Immediately, I thought, “oh no, maybe I’m not as gritty as I thought.”  I love starting projects.  But I’m always thinking about what’s next.  I’m impatient – once a project starts I am anxious for it to finish and want it to do so as quickly as possible.  This is especially true at work – just ask my development team who have to put up with me constantly asking, “Does it really take that long to do it?”

I’m a big fan of the Gallup StrengthsFinder.  My top 5 strengths are: Strategic, Competitive, Achiever, Activator, Futuristic.  There are definitely some strengths in those first few that drive me to complete things, but those last two mean that I love to think about the future and get things started.  Maybe not the strongest indicators of grit.

But then I realized – gardening and beekeeping – the things that give me physical grit in life may also be contributing to my emotional grit.  When a stranger asks me, “do you love what you do?” as Duckworth asks, my answer for gardening is “Oh my god, yes.”  I can talk about gardening and beekeeping for hours (which is not always appreciated by those I’m conversing with).

These are things I stay invested in year over year.  Gardening is never instant gratification.  Especially relevant to me right now as we plan to plant apple trees in our front yard that won’t fruit for years or immediately after I’ve planted blackberry bushes that won’t yield anything until next year.  Sometimes, it’s a long term investment.

And even for the things that grow more quickly, the return is variable.  Sometimes you do everything right and your yield is poor or nonexistent.  Sometimes you do everything wrong and you end up with more tomatoes than you know what to do with.

For someone like me, that’s an important lesson.  It’s grounding.  It’s gritty.

So, I guess the moral is: You should garden!  Your kids should garden!  Everyone should garden!  It makes us better people.

Author farmeramyPosted on

Garden Report: April 1

The Spring is starting to get underway!  My indoor seedlings (tomatoes, tomatillos, and purple cabbage) continue to grow.  The leaves started yellowing on some of the tomatoes.  They have plenty of water and light, so I added some fertilizer – hopefully that helps.

Outside, I have seedlings galore!  Despite having bought and planted lettuce and spinach seedlings last weekend, I also have new seedlings popping up from the seeds I had planted a few weeks prior.  So, I may have been a bit impatient on that one.  But I’d rather have more plants than no plants.

Peas:

Carrots & Radishes:

Bed #1 (lettuce, spinach, kale):

This weekend, I also followed my blackberry plan to the letter.  The only deviation was that I wasn’t paying close enough attention at the hardware store and picked up a 10′ 2″x6″ instead of 12′.  So, I adapted and made the beds into triangles instead of squares.

I think the little beds and trellis came out great!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Planning for Blackberries

I’ll be growing blackberry bushes for the first time this year.  I actually don’t like blackberries (or any berries for that matter), which I understand is apparently criminal.  To atone for my sins, I will be growing some blackberries for my wife and berry-loving friends.

I ordered a 3-pack of Sweetie Pie blackberry plants from Baker Creek, and they arrived today.

I wish I could say I consciously chose Sweetie Pie after a ton of research, but that would be a lie.  However, since receiving the seedlings, I have done a a very little bit of reading to better understand what I need to do to create the best conditions for them.  Here are the key things I learned:

  • Specially bred by the USDA to be resistant to a common fungal disease (Rosette)
  • Thornless!
  • Very sweet
  • Should probably grow with the support of a trellis

We’ve decided to grow our blackberries along the fence that runs behind the garden beds (pictured on the left in the photo below).

The fence will serve as a backboard, and I can construct a simple wire trellis that sticks out from the fence. I took my trellis inspiration from this diagram via Just Fruits and Exotics.  By using the pre-existing fence, I can avoid putting new posts in the ground.

I’m going to secure some simple wall mount shelf brackets into my fence posts and string some garden wire between them.  I will create small 1′ x 1′ beds on the ground bordered by pressure treated 2×6 lumber.  The small beds will provide a base for each blackberry bush that edges out the rubber mulch that surrounds my garden beds.  All together, the materials should only cost around $25.

As for transplanting the blackberry seedlings, it’s still a little too cold out.  So, I will keep them inside with my tomato seedlings until it’s warmer.  Once they’re transplanted, I’ll be taking inspiration from this very helpful Southern Living article on how to train the bush and trim the canes to maximize yield.

Author farmeramyPosted on

First Seeds of the Season!

I planted my first seeds of the year on March 4 this year.  My indoor seeds are growing great, and my outdoor seeds have been struggling.  Let’s start with the bad news.

Outdoor

On March 4, I planted kale, spinach, carrot, radish, and pea seeds in the garden after prepping the soil.  On March 17, I added lettuce and a second round of carrots and radishes.

By March 24, I had no sprouts.  We’ve had some crazy weather – vacillating between 60 degree days and 5″ of snow.  I don’t know if that has thrown them off or if something else is going on.

So, I got impatient and bought some starts/seedlings of lettuce, spinach and kale.

I did have 3-4 tiny radish sprouts from the first round of planting, but they were looking very weak.  So, I sifted the top few inches of soil from the carrot bed (getting rid of more rocks) and replanted my radishes and carrots.  I did switch to carrot seed tape that I bought at the store instead of the Baker Creek seeds.

I was going to replant my peas as well, but I loosened some soil around them and found sprouts under the surface getting ready to emerge.  So, I left them alone and hopefully they’ll emerge this week.

Indoor

I have historically had horrible luck with indoor starts.  I try to plant tomato seeds indoors every year, and every year I have to go buy starts because my indoor seeds fail.  I’ve come to realize we don’t get enough sunlight into our house for seedlings.

So, this year, I am using the UV light from a retail hydroponic garden to give the seedlings light around the clock.  My wife is not thrilled about the constant LED light running in our dining room, but it’s working!

I have healthy tomatillo, tomato, and red cabbage starts!

Side note – My seedling pots are made of newspaper.  So, I can just transplant them directly into the garden and the roots will grow through the newspaper.  I made them using this super cool, old-school pot maker that my mom bought for me on Amazon last year.

Here’s to hoping that we are done with snow and my outdoor seedlings can start making more progress!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Spring Garden Prep

During the first weekend of March, I prepped my garden beds for the Spring.  And by “I” I mean “we” because my wife fortunately helped due to the back-breaking nature of garden tilling.

This year, I wanted to double-dig my garden beds to really churn the dirt.  So, Chrissi started by loosening the top soil with a twist tiller.

I followed with a shovel – digging down 8-10″ throughout the beds.

In bed #1, we added a layer of new (store-bought) top soil.  In bed #2, I dug a moat around the edges where I would be growing carrots and filled the moat with top soil – intending to have as few rocks as possible (rocks impede carrot growth).  In bed #3, I added some excess old soil from bed #2.

What I didn’t anticipate is that digging much deeper than usual would surface a lot of rocks.  Seriously, a lot of rocks.  And debris – lots of old glass, tile, and misc broken objects from the former owners and/or flippers of our house.

It’s now 3 weeks later and I am still having rock problems.  I spent this weekend using a queen excluder from my beekeeping equipment as a sifter to try to remove more of the surface rock.

My only other prep for the year was some minimal structure building (as noted previously most of the upward growing will be accomplished through co-planting this year).

So, I used 8′ stakes to build my tomato structure.  There are tomato cages at each end for tomatillo plants.  And I’ve added some netting for my pea plants, which will grow in the same space and be removed when it’s tomato time.