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

Tiny bits of green and rainbarrels

There are tiny bits of green that have broken through, but as of last week when I took pictures, they were too small to see on a photo.  We've had some rain and good bit of watering so next weekend there should be some decent photos to illustrate the progress.

Last weekend we planted broccoli, onions, garlic, more lettuce, and cauliflower.

In January we purchased two rain barrels from the City of Charlotte and last weekend it was time to install them. Tom started by removing the brace from the wall.

Then he removed the downspout part of the gutter...

and sawed it off at the right length

Then he attached a plastic, adjustable piece that can be used to direct the rain into the barrel. He installed both rain barrels just in time for a downpour. One barrel was completely full, the other about half. Then it was time to test one of them out. He hooked up a hose to the spout at the bottom of the barrel...

turned the valve on and....

 

 WATER!

The rate in which the water came out was pretty darn slow (about one gallon per minute), so it took a while to water the entire bed. Tom watered one bed with 30 gallons which was about half of one barrel. Next step will be to put a "Y" joint at the end of the hose and run a soaker hose to each bed. Then we'll simply just  open the valve and let it run at its own pace.

2010 Garden Begins at New House!

It's here! It's here! We've stared at the date on our calendar since November and it's finally here!

I got our dirt at Mecklenburg County's "Compost Central", which as it turns out was just a mile and a half from where I work. So during lunch one day, I got a big-@ssed load of county compost, a.k.a. "black gold", and prayed I'd make it home safely. I did, though my truck drove completely weird. I think I was a bit overloaded. The next day I got another load, and that bulldozer operators skimped a a bit when filling my truck bed, so altogether I think between the two loads we evened out.

No, that's not from a giant mole. Rather, it's compost pile, load #1.

Then Yvonne and I sat down for a contentious round of on-the-spot game-changing planning ... as in something like 3 hours! However, Yvonne didn't just want to start digging in the dirt, though I did, and I had a sinking feeling she was right. As we talked it out, we realized that we want the easiest, most productive means of gardening in our back yard. Our gardening guru, Jerry Baker, uses "enclosed beds" in his own back yard. So what's good for Jerry is good for us. No tilling the ground and having to worry about fences versus coyote urine granules to keep out the critters ... and oy vey, the weeds, oh, yes, the weeds. And our first gardening experience here in Charlotte at The Cameron on Pecan Avenue utilized extremely successful enclosed beds. So we decided that enclosed beds were the route we'd go, combined with our successful county compost experience last Fall at Flynnwood.

So we began our first garden at our new house by, of course, measuring Tabla. (Doesn't everyone start their garden by measuring the pets?) He was pretty happy about it, 'cause it meant he got to head-butt something ... like the yardstick. The purpose was to see what the average height of the male cat is, since cats seem to be a "pest" in these parts, followed by geese and rabbits. We've seen rabbits and were really concerned about them until we read that cats really do a great job of keeping rabbits at bay ... and we know there are something like 5 or 6 cats that pass through our yard daily.

Next up was a trip to Lowe's, for a ridiculous, long wait to get some wood, nails and tie clamps. We'd spent the previous week planning ('cause we like to do that) and getting dirt. We began by laying out the pieces of wood in the order that they'd be put together, all based on the graph paper diagram Yvonne seemed all too pleased to draw out beforehand. Of course, after gridding out on graph paper, we had to grid out in the actual yard using flour as our demarcation lines on the ground, as we measured out the actual square footage compared to a plat diagram we had when we bought the houses versus Yvonne's graph paper diagram. My brain was itching from the inside out. Were we EVER going to get to plant anything? Please?! Aaaaaiiiiiiiieeeeeeee!!

So with the pieces laid out in the appropriate order... "uhhh, how does this look? To the right? No, to the left? Unh-hunh, how much? 6 inches? Another 6 inches. Now? How 'bout now? And again??"

we began nailing them together to create our 16' x 4' enclosed beds. We went with 2x12" treated boards. Should be good enough to keep out grass, weeds, voles and other varmits. Yvonne hammered like a girl, so I took over on the nailing duties. Actually I love hammering nails in wood and am pretty darn good at it. :) I just used her long nail experience as an excuse to take up the hammering reigns. Shhhh, don't tell her, though. ;)

Then it was time to fill the boxes. YEAH!!!! Oh, wait ... uhhhh, "Calling all precincts, calling all precincts: be on the lookout for a white male suspect, 5'11" driving a dirty gray pickup truck, dirt under his nails, newsboy hat and bad plaid shirt. Roger."

We spread a layer of newspaper to help kill the grass. (Actually, Yvonne did most of that. Okay, she did all of that. ;) )

and then tacked a layer of black plastic to the inside of the boxes to hold the dirt (I did that part ... we really worked great together). Yvonne cut a bunch of slits in the plastic for drainage, using scissors, while I nailed little ticky tacky nails up along the top edge of the plastic.

Now, it was time to use the collected leaves we'd be stealing from our neighbors all winter long. Nice of them to help us out like that, huh? I just LOVE IT when people do all the work for you, namely raking their yards and putting perfect compost material in tidy clear plastic bags for you. Awesome!

Next went in a layer of leaves. We filled up about half of the depth, knowing full well it would settle. The leaves provide excellent drainage, will break down to create awesome compost, and also allows us to use only half the dirt to fill the boxes.

Then we topped with compost.

We did a wheel barrel test before finishing the second box. Wanting to ensure there is enough room to get between the two boxes. Yep, looks good enough.

Then we built the second box....

and repeated the filling process.

Once all the dirt was in Yvonne smoothed it out...

I took a pH reading. Woo-HOOOOO, we were at 6.3 on the pH scale, awesome, awesome, awesome!!!













After we ran out of daylight Saturday, we prepared a seed soaking tonic to help the seeds along. Jerry Baker, again, totally rules.

For our first planting we're using spinach, turnips, lettuce, carrots and beets. Onions are good neighbor plants for all of those, so we left space to plant onions inbetween each, with one larger row of onions then several sub-rowlets. We'll plant those in a couple weeks (if the seeds arive ).

We gave everything we planted a good soak...

and covered them up for a good night's sleep. It's still in the 20s here at night so they need to be protected from the cold. The frost cloth keeps temps 15-20 degrees warmer underneath, while letting rain and good sun through. I was excited, 'cause this means we can overwinter many things come 2011. :) The bags of leaves, and a piece of slate my brother Mark gave me holds the cloth in place. Then, just two days later? Snowfall here in Charlotte. Good thing we put the new seeds to bed. :)