Tag Archives: lessons

Painfully obvious lessons

by on September 3, 2008 in The Growing Garden

More lessons, con’t from this post…

Tomato cages. Just suck it up and buy them. Stakes do no good when they have 6 “main” stalks coming up from the ground! It’s like trying to stop a monkey from flinging poo. Or trying to contain a 2 year old. Not gonna happen.

Zucchini and squash need a lot more room then the 2′ circle this boneheaded blog author gave them. 4′ all around. Or more.

Weed control. Don’t think because you start out good that you can slack off. Or your garden will look like this after a futile 2 hour weeding session:

That really is almost ALL WEEDS – the taters and corn are all harvested, so all the green you see, except the far right tomatoes and the far left squash, is weeds. :dizzy And that really is after I spent 2 hours taming some of the worst!

To build a trellis

by on June 10, 2008 in Tools, Products & How To

Stephanie asked me to write up how I made the new pea trellis. I was glad to have something to pull me away from work, so I got right on it!

I’ll start with a list of supplies (I got everything from Lowes):

  • ($10) 6′ steel fence post x2 (the ones sold as 6′…they are actually longer, with the part that goes in ground)
  • ($8) 1″x4″x10′ boards x2 (this means they are 1 inch thick, 4 inches wide and 10 feet long)
  • ($3) 1″x2″x8′ board x1 for the center post
  • ($3) Wire – old metal hangers and a couple spare landscape staples is what we used.
  • ($4) Twine…the stuff from Lowes is far from spectacular and breaks if stretched too far, but it served it’s purpose, cheaply
  • drill with drill bits, pliers, a couple screws, and scissors or a knife
  • ($6-30) Post driver. We made our own with a short piece of pipe, maybe 3-4″ with a pipe cap screwed on it (cost a little under $6). Top the post with that and hammer away. Or you can buy a premade one, but those are over $20. Up to you. It protects the post from the blow of the hammer.
  • A helper tall enough to reach up to 6′ (I know your toddlers would love such a job but they’re a little short!)

Assuming you’ve got a spot picked out, weeded, amended if needed, and any other soil prep done, measure just short of 10 feet…don’t make this a permanent mark, just a rough guideline. Drive the first post in so the anchor plate is a little underground. Lay one of the 10′ boards down so the end of it sticks out about an inch from the edge of the post you installed and move down to the other end. Drive the second post down so the other end of the board also sticks out about an inch.

Now measure to the middle (approximately) between the 2 posts and hammer the 8′ board down so it’s sturdy… mine only needed to go down a few inches so I plan on making my “Garden of Eatin’” sign to hammer on the top chunk sticking up.

With your helper, hold up the board to go on top so it’s almost to the top and the edge is about an inch overlapping the post – check to make sure the other end also overlaps the other post! Adjust as needed (you can pull the posts in a little if needed), then drill 2 holes just big enough for your wire, on each side of the post…I think a picture might be needed here to illustrate what we’re trying to accomplish:

Hopefully from that, you can see how the holes are drilled, with wire pushed through and twisted (enter pliers)….if you get it tight enough the little nobby things will keep it from sliding down (good technical manual I’m writing here, eh?). Finish that side, then do the same on the other end.

Use your drill and a couple screws and connect the center board with the top board. This is particularly important if you go with a more narrow board, like a 2″ instead of the 4″ I used, to keep it from sagging.

Now on the bottom, do the same thing on each side and the middle, but you really only need 1 wire to attach the boards to the posts (they won’t have the weight on them the top ones will)…keep the board slightly off the ground to prevent rotting:

Not to attach the twine. There’s 2 ways. The first way uses the drill to put holes for the twine to go through:

I think it looks nicer, but it takes longer and it makes the board unusable for anything else. For me, it took too long, so I moved on the the second:

In either case, start at the bottom, tie a good knot then carefully stretch the twine around the top board. It needs to be taut, but not too tight. If it breaks on you, you’ll know it was too tight! Consult your seed packets to know how far to space the twine. I did this after my peas were well established, but I would probably plant 2-3 seeds per string if I was direct sowing to ensure they all get used.

In the end, this is what I got:

Fall/winter cover crop

by on June 9, 2008 in Tools, Products & How To

Having never been able to be somewhere where I could contemplate the next season’s garden, I had never heard of a cover crop until I started researching gardening this spring. I learned, at a minimum, that planting a cover crop is a darn good way to add vital organic matter and nutrients into your soil with a minimum of cost and labor. Always a plus.

There’s much more to learn about it, so I went off in search of the how-tos and whys and whats.

What and why is a cover crop?

The cover crop (also known as green manure) is generally a single crop planted between seasons over the entire area. There are summer and winter crops and perennials, but I’m going to concentrate on winter crops in my research for now. Once the winter garden is in, I’ll do some summer cover crop research.

Cover crops are used to

  • fix nitrogen problems
  • loosen soil
  • prevent erosion
  • prevent leaching of nutrients (which apparently is called a “Catch Crop”)
  • suppress weeds
  • deter pests and diseases

Fava beans, clovers, vetchs, Austrian peas and other legumes add nitrogen to the soil. It sounds like a nifty scientific process involving bacteria drawing nitrogen from the air and fixing it on the legumes roots, to be released into the soil when the plant dies. Cool. Rye, barley, wheat, buckwheat and other grass and cereal crops are more for the last 5 reasons list above. Many farmers and gardeners combine types to get the benefits of both.

How?

Turn or till your area – hand turn it if at all possible so all your good wormies don’t get sliced up – and rake it smooth. Using a broadcast seeder (I got one from Lowest for $8, nifty little thing), spread seed over the area and rake it in to protect the seed from birds. You can plant in rows if you want, but everything I’m reading says broadcasting is fine….and faster.

When?

Immediately after harvesting…you can even do it in sections if you have one area that will be dormant for sometime, while you wait for another crop to mature. Let the plant grow and start to flower, then depending on the kind of plant, cut it, till it, let it die if it’s sensitive to winter cold, or let it go til spring and kill it then. They must be killed before going to seed.

My conclusion?

Based on the research from my references below, my plan will be to plant a legume with a grass and wait for it to start flowering, the mow it down, let it dry for a couple days, then till it under. After that, the garden will get our compost and the peat moss and sit for a couple weeks, then I’ll plant whatever I can at that time. For me, it looks like I might be able to get in broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, garlic, and lettuce, just based on Territorial Seed’s chart in their Fall/Winter catalog…may need to get some row covers, but that’s cool.

References:

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/fs/fs304-e/

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/sustainable/peet/cover/cover.html

http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s-3-81-789-1-1-2,00.html

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/covercrop.html

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=1036&storyType=garden

2008 Sunset Western Gardening Book

More lessons from the field

by on June 7, 2008 in The Growing Garden

continuing on a previous post….

Pea and bean trellis needs to have vertical lines to climb the best. And “garden twine” from Lowes is crap. Look at it wrong and it snaps.

Boxes are cute and fun and special garden layouts attractive, but not practical for economical and effective watering. Next time I’ll probably do plain ol’ rows. With real drip irrigation.

Name tags…permanent marker on plastic tags, genius. Writing on wooden popsicle sticks with regular pen, not so smart. I’m not sure which tomatoes are which, or which peas are which!

Memories (lessons learned as a child)

by on May 30, 2008 in Off Topic

My parents were awful parents. Really. Not “my parents wouldn’t let me have desert before dinner” awful, but “make me sleep surround by cat sh!t and never bathe me or even brush my hair” awful. I was spared the physical abuse my oldest 3 siblings got (I was #5), I think because they were just too old to chase after me when I screwed up (my dad was 50 when I was born and disabled, my mom 43)…but they loved to garden. My mom had a HUGE herb garden and my dad was always in our very large greenhouse doing something. I loved that greenhouse, especially the earthy smell. My most prominent memory was when my dad decided to mess around with a Gopher Plant. The sap is toxic but he ignores that kind of information…until he got the sap on his hands and rubbed his eyes. Ever see a grown man scream like a little girl? I ran as fast as I could into the house to get my mom and dad ended up spending almost a week in the hospital, and many more weeks at home with patches on both eyes. Being the ever loving wife my mom was, she just scolded him and made the older kids take care of him. So besides the non-gardening lesson of taking care of your ailing husband better then mom did, I learned that gopher plants are not worth it even if they keep the gophers away.

Lessons from the field

by on May 29, 2008 in The Growing Garden

errr, garden. This will likely become a page all to itself, depending on how much I find I’ve learned.

To start, I have learned the peas need very little nitrogen. So little that even dried grass clippings as mulch at their base will “burn” them. There’s a reason the Earth Juice has a separate formulation (no “Grow”) for legumes!

I’ve learned that pinching off the flowers on still small plants will encourage the plants to grow larger and better suited to bear fruit.

I’ve learned that watering in the morning and keeping the leaves as dry as possible is better then other times and methods, to keep bugs and disease away.

I’ve learned Rosemary is a PITA (Pain In The A*#) to grow from seed. In fact, I can’t seem to do it all. Time to get starts!

It’s late and I’m drawing a blank on the other stuff I’ve come to know, so more to come…..

Earthworms move slow…right? Right??

by on May 27, 2008 in General

So I’ve always been of the notion that earthworms are slow. I mean, they let you pick them up and they move around in your hand slow, then inch around in the soil slow, but apparently when they need to, they have some get-up-and-go!

I went out to check on my progress from today (even more satisfied seeing it again!) and there were 2 really big worms on the surface around the zucchini. I watched them for a minute, they were really big and “something to look at”, you know? So I went in the fence and got close and I swear to [whoever] those little suckers were in the ground like lightning! 8O One was so fast I didn’t see it move, but the other one, it was like a cat darting after a mouse. 8O That quick. Seriously! Crazy stuff!