Starting summer plants

This is what happened: I walked into the Lowe's garden center and got excited. I want to thank my assistant, Nicholas for trying to keep my level headed and putting up with my need for immediate results.

I bought:

Cherokee Purple tomato
Jalapeno Pepper
Blue Lake Beans
Sweet Basil
and..... STEVIA oooooooh

I also got two june-bearing strawberry plants and mint (Kentucky variety) from the local garden center.
I have two or three sweet pea plants started from seed already. (They're suppose to be early spring/winter but, we'll see how that goes). And of course the rosemary/oregano/sage pot is still going strong.

The strawberries are in a window box by themselves. The pea and beans are planted together in one. The mint is in a one gallon pot. The tomato, pepper, and basil are in separate 7 gallon pots. And the stevia is in a 5 gallon.

I used two different soils- The pepper and tomato are in my 'compost' soil. Really, it's just where I dumped the soil from last year in the woods and added some twigs and arugula. The may create an unhealthy plant- disease from fungi, bacteria, etc may now transfer from the dirt to the plants. But this soil is actually more lively- I saw earthworms and roly-polies when I  was gathering it. There's also more sticks and twigs which may leave more room for air & water. We will see.

The second soil I used was a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and osmocote. Nicholas had the peat and vermiculite left over from his creature-container making, but they're still cheaper than a bag of soil. A 2 cubic foot bag of Jungle Growth potting soil is about $9.  A 3 cubic foot bag of PACKED Majestic Earth peat moss is about $10. According to Lowe's website - this amount of peat should cover 72 square feet. And that particular brand is kind of pricey for peat. Vermiculite is about five dollars for a quart, and you should already have osmocote if you are gardening. Books and  things also recommend adding perlite, but I'm stubborn and cheap and didn't buy any.

The mixing of the soil was really messy. I had to rehydrate the peat moss and mix in the other ingredients. It was in no way scientific. Roughly, for every gallon of peat I added 1/2 gallon water, half a quart of vermiculite, and a fourth of a cup of osmocote. My method of mixing:

 I lined the inside of a pot with a piece of plastic so that dirt/water wouldn't run out the bottom. I put a little bit (one dust pan scoop) of peat in. At this point the peat is like dust. I poured a good bit of water in to get started with. Then I added about 3 more scoots of peat and mixed by hand. The mixture was very soupy mud. More peat moss, some vermiculite mix. Water, peat. Peat water. Vermiculite. Osmocote. Peat. Water. . . . . soil!

I decided not to reduce soil usage with the plastic bottles or anything this year. It was such a pain to try and keep them watered last year- I hope that more soil will translate to more water retention. I've also added a few more tactics to keep them cool.

My book suggested something that sounds far fetched, but easy. Use aluminum foil as 'mulching'. The foil is suppose to reflect light away from the dirt so that 1) the soil doesn't absorb as much heat (reducing evaporation) 2) increases light for the plant 3) deters leaf sucking creatures like lacewing flies, aphids, and vegetarian vampires. It also covers the soil. I didn't want to use new aluminum foil  so I decided to use stuff from my recycling. (ghetto, but I don't care). I had a sheet of clean foil, throw-away casserole dish, and some cans. The foil went onto the basil with some holes poked into it for aeration and water to get in. Casserole dish got cut up and placed around the stevia. Aluminum can got cut up and put around the pepper- which also provides the advantage of sharp edges that will cut up anything that wants to crawl on the soil around it. We'll see how it works out.

I've also arranged some white panels around the 7 gallon pots so that their black exterior won't absorb so much heat. If that doesn't seem to work I might wrap them with aluminum foil . 

The growth so far has been pretty good. Everything pretty much took off once I transplanted them, despite a bout of cooler weather. The mint has been the happiest so far, nearly doubling in size already. I also looked again at the beans- their bush beans not pole beans. They probably won't like the window boxes.

I planted marigolds in with a few of them to keep pests away, as well as some nasturtium seeds. The strawberries have already started to fruit, and I look forward to eating those as they ripen.

All this blogging has worn me out. I should update more frequently so I don't have to do so many posts at once :P

Winter Harvest

Winter was a great success.

This was my last harvest from winter. I had a boat load of greens, which the pictures don't really portray. Two whole window boxes were bursting with them. One had a mix of bitter greens (arugula) and the other had a mix of spicy micro greens (raddish-ish). Not my favorite. Most of them actually ended up in the compost heap. I had a few salads with them mixed into store-bought lettuce I had to pull them all up at once because they were attracting aphids.

This leaf of greens had a weird mutation where mini-leaves were coming out of it. Just wanted to show you all.


 
When I cleared out the micro-green box I found this one miniature radish. It tasted like a radish.

 I had started a box of Leek and Carrots awhile ago, and it's doing just fine. However, I thought that I would have full, luscious, delicious, ready to make soup leeks by now. No. They just look like green onion. :( I'm going to keep them going for a good while now so they hearty up. They do look good though.  

 

I  harvested several carrots from the leek box. It's weird, but the carrots I planted in other places haven't fleshed out. These definitely did. I hadn't been checking them very regularly so when I saw a quarter sized orange head peeking through the dirt I nearly split in half. Like this carrot.

 The variety is a true baby carrot (little finger I think, go check the post) so these are full grown. I ate them with my salad. Nothing extra-ordinary in taste, but they did have a strong flavoring of satisfaction.

Oooh! Springtime!

Actually, springtime is almost gone here in Auburn. Ever since February the weather has bounced between 40*F to 80*F. Humidity has yet to rear it's ugly head.

So I've been slacking (just a bit) in my art and spending time  outside. It's what I'm doing right now. And if I hadn't I would not have just seen a beautiful anole scuttle across the railing and flash his dewlap at me. There's also two new bird's nests on my balcony. One of nests is just low enough to look inside if I stand on a chair. This first one was taken about a week ago when I started my garden.

  The nest is about five inches wide, and very neatly put together.There is a piece of plastic bag or some thin plastic on the outside.
You can see the mud(?) packed around the inside in this photo.

This photo I just took. The birdies lined the mud with another layer of that grass/straw stuff. And laid two eggs. :) In my brief google search I've guessed that it's a robin's nest. Or a bluebird, but they usually live in boxes or holes. I don't know if it's the best idea to be hanging out on the porch right now with them- I havn't seen the mama or papa. Google said that the parents don't actually start nesting til they have laid all the eggs- so maybe she's out stuffing her face or something. I'll consult some experts later.

Now, onto the garden. (New Posts)