A Productive Day

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel like you've done nothing?  Not the good kind of doing nothing that follows spring exams or a hard week at work, but an unjustified day of nothing that you end in a slump.  Well, today was one of those days.

Thankfully, a garden is productive even on days when I'm not.  It's one of the reasons that doing laundry is my favorite chore - throw in the clothes, and you're being productive for a whole hour, even if you don't do anything else!  

I did make the effort of spreading out the pine straw that had washed due to yesterday's torrential rain (and even a little hail), checked and moved the mole trap (nothing to report), and weeded some of the raised beds.  I was delighted to discover that none of

the plants washed away, and even the sweet potatoes planted below the raised bed weren't boggy.  Equally as exciting is the evidence that I may soon be able to enjoy more of the produce of my garden.  Little squashes showed up several days ago, and today I discovered that the Lincoln peas have started to produce little flat pods!  The potato plants have flowered, too, which I read means that they have potatoes to unearth!  So at least something had a productive day :)

The Mole Hole

I went out to do a garden check-up today and a little weeding.  I've been weeding all week, as dozens of tiny weeds have sprung up all over the soft soil in my raised beds.  But more about that later. 

Weeds, I can deal with.  The newest residents in my garden are far more destructive, and I started noticing signs of them earlier this week: A couple of pea vines chewed off at the roots.  Loose soil.  Starting today, however, I found my garden riddled with holes, and tunnels squished wherever I stepped; half the carrots were no longer firmly rooted.  Moles.  

I started looking passively into the reviews of mole traps online, but after this morning, I knew it was time to take the leap.  Sonic repellants had gotten poor reviews, and organic gardening ruled out poison.  A book on companion gardening, Louis Riotte's Carrots Love Tomatoes, recommended castor bean plants, but the warning about their extreme toxicity were not comforting, especially since I have pets.  

The trap reviews seemed frankly bloodthirsty - one gave a detailed chronology of each and every mole killed.  I opted for the only one at Home Depot.  Thankfully it was not one of the tube-shaped options which requires inserting directly into the mole tunnel.  It was super-easy to set, and I hope it is equally easy to take care of my mole problem.  I never thought that I'd be someone to kill an animal so complacently, so we'll see how I feel if I actually catch one.  I'll certainly feel better if I don't have to see the holes in my garden anymore, however!

May

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to take a break from the tedious chronological format that I've taken up and jump right to the present day.  There's still a lot that I want to cover from April and early May, including my grow light, the construction of the tipsy pots, and transplanting the seedlings - but everything is always more exciting as it is happening!  I marvel at authors who can conjure up the emotions of events long-past with the freshness of today (I'm thinking of you, Kristin Kimball, of The Dirty Life).  But I believe that these posts will be much more interesting if I write them as they occur and take short side trips into the garden set-up.

Today was fertilizer day.  I've read that supplying good soil nutrients is even more important when the amount of sunlight a plant receives is limited, so I'm reassured of my original plan to fertilize every two weeks.  Neptune's Harvest fish fertilizer had been recommended in one of the books that I'd read, and it was available at my local hardware store.  Next time I'll opt for the formula that includes seaweed, but so far I'm pleased.  It's also a low nitrogen fertilizer; if overused, nitrogen will encourage leaf and stem growth, but not fruit bearing.  Since I added blood meal (high in nitrogen) at the beginning of the season, this fertilizer is perfect.  My mom's worry that it would make the herbs taste like fish, especially with foliar feeding, turned out to be groundless.  Of course, I do have to make sure not to get the fertilizer/water mixture on my clothes or skin if I'm going anywhere - it does make them smell like fish! 

It's amazing how much everything has grown.  When I get frustrated by how slowly things seem to be progressing, the pictures I've taken bring everything back into perspective.  The potatoes, especially, have taken off in the past six weeks!

The potatoes on the left are Yukon Gold, and the ones on the right are Red Pontiac - I've since discovered that the reds, at least, are fairly heat tolerant.  Thank goodness, since we've had a crazily hot spring!  They are planted in a mixture of peat moss and compost, and the containers are chicken wire on top of a weed prevention fabric.  

I can't wait to share more pictures of how the plants are growing.  I'm still battling a lack of sun, slugs, a million tiny weeds, and a mole digging mazes in my peas, but I love every minute that I spend in my garden.  

Dig In

I had decided to try a raised bed this year.  Our yard is a hill with the garden plot at the bottom - the top gets more sun and has better drainage, but to turn it into a garden plot would mean uprooting my dad's beloved lawn.  So, I work with what I have - the natural area at the back corner of the lot.  The spring rain in 2013 completely flooded our garden, and what didn't drown, the happy slugs devoured.  So, a raised bed it was, both for drainage and to keep pests out.  Thankfully, we rarely have to deal with anything bigger than insects.  

Maximizing the small space that we had became my priority.  And, it had to be aesthetically pleasing - something my mother insisted on.  We found fence pieces at Lowe's inexpensively in six foot lengths, and the Octogarden was born.  I started by digging up the soil, shovel by shovel, and turning it over.  Double-digging is suggested to aerate the soil, especially for crops like asparagus.  But I didn't approach it in textbook fashion with three trenches.  I have a bad habit of simply taking the general idea of something and being too impatient to analyze it closely.  I just want to get started!

I was happy to have the planks laid out in a rough octagonal shape and staked as they were.  My mom, however, ever the planner, measured angles and lengths until it was a much more respectable semblance of a regular octagon.  Thanks, Mom!

To the left of the initial shape above you can see the Tipsy Pots that we later moved to the center of the bed.  I'll cover their construction in a later post.  

The Trouble with Seedlings

I was pleased that the majority of my seedlings had germinated a little over a week after they were planted, firmly within their germination period.  I was still waiting on the lavender, with an unbelievable germination period of 15-20 days.  I've since noticed that flowers and herbs, on average, have a much longer germination period than vegetables, which doesn't jive well with my lack of patience!

By early April, I felt that the 3 inch tall cucumber seedlings were ready to transplant.  Hardening off is suggested for seedlings that have been started indoors - placing the seedlings outside for increasing amounts of time each day so that they adjust to harsher outdoor conditions; this limits the possibility of transplant shock.  I started putting the seedlings outside for a little while on sunny days, but certainly not with the organized progression of time that I should have.

Some of the other seedlings were showing sign of legginess, growing tall and thin instead of sturdy, which I attributed to poor light.  At this point I started pondering the possibility of getting a grow light to supplement their growth, but grow lights are very expensive, and I was making an effort at not going crazy with extras for my new obsession.

The radish seedlings were also showing signs of damping off, falling over at soil level, likely a result of my own over-watering and my choice of top soil for the planting medium.  Top soil has too many nutrients and bacteria for a sensitive seedling, and I have since moved to a mixture of peat moss, compost, and perlite.  Vermiculite, or worm castings, is also suggested, but it's so darn expensive that I haven't used it.

While the seedlings were struggling along, my mom and I were also doing the work of preparing the raised bed in the backyard for eventual planting.

Photo: Amazon.com

Get Growing

Where to start?

In mid-March, with spring just around the corner in the southeast and warm weather on my mind due to an upcoming Caribbean vacation, I decided to plant a garden.

People that know me well would take a deep breath at this point, as I'm known to dive into my latest obsession quickly and with endless enthusiasm.  Since my college graduation four years ago, I've spent a year in Greece, fostered kittens, delved into baking, and tried my hand at refinishing furniture.  Each new passion flared and then fizzled within a year, leaving me with new skills but nothing to occupy my time.  This inevitability, however, does nothing to keep me from jumping headfirst into my next new project.  So I jumped.

I usually limit my planting to plants purchased from Wal-Mart and the local hardware store, Renfrow's.  But in March, I couldn't wait.  And I wanted to be more specific about what I planted - the varieties I could get already sprouted wouldn't do.  Inspired by a book I'd found at the library (where else, as a new librarian?), I decided to purchase seeds and sprout them myself.  From Vertical Vegetables & Fruits: Creative Gardening Techniques for Growing Up in Small Spaces, I selected the varieties I wanted to grow: Patio Baby Eggplants, French Orange Hybrid Melons, National Pickling Cucumbers, Lincoln Peas, Blue Lake Beans, and Waltham Butternut Squash.  I also sprung for strawberry plants so that I could have the Mara des Bois variety, a hybrid developed in France.  Then, I waited anxiously for their arrival.

Just days before I was leaving town, the seeds arrived.  I looked through the envelope giddily, reading seed packages and opening them to inspect the seeds.  I had just enough time to plant the seeds in their individual peat pots and drop them off with my grandfather to "babysit" for the week that I was away.  I supplemented with seed packets that I'd picked up while waiting: Sugar Snap peas, Early Scarlet Globe radishes, Purple Coneflowers, Red Cored Chantenay carrots, True Lavender, and a Lettuce blend.

I chose peat pots for easy transplanting (plus they looked very garden-y) and used bagged top soil, estimating with my fingers the proper planting depths provided on the seed envelopes.  With instructions to keep them well-watered, they were left in the kitchen window, and I set out for a warmer climate.

Photo: Amazon.com