Next Season's Plans

So as things have gotten established in the garden, I have been thinking about what I should have done differently and what changes I will make next season. This is a first cut and will probably be altered throughout the season:

Overall I am pretty happy with the whole process, so I plan on growing even more veggies and fruits next year. With that in mind, the 5x5 box was too big because its too hard to get at the veggies in the center, and also because the density of the crops means that the middle veggies don't get as much light as they could. I will probably leave the center square empty next planting, regardless of what I put in the rest of the squares.

One problem is that when I planned the squares I only took into account only the final height of the crops. What I didn't account for is the staggered start times. For instance, corn gets much higher than the peas, but the peas go in earlier so they block out the corn as it grows. Next season I'll plan according to final height AND start time.

I also plan on building maybe 4 2x2 squares and putting them next to the existing bed. One of the 2x2's will be specifically for strawberries, because I am starting to see the strawberries take off now that the potatoes are out (more in a minute). I also want to take a stab at some homemade strawberry wine... (I can also use the juice of one of my lemons for it.)

Another 2x2 (maybe a long 5x2) will be strictly for corn. I'm not sure how my corn will turn out. Its been growing extremely well but I have read that corn needs to be planted densely in order to be fertilized, and I'm not sure my 4 plants per square, in 3 squares, staggered about a month apart, will be dense enough to fertilize each other. We'll wait and see.

Other 2x2's will be used for tomatoes, because by putting all of them together they will be easier to stake out.

I will also build a potato bin, maybe 18"x18." I finally gave up and pulled the potato plants a few days ago because they were just blocking out all the light for 3 or 4 squares around them. It turns out I got a good amount of potatoes:


I think this is pretty encouraging and I'm sure they would grow faster and bigger if I hadn't been cutting the foliage back for about two months (I wrote how long they had been in the ground when I pulled them so I could calculate in the future). I want to be able to disassemble the bin at the end of the season so I can get the potatoes easier.

Regarding the specific crops:

• The snow peas are tremendously prolific, putting out a good sized crop about every two weeks. I will probably plant a couple of squares of them next season.

• The carrots are also growing well:

• I also liked the spinach, but the mesclun and buttercrunch didn't really live up to my expectations. However my options for what to grow during that time period are pretty limited, so I may just end up growing a bunch of spinach.

• I think the green beans were planted too densely, 9 to a square. I followed Mel's instructions, but the way the leaves spread out (and they're big leaves) causes problems with light. I'll dial it back to four per square next planting,
  

• I'm happy with the tomatoes and peppers. The cherry tomato I've raised from seed is the biggest plant in the garden, although none of the tomatoes have set fruit yet (but they have flowered). Next year I will probably start the tomatoes and peppers about a month later than I did this year (mid-Jan), and I will start them directly in black nursery pots instead of in the peat pots.
  

trimming trees and eating peas

I have quite a few other things I should be doing right now but I would rather do this post. This past week we had two big trees in our yard trimmed. The first tree is the giant elm which dominates our backyard (the tree guy estimated it was about 70 years old). Its obviously on the backside of its life but, since we bought the house when everything was dormant, we weren't sure of the actual condition of the tree. It turns out there is quite a bit of foliage on the branches, but there were alot of dead branches, and most of those dead branches were overhanging the house. I have also been picking up branches from that tree out of the yard since we bought the place.

Secondly, there was a big, totally dead tree between our house and our neighbor's and, if this one came down, it would hit one of our houses. You can see the stump on the left side of the picture. This also gives me a ton more light on my garden during the morning hours:

If you click on the picture and enlarge it, you can also see the huge piles of firewood in the background, by the fence.

The plants have all been growing well, especially the tomatoes. As you can see from the pictures below, I picked up some tomato cages and staked out the Roma and Black Krim (which are growing next to each other) and the cherry tomato, which is growing by itself. The cherry tomato in particular is really big with a ton of branches and needs the extra support.



You can also see in the bottom left hand corner some new plants, where there used to be spinach, mesclun, and buttercrunch lettuce. In fact, a few days after my previous post I went out and saw that the mesclun and spinach had bolted and were unusable. I dug them out and added them to the compost heap. I also ate the rest of the buttercrunch (and gave a head (shoot?) to some friends). Instead of letting the squares lay fallow, I decided to try and plant some other crops in them. I picked up a Porter's dark cherry tomato (where the spinach was), a Santa Fe Grand pepper (where the buttercrunch was) and a Cayenne pepper (where the mesclun was). I turned over and heavily enriched the soil with some of my own compost and, in the case of the tomato, used some organic tomato fertilizer I have been feeding to my other tomatoes. I don't know if the plants will set fruit or develop, but it will be neat to see the results of growing two crops following closely on one another.

Since St. Patrick's day I have been eating some of my crops, namely the cold weather greens (lettuce, mesclun, and spinach) and some green onion. But recently some new crops have been coming in, particularly the snow peas. I picked some of them earlier today (along with an onion) and am planning on making a snow pea/ szechuan pork stir fry for dinner tonight.


I picked the large and medium sized pods, but there are still many small and baby pods left, particularly towards the top of the plant.

In the front yard, the pomegranate has sprouted and is doing well. I do plan on cutting back some of the overhanging hackberry tree branches to help it get a little more light, but that will probably have to wait until school is out.

You can see in the background, and here more closely, that the giant cactus is budding:


This is exciting because these put up a bunch of prickly pears. At the very end of the season last year, right after we moved in, I picked about a dozen of the pears and made some syrup, which is now in the freezer. This summer/fall, I hope to get more, and fresher, pears to make better syrup.

A few days ago we went to Austin Natural Gardener and I bought a dwarf key lime tree. I have been searching all over for a key lime, but due to some stupid restrictions on shipping fruit I could not get one. This guy was kinda expensive, but I was happy to finally find one:

For the time being I'm keeping my citrus (the key lime and meyer lemon) on the front porch:

The Mexican Plum tree is on the right, in the black nursery pot. We are going to plant it when we xeriscape the front yard in May. And speaking of xeriscaping, at Austin Natural Gardener we also bought an Arbequina olive tree, which will be an excellent fit in the front yard, opposite the pomegranate tree (we'll plant it at the same time as the Mexican plum).

Stay tuned for a first cut at a reassessment of this year's crops and preview of next season's plans...

Do-Over

Back in January I sketched out a plan for what I wanted to plant in which square. Of course, you know what they say about best-laid plans. Because I had a good number of seedlings die off and because some of the early/late crops either didn't work out or I figured I could do them in the same square, I had to do some rearranging. This is the new grid, followed by a picture of the actual garden (everything is planted, except the yellow corn, which will be planted in a month or so).


And, how it looks as of today:


Ive trimmed down the spinach and the mesclun greens and pulled one head of buttercrunch lettuce. I'm trying to get the strawberries enough light, and I'm also concerned that the yellow bell pepper might not get enough light. Its bracketed by the onions, the potatoes, and the peas on three sides.

I've got two closeups from the box. First, the massive cherry tomato I've raised from seed:

Next are the four snow peas:


I put a bamboo rod in the center and tied twine from the corners of the square to the notches on the bamboo to train the peas to climb.

I also have a little natural experiment going down at the bottom of the yard. Throughout this whole process I've had excess plants, seedlings mostly. First, I had the peat pots which didn't sprout, or the leftover seedlings which didn't make it into the nursery pots or the garden, or which were not as promising as the others who came out of the same hole in the box. Instead of throwing them out, I've just stuck them in the ground down at the end of the fenceline. I've also been dumping soil and throwing out peat pots down there. Its been pretty interesting. Ive got about four pea plants, a bunch of seedlings and some pretty vigorous tomato plants (I have no idea which kind), and today I planted some excess pepper plants I had. I don't water these plants or anything. I essentially want to see what will happen just by the process of nature, versus being in a tended garden with special soil.


The peach tree has set fruit also. There are probably about 30 of these little guys all over the tree:


In addition to the peach tree, the pomegranate (which I thought was perhaps dead) and the Mexican plum are both blooming.

Finally, I added two links to the section at the right. The first is the show "Central Texas Gardening" and the second, "dissertation to dirt," is by a former PhD student who now interns or something at Johnson's backyard garden (our CSA).

Projects

So besides the actual gardening and growing I had to do some related projects. First was a raincatch. This isn't really mandatory for the square foot gardening, but I do need it to grow my blueberries. As I mentioned in an earlier post, blueberries like acidic soil, and I got around that by putting the blueberries in containers. However I could ruin it all by watering the containers from the hose, adding in all the alkalinity from the groundwater. I'm surely not going to buy bottled or purified water, so I decided on collecting rainwater. I looked at raincatches at Home Depot (where I have been spending a disturbing amount of time and money recently) but they were too expensive and all seemed poorly designed. I decided to build a cheap one my own. I bought a 54 gallon Rubbermaid container, some 1 1/2 inch PVC, PVC elbow joints, screen, and zip ties. I think you can get an idea of the construction from the pictures:

I have no idea how well this will hold up, but the total of all the materials was around $28.00 and it took about 30 minutes to put together. The screen is to prevent mosquitoes from using the raincatch as a birthing pool.

Like a hobo Ive been keeping the rainwater in milk jugs and other bottles and hopefully this will be enough for the blueberries. After about two months rain and snow, I have about 40 gallons of water:

Yes, I know I drink a lot of soda.

For now Ive retired the raincatch. I have plenty of water, and when I run out I can just put the container under the drip line of the roof and it will be full.

The next project was a composter. Again, I looked at a bunch of fancy ones at home depot and they ended up being quite expensive. I bought a small, heavy-duty plastic trashcan and just drilled about 30 holes in the bottom and sides with a 5/8" boring bit, to allow oxygen into the compost:

In the end, this cost about 15 dollars and will be important for making my own compost for future plantings. Here it is after a month or so (I turn it every week or so):

ah Swiss chard...

Finally, I wanted to construct a kind of cage to prevent varmits from getting in to the vegetables and either eating the seeds, the fruit, or the plants themselves. I did it with 3/4" PVC and a few T and elbow joints. The top is a woven trellis and later I think I will put wire around the sides. I specifically made it so that I can scale it up by replacing the vertical supports.

Its going to be pretty awesome when I come out one morning and find a raccoon who has gotten himself trapped inside.

Update

The last couple of weeks have been very hectic with school stuff and a few visitors to Austin, so I haven't had much time to blog or really do much work in the garden. Honestly, there isn't much to talk about right now, other than a few small things.

Monday (March 15) I planted the remaining seeds in the garden: 2 plants each regular and pickling cucumbers (two adjacent squares in the upper left corner), 2 lima bean plants (from here, via the Masons), and 9 garden beans (in the lower right hand square). In the back row you can also see the shoots of four corn that I planted a few weeks ago.


Soon after taking these pictures I had my first bit of food from the garden: I picked a red onion and chopped up the stem and base for garnishing on some jambalaya, and I also picked some of the mesclun greens for a salad before St. Patrick's day dinner.

I have some specific concerns:

1. The potatoes are growing so fast. I have started trimming the plants, mainly to let some other plants surrounding the potatoes get sunlight, but I don't know the wisdom of doing this for three or four more months (for new potatoes), or what effect this will ultimately have on the potatoes I do get. Also, I have no idea what is going on under the soil... I've been thinking about next year and perhaps I will do a type of potato bin and just let the potatoes grow.

2. The strawberries are really disappointing. If anything they seem to be dying back. I don't know if they will take off once the weather starts to get really warm, but I hope so. My other berries, the blueberries and the blackberries, are doing really well. The trees also:

peach

apricot

Also regarding the trees, one of the main branches of the pomegranate in the front yard has been snapped off. There are also giant logs of crap around the base of the tree. I have a good idea who is responsible. I don't think the injury will be fatal to the tree, but in fact the tree may already be dead...or its just dormant for a much longer time than the rest of the trees.

I have two other projects. At the plant sale I bought two container tomatoes. I've planted those in some pots and I keep those outside most of the day (unless it is really windy or cold). Generally, I've begun to "harden off" the tomatoes and peppers I have under the lights by leaving them outside a few hours each day. The transplants should be ready to go into the ground in about 3 weeks (after the last frost).


Finally, I decided to try and grow some ginger, in what seems a very simple process. I'm doing it in the container because I will have to bring it in when it gets too cold.

Plant Sale

Given my seedling die-off and, on advice from mom, I decided to check out a few plant sales yesterday and today to buy some seedlings. I still object to this, because I want to grow things from seeds and buying young plants feels like cheating, but I want tomatoes and peppers and this might be the best way to get them, at least until I get better about starting plants from seeds.

Apparently these sales are quite a big deal, but I just randomly found them on craigslist. Yesterday (Friday) I went to a sale at one of the local Austin schools. I can't find a link to it, but it turned out to be pretty small- it was basically a vocational thing. I bought a habanero seedling and a jalapeno seedling.

UPDATE (March 8): I misremembered...I bought a Habanero seedling and a Cherry Bomb pepper seedling.

Today I went to a much bigger sale, at Sunshine Community Gardens. I showed up towards the end of the day, but the amount of peppers and tomatoes they had were massive (you can see a sample by clicking on the list at the above link). I bought two "new big dwarf" tomatoes, which I figure I'll grow outside in containers, not in the garden. I also bought a sweet pickling pepper, an Anaheim, and a "mucho nacho" jalapeno.

So here the new setup of the growing tray:

My grand champion cherry tomato is still totally dominant (its a good 6 inches tall and pretty bushy), and the black krim are coming up nice (bottom row, second from left). I am also getting some action on the other new varieties I planted a little bit ago, so hopefully that will continue.

Two "master gardeners" from the extension office had a table and I asked one of them what was going on with my seedlings. He told me that it sounded like the soil could be too dry or too wet. Big help (I'm being sarcastic). He also said that the grow light should be as close to the plants as possible, which I was confused about (I'm serious). He also told me that the extension service has an email address where you can send pictures and descriptions of your problems and experts can try to answer, which might be more promising.

Hot Plant Action

First, an update on the plants I started in early January under the grow light. A few weeks ago I transplanted them into some simple black nursery pots filled with some of the leftover Mel's Mix from the box. Some were starting to outgrow their little peat pots and I wanted to make the transition into the box as easy as possible. I now have them under a tent of aluminum foil to maximize the light:

Below is a list of what I started with, and following it is what I have now:

• Habanero pepper= I now have 1 doing OK and the other is stalled.
  
• Jalapeno pepper= all died
  
• Bell pepper= 2, both doing OK
  
• An Anaheim-type pepper= all died
  
• Hungarian wax pepper= 1 left, all but dead.
  
• Pepperoncini pepper= all died
  
• Roma Tomatoes= 1 stalled, 1 doing pretty good
  
• Beefsteak Tomatoes= all died
  
• Cherry Tomatoes= 1 massive bastard:
  

All in all, this is a pretty damn miserable performance. I started with about 4 seeds/peat pot and five peat pots, so out of 20 seeds I got about 1 is potentially useable plant. I figure I had about a 50% germination rate, most of the seedlings didn't survive, and then a few more died in the transplanting.

For the life of me I can't figure out why so many have failed. They are in good soil, get a regular amount of high quality light, and are kept moist (but not wet) by regular spritzes. I also water them with a 1-2-1 fertilizer (as recommended by the folks at ANG) every few weeks, diluted into the spray bottle. The stalks of the plants are very strong but the leaves are shriveling, drying, and dying.

I saw this coming a few weeks ago and ordered some new seeds to try and get something going:

Black Krim, a Russian Heirloom Tomato ("In Russia, Tomatoes grow you!")

Ceylon Tomatoes (a mini-beefsteak), because my other beefsteaks died.

Early Jalapeno, because I love Jalapenos and they are one of the reasons, if not the reason, why I started a garden.

Ancho Poblano Peppers, I would like to try and dry these.

"White Lightning" Habanero, because my Habaneros died and these look pretty cool.

While the seedlings have been pretty disapointing the stuff out in the yard and in the box has been going great. The peach tree, in particular, is starting to bloom:

I also bought a lemon tree a few weeks ago at Great Outdoors. Even here in Central Texas it gets too cold for a lemon tree to survive year-round planted in the ground. I keep this one inside in a sunny window in the back bedroom but I may move it outside during the summer. Its already got six little lemons on it.

The veggies are also going pretty strong. This is the lettuce, mesclun greens, and carrots (from the front of the picture to the back) and all nine spots of each have sprouted:

All nine buttercrunch lettuce have come up as well:

And all four peas:

So in the box, I'm batting a thousand. All seeds have sprouted and all the seedlings are doing very well. And though I didn't take a picture of it, the potato runners are also nearly up to the surface.