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.