Gardening at Nickelsville

Tuesday, June 9, my new gardening friend Crystal and I paced off a square of ground out at Nickelsville, a homeless encampment planning to become a sustainable eco-village. The 20' by 36' space is going to be an organic garden, built lasagna-style from the ground up.

The first stage will be laying down cardboard and newspaper to smother the grass and weeds, start them decaying into compost, and attract whatever earthworms live in the vicinity. I left a bucket to begin collecting compostables, which will be spread between layers of peat moss, until a bed at least a foot thick is built up by the end of summer. Then we'll spread a final layer of finished compost and topsoil, and be ready to plant fall/winter crops.

Using cardboard, newspaper, and compostable garbage in building the garden will also help the Nickelsville garbage bill!

We need many donations to help build the garden:

• Cardboard
• Newspaper
• Peat moss
• Compost
• Compost bin
• Worm bin
• Worms
• Rain barrel(s)
• Seep hose(s)

The most important thing right now is a rain barrel. We want the garden to be an addition to the lives of the Nickelodeons -- not a competitor for water.

The health department has told the Nickelodeons not to discard waste water in the bushes. Once we have some loam built up, however, we can have a gray-water rain barrel that feeds water into the soil (up to 720 gallons a week). Anyone experienced in using gray-water in home gardens is welcome to advise!

Yes, we're still going!

A lot of plants died in our unusually cold winter, including some perennials. It took me awhile to get the spirit up to start again this year -- but I did!

Early in May, our favorite frat (Sigma Beta Rho) came by and spread the compost I'd made over the winter, and on Mother's Day I began planting anew in the garden. I will post current photos eventually!

Current plants:

• Tomato: One each Sweet Million, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Oregon Spring -- and a dozen volunteers coming up from the compost, being slowly thinned out. :)
• One hill of zucchini -- planted more, along with cucumbers, but rats dug all the rest up!
  
• A forest of red orache (aka mountain spinach) sown from the seeds I saved off the one plant grown last year. I sowed them thickly because I didn't think I'd kept the seeds well -- then most of them sprouted! I'm slowly thinning them.
  
• A forest of catnip from last year.
• The rhubarb from last year.
• One kale from last year, grown big and wild and gone to seed: almost ready to pick off and replant the seeds.
• Volunteers from last year's plants: magenta spreen, borage, red russian kale, something that may be squash.
  
• A couple of french marigolds (had more, dug up by rats).
  
• 5 Easy Wave petunias, won in a contest! Were 6, one killed by rats; one other little hero has been dug up 3 times, replanted and keeps bouncing back!
  
• I planted some beans and guess what dug them up?
  

Herbs surviving from last year:

• The rosemary bush -- and it finally bloomed this spring!
• Most of the lavender -- I thought I'd lost my favorite, the gray lady, but she's coming back.
  
• The garden sage -- and it is blooming! It's not supposed to bloom -- but I love it. :)
• The golden sage.
• Oregano, both green and gold; blending beautifully!
  
• Spearmint --- of course! :D
• One of the three thyme bushes -- blooming nicely.
• Chives.
• Parsley.
  

Flowers surviving:

• My grape hyacinths were blooming again, but some vandal dumped their container. :( I have salvaged the bulbs and will replant this fall.
  
• One of the miniature roses had survived, was beginning to thrive -- then was stolen. :(
• One of the three chrysanthemums is coming back, but hasn't bloomed yet this year.
• Hoochy Mama (the heuchera) has survived! and is "blooming" (the leaves of the heuchera are much more impressive than the blooms).
• The catmint is blooming bountifully!
  

About half of the strawberries survived, and a new half-dozen came up in the veggie bed. The first crop of the year is starting to ripen.

We're still here!

I apologize for the long absence from blogging -- but the garden is going strong!

March 22nd, the boys from Sigma Beta Rho came, helped dig over the whole veggie bed, spread all the compost I had made, add several bags of topsoil & some amendments, lay out a drip-watering system, haul off a LOT of trash, and set in some plants. End result on the left. (Built-up veggie bed held in by cardboard because request for wooden beams has not yet made it through the DESC budget process.)

Laying in the watering system. I haven't used it yet -- every time I begin to think "I'm going to have to water pretty soon" -- it rains. When I do have to water, though, it will go straight to the roots, not on the leaves, and we'll have less risk of downy mildew, I hope.

Of course, if things stay as cool as they've been so far, we may never have to worry about downy mildew.








Setting in the first plants. Lesson #1 of the year: Do harden-off plants you've started indoors, letting them transition to the outdoors slowly. A lot of my first starts didn't make it because I just moved them straight from indoors to outdoors. Ones properly hardened-off are thriving.



That would have been 20 hours of work for one person! And that's only if I was still as young as these guys!




The garden grew slowly over the next month, but as soon as things warmed up just a little it shot up like it had been coiling its springs. Below is a photo taken almost exactly two months later:

Enough tomatoes already!

I have repotted the strongest of the tomato sprouts into larger pots: some newspaper pots, some recycled plastic containers, two of them from an oatmeal carton cut in half. Along with those that were begun in newspaper pots, I have, in the containers that they will be in until transplanted outside:

• 3 Sweet Million
• 3 Sun Cherry
• 3 Brandywine
• 2 Oregon Spring
• 2 Early Girls
• 1 Matina
• 1 Florida Petite
• 2 mystery tomatoes that I didn't label when I planted them

Crowded out of sight: 1 Brandywine, 1 Mystery Tomato

That is all that I am going to have room for, and then some! And I'm still sprouting some Marianna Peace and 4th of July tomatoes.

I've also potted one Rosa Bianca eggplant, and that's all the Rosa Biancas I want for my own garden.

Garden plan:

• five tomatoes down the middle of the veggie bed
  (Brandywine / Oregon Spring / Matina / Early Girl / Brandywine)
• in two tubs, one eggplant and three tomatoes
  (Rosa Bianca Eggplant / Oregon Spring : Early Girl / Marianna Peace)
• one 4th of July tomato in a pot
• upside-down hanging tomatoes: 3 Sweet Million, 2 Sun Cherry, a 4th of July; I might even try an Oregon Spring and an Early Girl upside down, unless somebody tells me I'm nuts.

I'm planning to give away the Florida Petite, one of the Sun Cherries, and one of the Brandywines as gifts. I would like to pot some more of the sprouts to give away: I still have three nice healthy Rosa Bianca sprouts, plus 3 Oregon Spring, 2 Brandywine, 1 Sweet Cherry and 1 Sweet Million; and I will (hopefully) also have more Marianna Peace and 4th of July than I can use. And I still want to sprout some more Florida Petite and pot them, as gifts. Unless I can give them away quickly, though, I may just plain run out of room. I've already run out of potting soil.

I started a small flat of geraniums and one of petunias today, in perlite. My first Amber Kiss viola is up! And Sid's catmint is sprouting!

More! More!

I have tomato seedlings coming up! 3 Oregon Spring, 3 Brandywine, 3 Sun Cherry, 1 Sweet Million. And all Rosa Bianca eggplants have sprouted!

I did not take the spinach basket outside after all, because I found that the dill I took out has died.

I started a pot of habanero peppers for Wes - Red Savina, world's hottest pepper in 1994; 57,000 Scoville units.

G'nite!

In spite of what I said...

I wasn't going to start anything new for awhile... but I did. I recycled some of the non-sprouting peat pots to start 6 spearmint pots for Wes and 5 "226" eggplants for me. In soil-mix cells that I gave up on, I planted 4 Sweet Marjoram and 3 Stevia.

I was resolved to keep better track of which plant was which. I started out labeling everything by section: 9 pots of this, 9 pots of that, etc. Then some of the peat pots in the tray started sprouting before the others, and I moved them out to the light, and lost track of which section they came from. I sorted out and rearranged everything today, ending up with (including both peat pots and soil cells) 54 identified seedlings, 13 unidentified.

Three newspaper pots have sprouted! Those were only seeded 3 days ago! Add on soaking two days before that, it's still faster than anything in the trays.

The identification of the pots is tentative yet: I think I have one pot of Brandywines and two of Early Girls. I'll be able to tell for sure when they develop a bit more. I'm hoping I can sort the others out over time, too. :)

Hold the phone: one Oregon Spring cell in the trays just sprouted!

What's sprouting indoors

Of the seeds I started on January 9:

• The Persian Garden Cress started coming up two days later, the scallions I planted in the other side of the flat started coming up two days after that. I am hoping that, with the daylight fluorescents, I can keep this flat indoors handy to the kitchen.

• I had a wicker basket that I started plants in outside over the summer. In fall, I planted catnip in it. I also stuck one lone garlic bulb in when I couldn't figure out where else to put it. I was keeping the basket just outside my window, until somebody reached in and took all the healthy catnip plants, leaving only a few stragglers (and the garlic). I replanted in with dill and three more garlic cloves, planning also to keep this indoors by the kitchen. The dill started sprouting on the 13th and two more garlic shoots had poked up on the 17th. The whole bed also bloomed with fungus; I thought it was clever to mulch it with coffee grounds, and I made the mistake of using old grounds. Scraping the surface, and sprinkling with "compost starter" (lots of beneficial microbes) helped to tone it down, but it still kept coming back in spots. I finally took the whole thing outdoors, hoping the fresh air and cold will help.

• I started another small wicker basket for the kitchen with chives and cilantro; the chives started sprouting on the 14th and the cilantro on the 17th.
  
  
• I started some Dwarf Curly Parsley soaking on the 9th and on the 10th I put it in a plastic yogurt container with drainage holes cut in the bottom. It began sprouting on the 16th.

On the 13th I bought more seed-starting soil and two 72-cell, covered planting trays; one with peat pellets, and one without. In the peat tray, I started:

• 6 Canterbury Bells
• 6 leeks
• 6 Red Winter kale
• 9 "Marvel of Four Seasons" lettuce
• 9 Moss Green Curled parsley
• 9 "Johnny Jump-Up" violas
• 9 King Henry violas
• 9 winter pansies
• 9 Swiss Giant pansies

I also planted, on the 13th, a wicker basket of spinach for the kitchen.

On the 16th, all 9 lettuce, 2 kale, 1 leek, 1 canterbury bell, 1 k.h. viola had sprouted; on the 17th 1 more kale, 1 more leek, 1 swiss pansy, and the first spinach sprouts. From then to the 20th, more Canterbury Bells have come up, leeks, kale, violas of both kinds, and pansies of both kinds.

On the 14th I put starting soil in part of the second tray and started 6 verbena, 6 Rosa Bianca eggplant, and 12 Summerlong basil. 5 cells of basil and 1 eggplant sprouted on the 17th; two verbena on the 19th, two more eggplants just came up on the 20th.

On the 15th I started soaking some Moss Green Curled parsley. On the 16th I also started soaking bell peppers, several kinds of tomatoes, several kinds of kale, leeks, and Swiss Giant pansies. I made my first newspaper pots, filling them with peat moss moistened with worm tea, and started 4 pots of tomatoes: 1 pot Early Girl, 2 pots Matina, and 1 pot Brandywine.

On the 17th, I filled more of the cells in the starting tray and planted 6 cells of Sweet Million cherry tomatoes, 6 Sun Cherry, 7 Brandywine, and 5 Oregon Spring. I also planted a yogurt-container pot of Moss parsley.

Also on the 18th, I planted sweet bell pepper seeds in a little plastic container that pearl onions came in. It has a flip-top lid, and air slits along the sides of the lid and the base.

The spinach basket began growing mold and some of the spinach sprouts wilted. On the 18th, after scraping off as much of the mold as I could and sprinkling the surface with Soil Alive and Dr. Earth Compost Starter, I planted some more spinach seeds, some leek seeds, and three garlic cloves. As of the 21st, four spinach shoots are going strongly, and two new ones are coming up. There is very little mold. I am thinking, though, that the spinach may germinate much better outside.

Some of the cells and pots in the seedling trays also began showing mold. I scraped it off and sprinkled them with the Soil Alive and Dr. Earth Compost Starter mix. I left the plastic lids off.

On the 19th, I made more and better newspaper pots, and potted the rest of the tomato and pansy seeds that had been soaking. Unfortunately, I did not label which was which. I told myself I would remember, and write it down tomorrow. I did not.

I know that in one box I have four pots of Marianna's Peace at one end, two pots of Swiss Giant pansies at the other, and four pots of Florida Petite tomatoes in the middle. I should be able to tell the difference between those soon after they show leaves; Marianna's Peace is a potato-leaved tomato, Florida Petite is not, and Swiss Giant are, well, pansies.

I used the plastic lid off one of the seedling trays to hold the other newspaper pots. In the middle are the pots I started the 15th, easily identifiable by appearance; each of my first newspaper pots was unique in its own weird way. At one end are some more Early Girls, and at the opposite end are more Brandywines. I think Brandywines are also potato-leaved, so I may be able to sort those out, too.

While the indoors temperature is too high for spinach germination, which prefers 40 degrees or so, it is not quite high enough for tomato germination, which prefers 75 to 80 degrees. I can put the spinach outside to germinate, but I don't know how to heat up the tomatoes without seedling heater mat, which costs more than I can afford. I'll just have to wait and see. I did plant several seeds per pot. If all of the pots do sprout, I'll be giving away most of the seedlings.

On the 19th, I planted catmint in a little wicker basket. When that grows up into a nice healthy mound, I'll take it into Real Change for Sid the Cat.

And that's that. I am going to try more winter sowing outside this week; I'm not going to start anything more inside until I get more shelving!

What's growing, January 2008

I was going to take some photos of the outdoor plants today. I was going to do a lot of things, including get some steer manure from Home Depot, and plant some seeds outdoors; instead, I woke up at 2pm and read until 5. I'm still recovering from a long cold/flu/thing, so when my body feels like a slow day I go with it, rather than get sick again. At least I can catch up with blogging!

In text-only, here's what's currently growing outside:

• In the container row in front of the raised beds:
  • One flowerpot of catnip
  • One large container with dormant dahlia and gladiolus bulbs and one bunch of living sweet alyssum, white. I took the bulbs from the other container indoors for the winter, fortunately, because that container was then accidentally smashed by one of the maintenance trucks. Unfortunately, the dahlia bulbs inside are sprouting and I am not sure what to do with them. I'm going to leave the rest of the bulbs out where it's cold.
  • One wicker basket containing dill and four cloves of garlic. It was going to be an indoor container; I just didn't have enough space to keep it inside. I'm sure the garlic will live; maybe even the dill.
    
  • The rest of the container-space is taken up with milk-crates of planting soil waiting for spring planting; one tub and one garbage-can filled with leaves-and-compost, half-rotted and lightly colonized by worms; and several sacks of leaves, moldering away.
  
  
• In the herb&flower bed (from left to right):
  • One root of perennial geranium, Kashmir Purple, planted in November. No green shows yet. I dug up one of the three last week and found that a shoot was starting, underground. That plant is now inside, and the shoot is poking up aboveground. I'm going to leave the other two outside and be patient.
  • The remaining stem of a Martha Washington geranium; it was still alive in a container in October, and although vandals smashed it, I replanted it to see if it will grow and bloom again in spring.
  • Oregano, spreading out close to ground and looking healthy.
  • Peppermint, looking straggly. I know it's put out runners underground already; I tore most of them up when clearing the remains of the basil out out in November.
  • Pineapple sage, also looking straggly. I have become very fond of the flavor in salad-dressing. I'm thinking of starting another one (or more!) indoors, transplanting it out in spring, especially if the plant doesn't bush up with warmer weather.
  • Garden sage, spreading out and looking very healthy. I got this plant free from the nursery, because it had long woody stems and looked straggly. I took it home, spread the woody length of the stems along the ground and mounded them with earth, and it has propagated and thrived.
  • Two rosemary bushes, still small. They never bloomed this year, either.
  • The other Kashmir Purple geranium.
  • Three lavender bushes, still small. Only one bloomed this year.
  • There are three or four little strawberry plants scattered through the bed, set by runners from the bed above, that I didn't notice until they were established. I haven't decided yet whether I will move them in April or just let them grow where they are.
  • There are also a few petunias, leaves still green, that I have decided to leave to see if they will bloom again in spring.
  
  
• In the strawberry bed:
  • I have not yet counted all the strawberry plants! I let the runners run wild this year. Next year I will pinch them off ruthlessly, aiming for more berries rather than any more plants. Strawberry leaves spread pretty thickly across the bed, most of them turned red.
    
  • Three thyme plants among the strawberries, still healthy but not very big.
    
  • One tiny borage volunteer that sprouted up this month!
    


• In the veggie bed:
  • Six onions. Several dozen onions from the nursery, both Walla-Walla and yellows, were planted the end of April last year. I pulled half-a-dozen through the year, for salads. They stayed salad-sized even into October, when I dug over most of the veggie bed, getting ready for spring. I left some of the onions, to see if they ever "grow up."
  • Four Red Russian kale plants, still putting out leaves. I pick off the leaves when still young, for salads.
  • A bed of mixed greens, growing slowly but still yielding salads.
  • Five cloves of garlic. I meant to plant more, but never figured out where. I have covered most of the veggie bed with a compost heap, inoculated with worms, and plan to add topsoil and compost across the whole in early March, to bring the depth of good rich soil in the bed up to at least 18".
  • Three "winter sowing" experiments: one plastic cookie tub, sown with spinach and covered loosely with a plastic bag; one plastic 2-liter bottle cut halfway through, folded back, sown with parsley, then "closed" again; one gallon milk jug, top half cut off, sown with White Russian kale, top half set back down inside the bottom half. The kale is sprouting already.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day and I will probably be at one celebration or another until dark. By Tuesday, though, I'll post photos of all this. :D

Getting started on 2008!

One of my 2008 New Year Resolutions is to keep my garden journal more regularly this year.

Starting off with -- seed starts! I bought a four-foot shop light and two full-spectrum fluorescents at Home Depot, total $30. This is much cheaper than the indoor stations in seed-starting catalogs -- but it does not come with shelving for the plants or a stand for the light. Or extra space in the apartment.

Our apartments in the Union are studios, the kind called SROs, which officially stands for "Single Resident Occupancy." I say it stands for "Standing Room Only." In order to squeeze in a seed-starting station, I stood the light up against a bookshelf and piled milk crates and planting containers between the bookshelf and the microwave. And on the microwave. And in front of the bookshelf. With a holding area in the bathroom for pots that are not sprouting yet.

This first photo shows the shop-light:


In the second photo, you see the motley collection of pots and shelving I have cobbled together:


The wicker baskets are permanent planters; two will stay in the kitchen, along with one of the other trays and a couple of yogurt containers. They contain chives, cilantro, cress, scallions, spinach, leeks, garlic, and two kinds of parsley.


The last of the wicker baskets has been sown with catmint. When it grows up to a nice thick mound, I'll take it into the office for the Cat Executive Officer.


The yellow pot contains one of the three perennial geraniums I planted in the perennial bed in November. I dug one up to bring indoors for a closer look at how & whether it comes to life. It has a small green sprout now; too small to see in the photo yet, but exciting to me. :)


The little plastic box isn't really pearl onions, as labeled; it's bell peppers. The container makes a nice little greenhouse, with plenty of air circulation and no mold problems so far.

There are also a couple of 72-cell Jiffy seed-starting trays. I took the tops off because I was getting mold on some of the cells. Mold's been growing on practically everything. I think I used too much water in the starting soil. Picking off as much mold as I can and then sprinkling with bioactives, Soil Alive! and Dr. Earth's Compost Starter, have helped control it -- maybe just by drying the surface. I've even sprinkled pots that haven't shown mold yet, to be proactive. For the last few batches of seeds, I've mixed the bio-powders in with the soil right at the start, and I haven't seen mold on them yet.

In the bathroom are handmade newspaper pots of far more tomatoes than I will ever plant. :) (You can probably tell which ones were my first efforts!) If they all grow up healthy, I'll give the excess away.


By the time these pots show green, I hope to have bought, begged or borrowed a small bookcase, and be able to arrange the plants better. I also might get a second $30 light setup and put it in the bathroom.

Everything is sprouting up pretty fast except the spinach. (I added some leek seeds and three garlic cloves in the wild hope the would help combat the mold.) It finally dawned on me that it's too warm in here for spinach to germinate; it would actually do better outside. I'm going to take the basket out back tomorrow; after everything gets going, I might bring it back in.

Garden Resolutions for 2008

1. Continue my garden/compost/worm projects. (Wes says it's good to include at least one resolution that you are certain you will keep.)
2. Keep a more thorough garden journal, and post to my garden blog at least once a week.
3. Help start at least one new (organic) urban garden in Seattle.
4. Find a way to continue fresh greens at the Union community meals this winter.
   
5. Help homeless shelters, homeless day programs, and other low-income apartment buildings find ways to grow fresh greens.
6. Add at least one native, heirloom plant to my garden this year, and save the seeds.
   
7. Post at least one "environmental justice" entry each week, making the connection between human issues and environmental issues.

Puzzles of 2007

• What were those clusters of little black (eggs?) on the nasturtiums? (no photos)


• What DOES Holy Basil look like, and why didn't it come up?

Favorite Plants of 2007

The garden produce everybody enjoyed the most:

• Tomatoes, of course.

• Kale. Plant LOTS more kale next year.

• Nasturtiums. Plant LOTS more nasturtiums next year. Wes alone could eat the production of three nasturtium vines. But either make two salads (one with and one without) or put flowers in a bowl on the side for those who aren't freaked by eating them.

• Borage. No worries about getting more - I had volunteers coming up all year!

• All the flowers. Pedestrians like the spot of brightness among the gray city streets, but residents like cut flowers indoors too. Plant more, so there's enough for garden display and indoor display AND eating.

• I planted a variety of cucumbers this year. The most productive were the Asian types (the long, thin ones), and the Su Long was the healthiest. Nobody was put off by the shape, they were all cut up in salads anyway. So next year I'll just plant the Su Long, and maybe lemon cucumbers just because I like the cute little things.

Top 6 Things I Did Right in 2007

1. Compost tea really does seem to increase yield (at least in tomatoes) and cut down on disease. I did have black spot on the green peppers, some damp rot in a couple of lettuces and a pansy (planted too close together) and the downy mildew that swept through the vines (planted too close together). This seems light compared to the myriad of awful things the gardening books warned me could happen.
   


2. I vibrated the tomato blossoms with a battery-powered electric toothbrush, and a huge number of tomatoes set.
   


3. Radishes work well as a "trap" crop. I found this out by accident. The first crop of radishes got pretty heavily chomped - but almost nothing else did.
   


4. Marigolds and borage brighten up the day for everyone; are great in salads; and do seem to be good companions for other plants. They certainly didn't seem to hurt anything.
   


5. Cucumbers and squash love bone meal and kelp. Sea Magic and compost tea make a great foliar feed.
   


6. A layer of worm castings really speeds up seed germination! (I learned this by accident.) Worm castings also make a very effective treatment for black spot. (I learned this in desperation.)
   

More lessons from 2007

1. Learn how to mulch. First I was waiting to mulch until the seedlings came up. Then I was afraid of smothering the seedlings, so I was waiting until they got high enough that I could put mulch under them. Then I was overwhelmed by the difficulties of tucking mulch in around the base of all those plants. I didn't learn until the end of the year that I don't have to "tuck it in" around the stem. :D I also didn't have the money for a good commercial mulch, the transportation to get much of it, or the patience to shred enough newspaper to mulch 70 square feet of ground. And don't use peat moss as mulch. It dries into an almost impermeable layer. I learned that after just one watering. My most effecti ve mulch was coffee grounds. I was cautious with them this year -- next year I'll be less cautious.
   


2. Don't plant cucumbers beside the lavender. Interplanting works great, but cucumbers need LOTS more water than herbs are comfy with. Flowers and herbs, okay; strawberries and herbs, okay; cucubits and herbs, no.
   


3. Mark where you planted! I sometimes forgot where seeds were, and which. The markers of individual nursery plants got lost, too. Not as big deal, but I was surprised when our (one) green pepper turned red; and what I thought was a zucchini turned out to be a sunburst squash while the sunburst squash turned out to be a zucchini.
   


4. Keep up the garden journal better. I started out faithfully recording every sowing, every watering, every feeding, every time it rained, the date I started a new worm bin or compost bin. By the end of September, though, I slacked off on keeping records. Now I wish I had them.
   


5. When you buy nursery seedlings, you can get more than one in a pot. The reason the peppers never thrived turned out to be that they were each two plants, put in together. When I tried to separate multiple seedlings in other pots, they sometimes did not thrive. Again it seems best to steel yourself to cut off extra seedlings early, in order to get one productive plant.
   


6. If you start your own plants, you have more control over what you get. Of three pots I bought all simply labeled "zucchini," one was light green and pear-shaped, one was dark green and round, and one was dark green and, well, zucchini-shaped. This was interesting, but... well, I want to know what I'm raising!
   


7. You have to start the winter garden before winter. I could have more growing now, if I'd realized I had to plant it earlier.
   


8. Foliar feed is pretty much wasted on lightly-feeding plants. Not that it hurts them - but it's a waste of money.
   


9. Don't try starting seeds in potting soil. It works much better in peat moss. And even in warm weather, some plants start better in peat moss than in garden soil.
   


10. Worm castings don't solve everything. They worked so well on the black spot that I tried them on the downy mildew, too. Doesn't work on downy mildew.
    


11. The charts say beets like acid soil, but mine grew a lot better after I added some dolomite lime.
    


12. Sunburst squash tastes better when you let it grow larger. The bite-sized squash on crudité trays is pretty bland, and isn't worth the space in a community garden when you have to make salad for 20 once a week. When it gets to three or four inch diameter, it develops a very pleasant flavor - and goes a lot farther!
    


13. Lemon cucumbers taste better when they are very deep yellow. They are edible when they've just begun to turn orange around the stem, but at that point they taste like almost any other cucumber. If you wait until the whole cucumber is dark yellow with streaks of orange, they begin to taste lemony. In a salad, though, nobody noticed any difference. Plant less lemon cucumbers next year, and use them whole.
    


14. When they say to use compost tea right away, they mean it. I let it sit too long, twice. BIG stink.
    

Top Ten Things I Learned in 2007

1. Don't crowd the plants. I put way too many big-vine plants (cucumbers, zucchini, "sunburst" squash, and pumpkins) in too small a space, with not enough trellising, and I never pruned anything. I ended up with a jungle, got only a few fruits from each plant, and in August downy mildew swept through the whole lot; by the end of September I had to pull up every plant and most of it, I couldn't even mulch. I lost a couple of heads of lettuce and a pansy to damp rot. I couldn't bear to thin the basil, and I ended up with a lot of tiny basil plants that bolted to flower almost right away. In general, thinning results in bigger, healthier, and more productive plants.
   


2. WATCH more closely for disease! I didn't notice the black spot until it was far along; I lost two peppers entirely. I also didn't notice the downy mildew early enough. When I did, I should have sacrificed the affected plants early, and I might have saved more.
   


3. Prune your tomatoes, they like it. Tips I found out too late: As soon as a tomato plant puts out its first flowers, pick off all the leaves up to that point. (And add soil; tomatoes can put out roots from their stems!) Pick off a few leaves every now and then through the season, to let sun reach all the tomatoes (makes it easier to see them for harvest, too). At the very end of the season, while waiting for the last of the fruit to ripen, pick off almost all the leaves. Tip I had but didn't use: You don't have to keep every tomato that sets. I had a LOT of tomatoes per plant, but most were very small. Next year, I'll go for less numbers, bigger individual fruit.
   


4. Don't plant under the tomatoes unless some sun is going to get in there! I tried it with pot marigolds, then with carrots. Both times, I got sprouts; then they disappeared as the leaf layer above them got thicker.
   


5. I need better trellising! I put four-foot metal tomato cages around the tomatoes, and they outgrew them. By the end of the season two of the tomato plants were lying horizontal. The flimsy plastic trellises I used for the cucumbers started leaning over even before anything had begun to lean on them. Other trellising mistakes: Often I didn't notice new growth that needed to be tied to the trellis before it had gone its own way too long, and bending it back ran the risk of breaking it. That was partly due to plants too close together, partly just not checking often enough. The zucchini did not seem amenable to trellising at all; I think it could have been if I'd started when it was younger. And I thought it was real cute at first when one of the cucumbers started climbing a tomato; then the cucumber leaves shaded by the tomato started dying. Not an experiment to repeat.
   


6. Switch to different greens in hot weather. The salad greens we started with produced wonderfully all spring. When the weather got hot, they shot up long stocks and flowered, and the leaves turned bitter. Next year, pull the spring greens as soon as the weather heats up, before they bolt. Plant some hot-weather greens (just before hot weather). Switch back to cool-weather greens in the fall.
   


7. Cherry Belle radishes don't grow well in winter. They were great all spring and summer; three weeks from planting to eating, and you can eat the thinnings too. I tried planting some the end of September and they hadn't gotten over two inches high, three months later.
   


8. Don't plant mesclun mixes unless you know what each variety looks like. I was letting weeds grow all over the garden because I didn't know what was a weed and what was unknown-green-number-eight in the mesclun seed mix. And ALL of what I thought were "Sacred Basil" seedlings turned out to be weeds. I'll try starting Sacred Basil indoors next year, and find out what the seedlings are supposed to look like. Someday I will now what every seedling of every crop and every weed looks like. Maybe by the time I'm 93.


9. Don't spend money on garden worms until you build up the organic content of the soil. It was December before it dawned on me that the reason the worms I'd added to the garden had not multiplied was, there wasn't enough for them to eat. I did build the soil up a lot, and the worms I did add survived. But they won't multiply until the soil gets rich enough to support a larger population. Instead of adding more worms, add more worm feed.
   


10. Avoid overhead watering. Really. By next spring I'm going to have a water-the-roots-only system of seep hoses put in. With the sandy soil and the raised beds, it's really impossible to over-water this garden. But damp-rot and downy mildew have made me very cautious about over-watering the leaves.
    

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!