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.
    

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.

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.