Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Adventures in Vermicomposting

Last month I made my first attempt at composting with worms. I wrote it up as an article at an online social-networking site called "Gather." The Worm Saga: Further Adventures in Vermicomposting became a featured article! It is pretty funny; I did almost everything wrong.

I have started over again, however, with all of the lessons I learned. I'm going to write that up, too. I wonder if it come out as funny, describing something going right?

At least so far it's going right!

June 3: Better photos!

There's a higher-resolution setting on my digital camera! And I finally stumbled on it! So here's some better photos of the garden, starting with, above: an overview of the veggie-bed. Our first crop of mesclun is now bolting enthusiastically. We're going to have a BIG salad this next Wednesday: I'm pulling up the bolting plants and we'll eat them flowers and all!

Next is a shot of the "lavender patch." We have three kinds of lavender now. The tallest is "Goodwin Creek" grey lavender; the middle-sized one is Grosso; the two smallest (picked on by birds before the netting went up) are Provence. That's going to be a lovely-scented corner of Pioneer Square! Little bits of sacred basil are coming up all over, too.

And here's the glossiest cucumber in the garden. Nasturtium, borage, and marigold are supposed to be good companion plants, and this cucumber has all three as companions. Maybe there's something to this.

Photos from May 29

Lots of action lately, not much blogging! Here's catchup, with some photos.

The garden is filling in nicely. We put bird netting up last Wednesday (May 23); with David, Claudia, and I working together it went a lot faster than I expected. We also got some tomato cages for the three biggest plants; there's no room for cages around the smaller ones (planted too close).

To the right: that corner of the garden a month ago.


Along with the netting, we bought replacements for the cucurbits that the birds ate: three pots of "burpless" cucumbers (which came to five plants total), some vining zucchini and a bush-type zucchini, some new Sugar pumpkin plants, and a couple of the "Sunburst" type scalloped squash. I have another half a dozen of those (called "Sunny Scallop") coming up from seed, but when I saw two great big ones in a pot, I saw earlier gratification and had to have it!

This time I put some bone meal at the bottom of each hole before I set in the plant, and I also worked some bonemeal in around the surviving zucchini and pumpkin from the April 28th planting.

Two of our zucchinis on May 5; I thought they were doomed.


Here is one of the new zucchinis I put in on May 22 -- and one of the two little zucchinis I thought were dying on May 5th! Bonemeal did it! (The other one didn't make it, though, even with bonemeal.)




I also set out some seedlings I had started indoors to protect them from the starlings: ten lemon cucumber seedlings, a dozen spinach seedlings, and two dozen beet seedlings. They hadn't gotten much sun indoors, though, and were pretty weak. None of the beet seedlings made it; a few of the spinach seedlings took hold; and four of the lemon cucumbers are still thriving. Here on the left are two
of the strongest lemon cucumber seedlings.

My friend and fellow Raging Granny Shirley Morrison gave me some chard Saturday morning, the 26th, after our Seattle Raging Granny meeting. I went home by way of City People's Garden Store and bought two lavender plants to fill out the corner where the birds nibbled our first lavender; an Italian basil, because I just can't wait for our basil seedlings to get big enough to start harvesting; and three pots of arugula, which were absolutely the last salad greens they had
out in pots.

To the left there is some of the Swiss chard, filling out one of the vacant spaces in the Salad Patch.



Left is the new Italian Basil; right is a closeup of some of the Sacred Basil I planted from seed.



And here to the left is the lovely new lavender: two kinds, "Goodwin Creek Gray" and "Grosso."



Here's some new arugula set in on May 26 near some of the mesclun plantings we put in on April 28. You can almost make out the yellow flowers of the mizuna plant starting to bolt. The first arugula is starting to get leggy and bolt, too.

Playing in the ketchup...

Lots of things happening, except blogging. Quick catch-up on the high points, then on to some photos:

• While out in the garden on the 12th, I spotted our culprits, the ones eating so many of our plants: birds! Two big, sleek black birds with iridescent wings and yellow beaks flew down not five feet in front of me; one plucked off a branch of that big new sage, while another snatched a whole sprig of rosemary from almost ground level. Jean said they are most likely starlings. We got bird netting May 23rd; put it up on the 24th.
  
• I had just bought and spread some Sluggo, which is iron sulfate; nutritious for humans and other animals (at least in small quantities!) but poisonous to slugs and snails. When I saw the birds I thought, "Darn! I just wasted ten bucks!" When I came out the next morning, though, I saw a little tiny dead slug on one of the wooden raised-bed railings. So we did have slugs, too.
• I identified the five varieties of "mesclun" we got from the nursery as: mizuna ("potherb mustard"), tatsoi ("spoon mustard"), Red Giant mustard, Red Russian kale, and arugula. We had garden greens in our salad (along with marigold petals) for the Wednesday community meal on May 23 and May 30. The mizuna, tatsoi, and arugula is already starting to bolt. I have been sowing more mesclun mix, and have also put in some more nursery-pots of arugula, to keep the salads coming.
• I made my first attempt at worming. That will be a saga all by itself. My husband Wes has already posted his take on it.

Next: photographs!

I'm Ba-a-a-ack!

Jean kept an eye on the garden, and thought it needed no more water even without rain. Everything is fine except the tangerine gem marigold seedlings.

I made a quick trip to the garden store and bought new cucumber, zucchini, and pumpkin plants, some well-grown sunburst-squash to supplement the sunny-scallop squash seeds I sowed earlier, plus a few more lettuces and a healthy-looking young borage. Putting them in I found that although the soil is dry on top, it is moist (not damp, but cool-moist) under the surface, and six inches (or more) down. It will hold until I get the compost tea tomorrow.

Only a few of the tangerine gem marigold seedlings are still there; the radish seedlings are thriving; a few more spinach seedlings have sprouted; it looks like a few borage and calendula are coming up; and some of the basil are coming up! The nasturtiums I got potted are struggling along, and it looks like a couple are coming up from the seeds -- including one in the border outside the raised beds.

I don't see signs of new nibbling, but the golden sage and the peppermint haven't recovered from the nibbling they got, so when I go to get the compost tea I am also going to get some new sage and peppermint; and some nasturtiums I saw that are already in flower.

I'll take some more pictures tomorrow, when everything new is in. See you then. :)

Cayenne works!

No more new nibbling! Whatever it was, the cayenne border around the garden seems to be repelling it.

Sunny and warming.

I'm going to Yakima tomorrow morning and I won't be back until Friday evening. I've passed the word: If the weather continues hot and sunny the garden will need more water; if we have rain, that garden will need more cayenne.

One of the zucchini plants appears totally dead. The second is sprouting new leaves. Even the one chewed down to the stem seems to be sprouting new leaves!

There are a few grass-like shoots coming up where I planted the spinach. Yup, that's what spinach seedlings look like.

The rhubarb is definitely dying, and I'm not too sure about the pumpkin; it looks like it's sprouting new leaves, but it also looks like the older leaves are dying. I'm going to check the ground in that end of the garden before I leave, make sure it's retaining water.

The mesclun plants are standing up proud and practically gleam with health. We may have salad next Wednesday!

I ordered more Sacred Basil, Mesclun mixes, some purslane and some white clover, and had them shipped extra-fast, with the manic intent to sow them before I leave for Yakima. They came today, but so did a bit of my sanity. I'll hold off any more planting until I come back, when I can see more of what's coming up, and I can keep any newly sown seed evenly moist.

I'll post again next Saturday!

More nibbling

The plants I sprinkled cayenne pepper around yesterday seemed to have no new nibbles today. The sage, the peppermint, and the orange balsam thyme had been gone after! So I sprinkled cayenne around the most vulnerable plants AND all around the border of the beds.

There is almost nothing left of the cucumbers, but the pumpkin seems still strong:


The oregano looks downright photogenic:


Radish seedlings and tangerine gem marigold seedlings are definitely coming up. I planted a few more beets & radish in a blank spot between the radish seedlings and the yellow onions. Spinach seedlings have not yet come up. I planted a few more spinach anyway, with a couple of borage, and this time marked where I planted them with a few radish seeds.

Our White Chrysanthemums Are Blushing

Our previously all-white chrysanthemums are developing a mauve blush in the lower petals. Is this a characteristic of this flower, or an indicator of something in the soil?

More planting, definite nibbling

Back to City People's Garden store this morning:

• 1 Orange Balsam thyme, already in flower;
• 1 French thyme, not flowering;
• 1 Greek oregano;
• 1 pot of nasturtium seedlings;
• 1 red "Colossus" pansy (two plants; one in flower, a smaller one not);
• 3 gallons of fresh compost tea (still warm);
• 1 watering can (turns out to hold just short of 2 gallons)

Came straight home to start mixing the compost tea one watering-can full at a time and pouring it on the garden, while it's still fresh. Doused the plants as well as the soil. A little over one gallon of tea went on the two small lower beds (with a little over four gallons of water), a little under two gallons went on the large upper bed (with a little over eight gallons of water.) I measured out another two gallons of water on each of the lower beds and another four gallons on the upper bed. That's 21 gallons of water total, and seemed to be all the soil would hold.

Oh, and I put the new plants in, too! The nasturtium divided into four seedlings.

Something is definitely nibbling on some of the lettuce plants, some onion plants, the cucumber and zucchini and pumpkin plants. The cukes are eaten down almost to the stems.
Chewed zucchini:

I sprinkled cayenne pepper around the plants nibbled on, and a few others.

I'm beginning to care about the weather

I found a weather page so that I can keep close track of when it rains, and when it is going to rain. And have some warning next time it hails!

Hail!

Hail today, and rain. No freeze, though. Garden seems fine. Some smaller leaves may have been knocked loose, or we have critters nibbling.

Garden Calendar

Estimated picking, planting, and fertilizing schedule.

Planting onions

We straightened out which key is which today. I went out at 9:30 AM and put in 24 Walla Walla onion seedlings and 24 yellow onion seedlings, interplanted with the pansies, peppers, and mesclun-mix salad greens. I figure if the pansies serve to shade the onions, the mesclun and peppers should too.

The Walla Wallas go from the left side in.

The yellow onions go up the right side.

Closeup of the peppers with onions:


Then I poured more fertilizer on: used up the last of the compost tea, and then some for fish&kelp. Between yesterday and today, I've put 5 gallons (2-1/2 cups fish&kelp, 3 qts. compost tea) on the vegetable bed; 1-1/2 gal. each (3/4 c. fish&kelp, 1 pt. compost tea) on the strawberry bed and the herb bed.

As near as I can calculate, our garden needs 45 gallons of water a week. I probably gave it that much Saturday evening. The soil was moist and easy to dig for several inches down today, while being dry in patches just on the surface. With the extra water today, and whatever Jean and Claudia add when they plant their additions tomorrow, I'm not expecting to do another watering until Saturday. I'm going to try to use a much lighter touch Saturday; I think I brought the water down too hard on the pansies and petunias last time.

I'm going to get more compost tea every Saturday, but I need a mister to apply it properly. Pouring it onto the soil is helping the soil texture, but to get the most benefit I also want to soak the leaves, gently.

Here's a closeup of some soil. The soil from the veggie and herb beds is sandy, but at least holds together when pressed in a fist. A handful from the strawberry bed is more sandy; it forms a nice clump when pressed, but falls apart when released. (That's the sample in my hand, and it's too close to the camera to see clearly.)



No sign of slugs yet.

First Planting: Part 2

Got my photos today! Much better pictures of our first planting!

Here's the fraternity volunteers who built 2/3rds of our raised-bed garden and helped us do our first planting, with Shelby on the far right:

The stars of the show:



Here's another guy taking pictures.



Later we'll get a copy of his photos of the three residents who worked on the garden: Jean, David, and me. The rest of my photos are all of the garden:

From the bottom:


Off to the right, toward the railyard:


Off to the left, toward the bus stop:


Close-up of part of the herb bed: peppermint, golden sage, peony (really petunia) and marigolds:

First food for baby

I dropped the camera off at Walgreen's for development, then I spent all my money at the garden store, and I don't know when I'll have the photos to post.

I bought two more pots of onions, one of Walla Walla and one of yellow onions, for Wes's sake. I also bought a gallon of compost tea and a gallon of liquid fish&seaweed fertilizer. The compost tea mixes up 1 gallon to 4 gallons water; the other mixes up 1/2 cup to 1 gallon water; as far as I can find out, 8 gallons of water mixed with 2 gallons of compost tea and 2 cups of fish&seaweed should be about right for our 75 sq. ft. garden. twice a month. Next time I'll buy two gallons of compost tea.

I wanted to get in and apply the first batch of fertilizer this evening, but the staff person at the front desk is new, and didn't know which key unlocks the garden gate. I got one and a half gallons of the mix spread over the left side of the garden to about a foot wide, and the whole top triangle to about 2 feet down, by pouring it over the fence. Next time I have to do that, I'll get a picture for you. :D

We had a birthday party for Jean this evening, and I told her that I had drenched the area she plans to put her dahlias in. She will probably do her planting on Tuesday, and Claudia will plant Majestic Giant pansies around the nursery pansies, probably on Tuesday.

Tomorrow, when I can get the gate unlocked, I'll finish the fertilizer dousing and plant the onion seedlings. Since they have to stay in my room overnight, I already doused them with some of the mix.

When I get my next check (May 3), I want two more thyme plants, and maybe another sage plant.

Two weeks from now we should be seeing sprouts. We can sow another batch of seeds (probably beets and spinach) in the bare spots, and pour on another batch of food mix. I'm starting a garden calendar.

My seeds came!

After we got all the plants in, that seemed enough for the day. I decided to plant seeds the next day. I came in at 1:30 all worn out -- to find the borage, calendula, gem marigold, nasturtium, and basil seeds in my mailbox.

Jean had been adamant about not watering 'til 4 PM. So I took a nap, then went out at 4 PM and soaked the whole garden thoroughly, then planted basil, borage, "flashback" calendula, "tangerine gem" marigold, beets, radishes, spinach, and summer squash.

What we have now, arranged in approximate order of when we will be able to pick (the herbs we can begin to pick right now):

• lavender (2) (from nursery)
• rosemary (2) (from nursery)
• sage (1) (from nursery) (where'd the second one go???)
• oregano (1) (from nursery)
• thyme (1) (from nursery) (where'd the second one go???)
• peppermint (1) (from nursery)
• petunias (from nursery) (already in bloom, start picking soon)
• cosmos (1) (from nursery) (already in bloom, start picking soon)
• pansies (some from nursery in now, some from seed going in Tuesday) (already in bloom, start picking soon)
• marigolds (some from nursery, already in bloom; some from seed)
• young rhubarb, donated, we may be able to start picking in a week
• basil (from seed) (begin thinning & picking in 21 days)
• salad greens (from nursery) (begin picking in 21 days, or less)
• spinach (from seed) (we might be able to pick some as soon as 21 days)
• radishes (from seed) (22 days)
• beets (from seed) (will be sprouting in two weeks, baby beets at five weeks, fully mature at 8 weeks)
• tomatoes: early girl (2), sweet 100s (2), sweet red cherry (1), whatsitsname (1) (from nursery) (begin to pick first tomatoes in about 6 weeks)
• summer squash: "scallop sunny delight") (3 hills of 4 seeds each) (50 days)
• zucchini (1 pot of three seedlings) (from nursery) (approx. 50 days)
• cucumber: lemon cucumber (1 pot of two seedlings), burpless (1 pot of two seedlings) (from nursery) (60 days?)
• strawberries (10) (from nursery) (70 days?)
• pimiento peppers (3) (from nursery) (90 days)
• pumpkin (1 pot of two seedlings) (from nursery) (120 days)
• onions, Walla Walla & yellow (starters from nursery)
• calendula (from seed)
• nasturtiums (from seed)
• borage (from seed)
• dahlias (going in Tuesday)
• one sunflower, donated

When I told Shelby that creeping myrtle was poisonous, she was easily convinced to leave it out.

First Planting: Part 1

Okay! We have our first plants in the ground!

I took some Before pictures with my little computer-camera that I downloaded tonight, and some After pictures with a disposable camera that I'll get developed tomorrow. So I'm just going to post half the story tonight, and the rest tomorrow.

Looks tiny from this perspective, eh?


Here's a closer view of the bottom-right. That's one of the two chrysanthemums that Ed planted a week or so ago.

Here's a close-up of its sister on the left end.

And that was all that was there when we started at 11 AM this morning.

Here are the plants ready to go in.

First we worked in 2 cu.ft. each of peat and steer manure, and one little bag of bone meal. My photo of that part isn't very good.

Tomorrow: pretty pictures!

Shopping Day!

Tomorrow is planting day! We're going to be putting in a mix of seeds and nursery plants. Six of us, along with staff member Shelby, went to Home Depot today to pick out plants [and buy seeds for what hasn't arrived yet. :( ]

We also bought the bone meal and peat recommended in response to my question on Yahoo Answers.

I took my proposed garden plan along, but we didn't exactly stick to it. Once we saw live plants, everybody wanted something different!

We now have a bunch of salad greens already started; we can plant those next to the mixed-green seeds, and have a continuous harvest. I forgot that I already had radish seeds, and we got some more. We also got some spinach seed, which is another early crop. And I have plenty of beet seed; beet greens and baby beets can be harvested early. I think that's enough for greens this year; I'll stop fretting for turnips.

We have six tomato plants: two Early Girls; two Sweet 100s; a Sweet Red Cherry; and a beefsteak hybrid, name I forget. I'm sure all the seeds I bought will keep for next year, when we can start our own plans indoors. We got two zucchini plants and two cucumber plants (one burpless and one lemon) so I'm going to save the zucchini and cucumber seeds for next year, too. We got two pumpkin plants, which was unplanned for, but I love it. I still want to plant my seeds for Scallop Sunny Delight summer squash, though! I got nasturtium seeds, since the ones I ordered haven't arrived. Pea plants don't seem to come in starters, so I will be planting seeds for those. And that fills up ALL the space for trailing vines. Somehow we ended up with three pepper plants, plus a package of seeds. I don't know where we're going to put them!

We got some Walla Walla onion sets and half a dozen pansies, which we'll plant interspersed with the pansy seed I got. I'll see if what worked for Jackie French in Australia will work for us in the Pacific Northwest. :)

I was talked down from the 20 strawberry plants I wanted, to 10. According to Shelby, they have babies. :) I wanted six thyme plants among them; we got two. But they'll probably spread, too!

We got the lavender, rosemary, and sage that we had planned for the herb bed, plus oregano and peppermint. I know we've got at least two sage plants (two different kinds) but I'm not sure how many of the others we have. I think we need more; Shelby and Jean think those will spread to fill in the space we've got.

Shelby insisted on getting some creeping myrtle for "ground cover." I researched it after I got home; it will be pretty, but it's an invasive plant, and unlike the myrtle bush that it is not at all related to, it is toxic. I feel very strongly about not having any toxic plants around the garden, so I am going to urge Shelby to take the creepy myrtle home.

We got lots of marigolds. None of them seem to be the gem marigolds or the french marigolds that I wanted to plant. (Also among the seeds that never arrived!) We also got a nice big cosmos, which I hadn't planned for but fell in love with when I saw it. (It's purple.)

I wish I'd taken the camera along! I will definitely be taking pictures tomorow, though.

See you then!

We have a new name

At this week's meeting Jean proposed a name for our garden that was an instant hit: "the Garden of Union."

I've worked up a garden plan based on the selections talked about so far, my estimate of the garden measurements, the "square foot garden" guidelines, and companion-planting ideas. We'll see how well the plan survives contact with the ground!

It's On!

Some volunteers from a local fraternity built a raised-bed garden on a bit of scavenged land behind our building, the Union Hotel. It's about 75 square feet, in an irregular semi-triangle. I've started this blog to record our garden experience.

I'll be taking phographs as we go along. For a beginning, here's where we are on Google Earth.

So far, the volunteers and our Maintenance Marvel Man Ed have sifted out a lot of rocks and laid down some top soil. There's a good foot of good-textured soil, sandy loam, with a denser soild, more clay and rock, under it. I've tested the soil, and it seems to be around ph 7.0, with a moderate amount of phosphorus but a very low amount of nitrogen and potassium. The volunteers have donated about 40 pounds of steer manure, and we're collecting coffee ground, veggie and fruit peelings, and eggshells; adding all of that should help both the soil texture and the nitrogen content.

We'll start planting April 28 this year, but much earlier next year.