TY Gets a Summer Helper

For those of you who didn't know, our niece Rebecca is staying with us this summer. She has an internship at Presbyterian Cancer Rehab & Wellness as a Copy Writing Specialist.  And she's participating in a work study program at TY's Veggie Garden (of course).  Her first lesson?  How to turn a compost pile (Tom wasted no time).

Tom gave her all the ins and outs of brown vs. green, this amount of water vs. that amount of air, etc. He was also envious of her tres chic hat than his functional broad brim.

Then she got to work, moving the contents of bin three into bin four.

And like the true Florida girl she is, she did all gardening in flip-flops.

And after about an hours worth of work, Rebecca had all contents moved into bin four.

Things are coming up in the garden!  Woo hoo!  Here we have a cucumber plant, a tomato plant and some cilantro...

 marigolds and Swiss chard...

nasturtiums and beets..

lima beans...

squash...

marigolds and dill...

soybeans...

basil...

peppers and tomatoes....

and potatoes.

What we've planted up to now has primarily been in boxes three & four.  This weekend we moved into box two and planted tomatoes, parsley, two different kinds of peppers, okra, and green beans.

Tom transplanted two of the mammoth squash plants into box two so they'd have plenty of room to spread out.

When we moved in there were two dirt patches the previous owner used for flowers.  The one in the backyard we are using for potatoes (which, as you saw above, is doing very well).  The one in the front yard we designated as the Great Pumpkin Patch. Rebecca and Tom planted seeds that we saved from last October's pumpkin.

They planted a LOT of seeds (about 30).  If all of them come up and produce pumpkins, we're going to have to open a pick-you-own pumpkin for the neighborhood kids.

Once I finished watering the boxes in the back with Jerry Baker's Green Up Tonic (beer, amonia, Karo syrup, plant food, and dish soap), I watered the pumpkins.  The white puddles on the ground form because of the dish soap in the Green Up Tonic.

Rebecca illustrated her idea of the size she believe the pumpins will grow. After the final watering we said a prayer around the pumpkin patch. The prayer was that our patch might be deemed the most sincere in all the land, productive, green, and of course full of pumpkins. If so, then on Halloween The Great Pumpkin will rise, fly through the air and take toys to all the children of the world. In the words of Linus, "I don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see." God willing. :)

~Y

Things are a bloomin'

Last weekend we were busy bees working in the yard.  We didn't post anything because most of the work was more like lawn maintenance than gardening (mowing, weed whacking, trimming hedges, mulching trees, etc.)

This weekend, however, it was back to the garden. We put our irrigation system to the test (see previous post) and IT WORKED.  The two rain barrels were full and were due for a downpour today so we emptied out the rain barrels into the garden via a "Y" connector and two soaker hoses. It took a while to empty them, but we did.  And, as you can see in this picture, there's some green stuff growing!

We didn't take pictures of everything, although everything HAS sprouted at this point.  Some things are still pretty small, but they're there.  Below are the limas which are taking off!

Chard and beets are doing well too (they both look the same at this stage so we just took the one photo).

Cucumbers starting out great....

and squash is off to a good start as well.

Tom's impatience with a lack of sprouting tomatoes and lettuce got the best of him. So he started 2 little containers of worm castings and planted the same tomatoes seeded in the garden beds, and the same kind of lettuce. As a test to see if the worm castings were good or bad for seed soil, he sowed even more tomatoes in potting soil. We'll be curious to find out if anything sprouts, and how long. It took 14-17 days for germination in the raised beds. Tom's betting the small containers will yield faster results ... but you never know until you try.

This picture was taken when we first moved in - a little less than one year ago. As we've been workin' the yard, we've sized up different areas to see what potential they have; where might be a good place for berry bushes, potato patches, pumpkin patches, cut flowers, etc.  We'd been keeping an eye to see what a patch off the carport might be good for, since we both hated the eons-old monkey grass it contained.  It gets about 2 or 3 hours of sun so it will be ideal for items that don't need full sun.  So two weekends ago when we were doing lawn maintenance, I moved all the cement blocks out of the way and started digging out the monkey grass.  I do believe this is one of the hardest manual labor jobs I've ever done! (She did an awesome job! :) ~T)

This weekend I got all of it out and re-arranged the cement to make a narrow bed.

Tom broke out the ol' Mantis Tiller and worked the dirt.  He threw in some wood ash and composted horse manure (courtesy of brother Dan and cherished horse Flamenco), a little muriate of potash, and the bed was ready to go!  We'll see how lettuce does here since lettuces will grow in partial shade.  Got the first lettuce seeds down.

There are two patches (one in the back yard and one in the front) that the previous owner used to plant flowers.  This one in the back yard is lined with the evil monkey grass so it will need to be dug up as well (Tom censored out Yvonne's cursing from this sentence ~ the editor).  For the time being I cut it down to nubs with the weed whacker.  We'll just keep mowing over it until we have a chance to dig it up.  In the meantime, Tom tilled the center and threw the same additives as in the lettuce bed (but more muriate of potash), then planted potatoes. (The potatoes Y speaks of ... well, they sat by our back door for a couple weeks way back in October. I never put them in the worm bin. Instead, I did the easier trick of placing them in our storage room, locking the door and forgetting about them. Lo and behold, the dang taters sprouted, in the dark! So why not plant those suckers and see what happens?)

When we moved in last year, we noticed this tree along the back fence.  We're pretty sure it's a pecan tree but some kind of funk got to it and we never really saw what these "fruits" turned into.  We're going to do some research on it and try and manage the funk and bugs to see what we can get it to produce.

Here is a more up close shot of the "fruit".

Toms has been working the compost and it is moving along.  Two weekends ago he put all the grass clippings in the bin on the right and the piles already reduced by 2 feet.  About every 7 days or so he turns the pile. It has a sweet smell, and we're still adding to it. He waters a little along the way so the microbes will be moist enough to eat away at the pile. Last week he watered the pile in stages for the first time, and in one week the pile really heated up. It was almost too hot to hold throughout the pile, as he turned it. (He insisted I take this photo as he's crazy about making dirt.)

~Y

A Second Planting for 2010

This weekend we started by spreading the compost from the first two boxes...

among all four boxes.

Once that was done, we made our way to Atlantic Landscaping and picked up two loads of dirt: one Garden Blend and one Garden Blend with Mushroom Compost.  This place has all kinds of soil, compost, and gravel.

We paid for the soil inside a small office, then drove around back where a guy in this little contraption scooped up a load of dirt and....

dumped it into the back of our truck.

We brought it home....

and spread it in the boxes. One truck load of dirt finished up filling one box.

So we got two boxes filled and ready to go.

Tom had taken a Ph reading, using a Christmas gift no less, and determined the soil was somewhat acidic ... interestingly, moreso in the bin with mushroom compost (5.0 in that one, 6.0 in the one without). So he added wood ash we've been saving from our fall/winter fires, and a little bit of muriate of potash.  He got it all mixed in and we were just about ready to plant.

I used this handy, dandy tool that the Mahony's also gave Tom for Christmas to mark off the appropriate amount of space for each bed.  The tool is exactly 12".

We used masking tape to temporarily mark where each set of seeds would be planted.

Then we got busy getting Spring and Summer seeds in the beds.

 

A good drink of water to encourage the little guys to get moving.

The last things we added to the bed were markers to indicate what we planted, which is as follows:

Bed #4

marigolds, dill, eggplant, thyme, borlloti beans, basil, okra, rosemary, peppers, basil, tomatoes.

Bed #3

squash, parsley, limas, poppies, beets, nasturtium, chard, marigolds, lettuce, cilantro, cucumbers, tomatoes.

Then we topped the two boxes with a hi-tech anti-cat device, a.k.a. fencing, for our the never-ending procession of tomcats in our back yard.

Still "Plowing" Ahead

Bad soil.

Well not so much bad soil, as the wrong mix of soil.

That's what we determined the problem is. Using our powers of observation, a little help from our fellow suburban micro gardeners (thank you Bob), and a bit of info from the city compost mill, we determined that the compost we used to plant our seeds is not sufficient to grow vegetables.  It's a good "addition" to the NC clay-like soil, but it doesn't have enough body to support a root system for veggies or flowers.

So Tom called another local place that sells dirt (again, thank you Bob) and found out what we need.  This week we will spread the compost we currently have among the four boxes (see below), then top them with the dirt we'll pick up this week.

In the meantime, we got busy "plowing" ahead with numerous other tasks to keep our forward progress in motion.

I learned how to weed whack.  Not very good at it yet, but Tom sure was excited that I was interested in learning how to use this piece of lawn equipment.  Something about moving on to the sidewalks and driveways?  Don't know what he could mean by that. ??

We worked on our irrigation system. We have one hose running from each rain barrel with a "Y" splitter at the end.

From the "Y" splitter we attached soaker hoses which will go into the boxes (once we have new dirt).  Each rain barrel has this hose configuration so that all four boxes can be watered from the rain barrels.  What will we do when we have a yard full of boxes?  Who knows, but this will work for now.

We bought enough wood to build two more boxes.

This will be it for box building this year.

I was supervising at this point.

Break time is over.... gotta fill the boxes with leaves.

The other project we worked on this weekend was the compost bins. We purchased a roll of 4'x50', hardwire cloth (that's what it's called).  We played around with different configurations.  This one was three big bins.

Tom didn't like that too much - too big.  So we cut the fencing in half and figure-eighted each to create four  smaller bins.  He liked this better because it gives him more bins to play with and it allows the material to build up higher and "cook" faster.

He was a pretty darn happy camper to fill up the first bin with two weeks worth of grass clippings.

Excess leaves from the fall got put into bins 1, 2 & 4, then a drink of water for all.  Bin 3 is left open for more green yard waste to be filled at a later time.

~Y

Things not going so well

Things at TYs Veggie Garden are not doing so well.  It's been six weeks since the first planting and things haven't progressed. Seeds have broken ground, but that's about it.  By now, we should be seeing some decent plants. Unfortunately all we have are itty-bitty, two-leaf sprouts.

Our first theory is that the beds weren't getting enough water. So we started watering every other day. More water has caused a few more seeds to come through, but clearly nothing to get excited about.

Another theory we have is that the unseasonably hot weather over the last two weeks is stunting the growth of these cold-weather seeds. Maybe the hotter weather is just too much for these guys. As of last night, the temperature has dropped back to normal Spring temperatures so we'll see if this helps.

Another theory is that maybe the compost we bought from the city need some dirt added to it. Next time we'll mix in some other kind of dirt with the compost and see how that works.

And the last theory we have is that maybe we should have stared the seeds inside about a month earlier and transplanted the plants. We weren't really prepared to start seeds indoors this year because by the time we started focusing on the garden, seeds would have needed to be started already and we had boxes to build.

This weekend we'll build one more box and that will be it for box building this year.  We'll also plant some seeds in small pots and see if those do any better. We're scheduled for a a third planting for Spring then on to summer veggies and herbs in May.

A spot of good news... we have an apple tree in our yard.  Only thing we know about it is that the apples are SUPER tart and may only be good for applesauce or cooking. We didn't get around to pruning it in the Fall so it's a bit too tall at the moment.  But we'll do some work on the tree as the apples come in and see if we can do anything productive with the fruit.

Everywhere there is one of these white flowers, we should have an apple.

~Y