Intermission -- Pictures

After three weeks of promising pictures of the garden, I finally have them -- woo - hoo!  So remember I told you my garden space was teeny-tiny... well now I guess you'll believe me.  This is it, happily nestled between the air conditioner and the huge holly bush.

M. did the fantastic brick work.  Before, this was an extremely chaotic explosion of rock, brick, ivy, and misc. plants. 

This is a closer view of the right side of the garden.  The left size is relatively unexciting right now, with only cucumber planted.  On the right size is the four vertical rows of lettuce, spinach, and arugula.  In the back is a horizontal row of sugar snap peas and in the front are two short horizontal rows of green onions.  Of course you can't see anything yet, but I promise you, they are there.  As a matter of fact, look at this:

SEEDLINGS!!!!!!

Spring Planting -- Phase 3, In the Meantime

It's been a little over a week since I planted my arugula, lettuse, spincach, green onions, sugar snap peas, and (oops..) cucumbers.  Since then, the weather has been pretty nice, daytime temperatures between 55 and 65, rained three days.  And appaently its perfect weather for lettuce, spinach, and arugula seed germination -- look at my babies!

This was taken a few days ago -- there are tons more now, especially spinach. So what exactly are my seeds doing? First the seed gets a signal from envrionment to start germination. When seeds are kept in the dark and in the absence of moisture, a chemical hormone called absicic acid is keeping the seeds from germinating but when they are lightly buried in moist soil with pinpoints of sunlight hitting them, they stop making absicic acid and start making giberllins which basically says GERMINATE! The baby plant starts growing by sending out a tiny root called a radicle. The baby plant, or cotyledon, elongates until the seed breaks the surface. Two baby leaves (plumule) comes out and the seed covering falls off. Over time, the radicle becomes a root and as the two baby leaves fall off the stem and the stem elongates, normal leaves are produced. Or in short, look at this diagram from Hawaii University:

 

Spring Planting -- Phase 2, March Seeding

According to my plan, March is time to plant my lettuce, spincach, arugula, pea, and onion seeds.  As soon as I got home on Tuesday, I started planting.  I changed into my gardening gear, grabbed my tool (that is the spade), the seeds, and my iPod, and went straight to my garden.

To plant the lettuce, arugula, and spinach seeds, I needed to lightly sprinkle the seeds and cover them with approximately 1/4 inch of soil.   These seeds are relatively small, so they are rather difficult to dipserse individually.  I used my spade to create 4 trenches about 1/2 to 1/4 inch deep and 12 inches apart.  I opened the seed packets, put some seeds in my hand, and lightly sprinkled the seeds into the trench.  After I finished planting the seeds, I lightly covered them with soil.  I lightly patted the ground over the seeds.  For the onions, I did a similar planting.

For the sugar snap peas, I created a trench about 1 to 2 inches deep.  Compared to the lettuce, spinach, and arugula seeds, pea seeds are rather large and easy to plant individually.  I planted one seed every 1 - 2 inches or so and covered the seeds with 1 inch of soil.  Again I lightly patted the ground over the seeds.

So recall from the previous posting that for some reason, I though cucumber seeds could be planted and I bought a packet of seeds.  Once I got home, I didn't look at the gardening guide again so I planted them too.  This may be a mistake; the planting dates for cucumbers (slicing and pickling) starts April 15, so I may have jumped the gun a little here -- only time will tell if they do well!  Anyway, to plant cucumber seeds, I needed to dig a trench about 2 inches deep.  I planted 4 - 6 seeds every 3 inches; the size of cucumber seeds is between pea and lettuce-type seeds, so this isn't too difficult.  I covered the seeds with mounds of soil, burying them to about 2 inches.  No patting of the soil required. 

I realized I had lines of seeds and no way to know exactly where they are.  I needed something weatherproof and around the house to label each row.  We happen to have a lot of rocks and pieces of bricks around, so I grabbed a sharpie, labeled a rock with each seeds name, and placed a labeled rock at the head of each row, like below:

I watered the garden after planting and I was done for March planting!  The past few days have been rainy, so I've only been waiting for seedlings to come up.  I promise once it clears up I'll get pictures of the garden.

I've planted lots of babies and I can't wait to see them grow!

Spring Planting -- Phase 1, Planning

So the garden's ready and now it's time to figure out what I want to plant, when it should be planted, and whether it should be seeds or seedlings (i.e. small plants).  The best place to find this infomration is to go to the NC Coooperative Extension Service.  The Cooperative Extension rocks -- every state has one, and its a great source for any and all horticulture and gardening questions.  Not only does every state have one, but every county in every state has one as well.  If you're not a North Carolinian just google your state and cooperative extension.  Should come up.

Anyway, on the NC CES website, I found a great publication on how to start a garden with a planting guide for a plethora of vegetables (http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag-06.html).  An early start on gardening is a must: there are quite a few vegetables that like cool weather (i.e. spring).  In March, you can plant the following seeds: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, greens (lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, etc.), onions, root veggies (rutebaga, radishes, beets, turnips), peas, and carrots.  April veggies include green beans, squash, corn, pumpkins, tomatoes, and watermelon.   Most of the planting dates for these vegetables is actually mid-March and mid-April.  I also would recommend buying seedlings of tomatoes.  Unless you have a space to start from seed inside (which needs to be done in mid-February), it may be too late to plant seeds in the spring.

Okay.. if I could, I would grow.... all of them.  But, as timy a space I have, I can only do a few.  So I've chosen the veggies that we consume the most. I figure, at about $2 per lettuce bunch and $2 per packet of seeds, I'd have to make ahead economically, given the garden is productive (fingers crossed!).  For March, I decided to plant lettuce (2 types), spinach, arugula, sugar snap peas, and onions.  April will be tomatoes and maybe squash or green beans. 

I went to Ace Hardware, and bought seeds for the March vegetables. For some reason, I thought I had cucumbers on the list (even though the list was in my bag), so I bought those too.  And my total was.... $10! nice.

As  soon as I got home, I changed into gardenining close and got started.

Preparing, preparing, preparing

During the fall and winter, the space of my would-be garden was covered in leaves.  See, this is a good thing.  As the layer of leaves breaks down, nutrients (ah nutrients) are recycled into the soil, making it nice and organically rich.  Plus, it provides a nice warm toasty winter site with lots of food to tons of little beneficial critters. 

Sometime in towards the end of February, on one sunny slightly warm (as in 55 degrees warm) day, because I was DESPERATE to get outside, I raked the leaves away from the bed.  After another couple of cold weeks, it was finally March and no longer 40 degrees during the day.  That's this week, by the way. 

The first thing that really needed done in the space was to remove all the overwintering weeds.  It's important to get all of the weed removed, i.e. not just the top green part but the roots too.  Otherwise the little suckers will just pop back up, it's their life strategy (see the R-strategy (aka ruderal) proposed by Grime 1977).  They're survivors.  Anyway, the easiest way to do this is to use a spade and dig up the weed from underneath, removing the roots, while simultaneously pulling from the top. 

Unfortunately, several of our 'weeds' are little clonals.  This means that instead of growing by seed (i.e. sexual reproduction), these clones will send out an underground stem (also called a rhizome or runner) from which a genetically identical plant will grow (also called a ramet), i.e. asexual reproduction.  Much more of a PITA (pain in the ass) to remove, so I tried my best, got frustrated, and figured I'd pick them out later when I turned over the soil.

Which leads me to turning over the soil,which is the next step.  The seeds need soil somewhat losse soil for their tiny little baby roots (also called radicle) and tiny little baby stems (or hypocotyle) need to grow through. I tried to do this first with a hoe (if you have a larger garden space, may I suggest NOT using a hoe, but perhaps renting / buying a roto-tiller) to no avail.  Since I have such a small space, I simply used a shovel to turn over the soil and then used the hoe to break it up.  My sig. other, M., redid the brickwork surrounding our garden space and removed some unwanted shrubs.  And viola! The garden was ready for seeding!  (Pictures to come, once again it's raining outside).

During my soil-turning endeavor, I found that our garden spot was a haven for grubs.  More specific, these cicada grubs (courtesy of D. Pugh's website, http://www.dpughphoto.com/index.htm -- check it out, pretty awesome nature photos):

And, being the bleeding heart nature loving person I am, I re-buried them.

An Introduction

Okay, so I'm not quite a 'virgin' gardener.  I have a had a garden before.  As a Master's student at Ohio University in Athens, I had a small plot in an organic garden belonging to the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology.  It was about a five minute drive from my house, and I was somewhat successful with the garden; tons of zucchini, a few melons, some tomatoes.  But most of what I planted was disastrous.  My eggplant was devoured by flea beetles before they could even put on a new leaf, my cucumbers yellowed before they even ripened, and my beans never really became beans.  Long story short, not a productive garden, mostly becuase I didn't put the energy needed into it. 

I'm also not really a novice when it comes to plants.  I've got a Master's degree in plant biology and am currently working on a PhD, studying how plants adapt to stressful environments.  However, my reserach is NOT related at all to gardening, horticulture, etc., contrary to what many people think.  If I had a nickel for everytime someone asked me "Why is my plant dying?" or "What is this plant?".  Show me a plant, and I guarantee I will be able to give you some theories of why it grows where it does and how it does, but I will not be able to tell you it's name.  Maybe a wide group name, i.e. that's an oak, but nothing specific.

But I digress.  The point is I have never had a home garden grown with the intention of replacing store-bought vegetables commonly consumed in my household.  So that's my goal, with a garden that is quite small, maybe 6'x 4' (don't have the exact dimensions, it's raining out and don't really want to go measure, but you get the idea) and household that equals 2 adult members.

And..... go.