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 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
No comments:
Post a Comment