Earth Day Gardening Update

Happy Earth Day! In honor of our mutual Mama, I thought I’d share some recent photos from the next season of Mad Scientist Gardening. Actually, I just clicked that link to May 26, 2013, and I’m feeling a whole lot better about my progress! We’ve come a long way, baby … but still have miles before we sleep …

On April 1, 2014, I started 72 little seed pots in a Burpee Seed Starter Kit, along with about 25 others, which I let germinate under another set of fluorescent lights in our basement, as well as upstairs in the office. It has been seed central here for all of April.

April 1

Seedlings today: I need to repot some of the larger ones so that the little guys get enough light.

Office seeds 4/1/14

Office seedlings today

Yesterday, I began another round of seeds:

I decided to plant the warmer crops in at least two rounds, in case I get hit with leafhoppers and squash vine beetles again this year. This is round one of the squash family, and I’ll be scattering some sunflower seeds soon. We already have some sprouting from last year, which I’ll need to cover from tonight’s frost.

Newly planted seeds warming on our sunny porch and mini-greenhouse, which just gets used as a rack. Holy off-gas of the plastic! Maybe next year…

Last week marked the arrival of some long-anticipated fruit trees, a dwarf lilac, Alpine strawberries, lingonberry bushes, other fruit bushes and a scabrosa rose, which supposedly makes 5 inch flowers and huge hips. I had offered a Reiki class in Goshen back in February and wisely allowed some people to trade yard work hour for hour. It was so wonderful having knowledgeable help and extra hands planting all the trees and other plants:

Here’s a still dormant “sweet” quince tree.

Our rose is the happiest so far, because, why, yes! We do have extremely acidic soil, which roses love. Fruit trees, not so much. I’ve started foliar sprays of Sea Magic, and they seem to be recovering from their shock. This rose has been happy from the start.

Looking at this original photo makes me feel better about the one Alpine strawberry plant that I may have killed by accidentally saturating its leaves with the essential oil based Squirrel Stopper. Oops! “Do not spray on plants.” That one guy didn’t look to happy to begin with, though. Maybe Sea Magic will work its magic.

The structure of the yard continues to change, as well. Some day when I feel the yard has really begun to reflect my full vision for it, I will post a true before and after photo. The before photo is so desolate, weedy and embarrassing, but I’ve saved it for when the front yard has started blooming into what I see in my head. Until then, last year’s massive wood mulching project has transformed into this year’s coffee and leaf mulching project to build new raised beds for beneficial bug-friendly flower mixes.

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from a neighbor asking if anyone had need of coffee grounds for compost. I jumped at the chance, forgetting that this neighbor happens to own the local coffee shop. Imagine my surprise when he dropped off 5 huge kitchen bags full of grounds! Worms love coffee grounds, and brewing coffee takes out most of the acidity. I added a bunch of the nitrogen rich grounds to our compost pile, but also mixed some in with the leaf mulch that’s rotting down and killing grass before I plant.

Coffee grounds near Mount Mulchmore

That same neighborly email thread allowed me to get rid of share six huge garbage bags of leaf mulch with another neighbor, which means Mount Mulchmore is more of an East Coast than a West Coast sized mountain.

The concrete hauling project remains my one-woman clean up the neighborhood attempt. I’ve gradually hauled over about half the smashed up concrete that had been looking ugly in front of the apartments next door. Fortunately, the buildings are on a corner and the ugly piles face away from our house, so it’s not completely obvious where their ugliness ends and my intended beauty begins. Of course, that means I’ve got much longer walks with the wheelbarrow, so this project has stretched over at least a month, probably more, and it’s not done yet.

I wasn’t sure about the concrete slabs, but I think my garden faery landscaper must have cast a Glamour on that concrete. We’ve now had many, many guests and yard workers over in the past couple weeks and people keep asking (sincerely), “Where did you get the beautiful stone?!” LOL … but, hey, enough of those comments inspired me to haul more slabs and build more beds. The “stones” have now begun to unify the front and back yard, and they’ll allow me to make raised beds in an otherwise dead zone of a foot of wood mulch over landscape cloth — my desperate attempt to make a dent in the thousands of dandelions going to seed each hour last year. No, I do not exaggerate!

The bed on the left already holds chocolate mint that had taken over a different raised bed. The one on the right will house marigolds and other beneficial flowers, and the one directly behind it already has yarrow and wild violets. I will plant more in there as I have time and weather permits.

This long bed will hold the beneficial bugs mix of various clovers, dill, carrots and other pretty, nectar-y things.

The above photo also shows the beginnings of another concrete raised bed to the left, which already holds a poorly selected site for asparagus and (hopefully) cardoon, if the seeds sprout. Everyone steps on my asparagus, so I realized I needed to create some visual deterrent. Perhaps a bunny deterrent, as well. It will also let me add a lot more compost and some marigolds. Unfortunately, completing that bed involves uprooting about 50 more dandelions. Note: I already have nearly a five gallon bucket full just from this weekend:

These will be cleaned and separated — roots from shoots, with the shoots put in smoothies and the roots roasted for dandelion tea/”coffee”. Uprooting dandelions is vigorous work! I’ve earned that tea, LOL, and really … it has hardly made a dent in our volunteer cash crop.

Back to the previous photo, though, I am so thrilled with how great the triple-tiered raised beds filled up! A four-person family helped me on Saturday afternoon, and I see from last year’s post that those raised beds never looked so good. I thought they had flopped after a season of growth, but it turns out that two people really weren’t adequate to fill them the right way. They stand much higher and firmer now, awaiting bush beans, calendula, borage and cantaloupe later this year. The half gallon milk jugs in that same photo are protecting fava bean sprouts from the squirrels and bunnies, who devoured my first planting of fava’s. Ohhh, they want those sprouts! Every day, I find evidence of them attempting to burrow under the milk jugs. Thank you, hidden gopher wire! Nobody’s climbing up from underneath my garden!

Sooo, that’s the update. Today, my friend Suzanna’s taking me to pick up a rose bush root ball that someone on Freecycle dug out in order to put in a new driveway. I have no idea where it will go, but it supposedly looks and smells wonderful in bloom. Plus, it’s free. Also free and coming soon: two serviceberry trees from the City of Goshen, which will go on our front easement on the side of the house with the herb garden.

I love how these plants will please my grandmothers, who both passed last year. I have Grandma Van’s little houses on our front porch, and these will look out on the serviceberry trees that birds love. Grandma Van had such a magical relationship with birds! Gramma Irene loved roses and tended so many rose bushes in her lifetime. I’ll now have two, and a friend/student and I planted dozens and dozens of white lilies to edge the back of the concrete lined front bed. Irene Lilly will be pleased. 🙂

Early Spring Garden Update

Well, it’s been awhile! My handy dandy Witch’s Datebook marks today as a good planting day. (That’s actually the whole reason I get these datebooks! They tell me the best days for harvest and planting, all throughout the month, so that I don’t need to keep track of the Moon and other influences.) Yesterday, I scrounged around huge volumes of seed packs in order to create a polyculture blend for an early spring crop in the cold frame, along with fava beans to fix nitrogen in the Bed Bed before I try growing Faery Tale Pumpkins there this summer. I soaked the seeds overnight for planting today:

Fava beans on the right, and on the left, Alaskan peas, Lucullus chard, spinach, golden and chiogga beets, parsnips, two types of turnips, two types of carrots (including a short growing Japanese variety), Ching Chang Bok Choy, tat soi, a less fun to say kind of bok choi, two kinds of radishes, lettuce mix, and some Red Russian kale … all interplanted for early greens to thin and eat while the others grow to size.

Our cold frame’s looking pretty ragamuffin these days, but I’ve opened it the past few days to get some rain. The soil is nice and fluffy, dark and rich. Although many of my plants died in the weeks of minus 15, the dried leaves have begun to rot down and enrich the soil:

If you look carefully, you can see garlic, thyme (currently purple but with some green at the base), spinach, parsnips, beets, and some carrots.

This Red Russian kale looked dead, but it has come back to life with the warmer rains. I left some of the other plants in there, just in case. You can see parsnips growing behind the kale.

We’ve also got sprouts of corn mache (miner’s lettuce) and, I think, spinach, that I planted early last week.

I put an orgone puck near the peas, because I realized after planting them that they are probably too close for comfort to the garlic. Hopefully the orgone will strengthen them. 🙂

I also tried an experiment called “over-wintering,” just letting Nature (almost) take its course on normally self-seeding herbs. I haven’t seen any signs of life yet, but it’s still pretty cold. One container (of corn flower seeds) always looks dry, even though the rest show damp soil. Mysterious!

I spent much of last fall mulching out a huge swath of weedy front yard. The last few days of winter included hauling over concrete slabs from the apartment complex next door. These will eventually look orderly, as they line the edges of raised beds and demarcate paths:

Almost finished the edging. It’s a circle with three entrances wide enough for my wheelbarrow and for meandering once we have edible ornamentals to admire. You can see the last part of Mount Mulchmore towards the upper left.

The Bed Bed (a reclaimed Sleep Number Bed Frame) filled with compost and leaf mulch and planted with fava beans. The wire at the top went over the bean seeds to discourage squirrels, who may have unearthed all the tulips I planted last fall. 😦

Indoors, we’ve got a newly arrived and as yet unassembled Garden Tower on our porch. David will be helping me assemble some indoor growing systems this weekend, so that I can get seeds started for warmer outdoor transplants. This Garden Tower holds 50 plants in 4 square feet of space! How cool is that? I bought it to demo for Goshen, but I am now glad for the extra space, since I realized I need to take care of the bindweed problem in a newly mulched out area where I intended to grow pumpkins. Instead, I’ll be growing Mexican Marigolds, which supposedly excrete a chemical that’s toxic to bindweed. No more bindweed nightmares to wake me up in the morning like last summer! I’ll be killing it with flowers.

The Garden Tower Project

We’ve also got a new faery addition for our window, a lovely gift from two sweet friends:

She’ll be happy near the still blooming Christmas Cactus and a pink geranium — at least until it goes outside for the summer. Until the morning glories start climbing their decorative trellises, I always appreciate prettier views. When growing, our yard sticks out as an oasis of color, food, and riotous flowers and herbs, all the more surprising for the industrial and run down nature of some of the nearby buildings. A local gardener whom I very much admire recently announced that ours was “the most improved yard in all of Goshen!” That warmed my heart. It’s a lot of work, but I’m happy to spread beauty anywhere, especially where most needed.

The most encouraging part of today’s rag tag gardening adventure? I accidentally dislodged a little carrot while moving around mulch to plant my seeds. I didn’t know how this little guy would taste, being so immature, but I decided to give it try:

Very early carrot, accidentally harvested from the cold frame

The verdict? Sweeeeeeet!

Planning This Year’s Garden

We’re approaching garden time in the Northern Hemisphere! I just bought an indoor grow light system that we can start in our basement. Last summer, I found that it was too hot to plant many of my fall/winter crops, and with this winter’s brutal temperatures, I want to give my plants a longer indoor start before spring planting. A very sunny window also helps. I started tomatoes, chard and kale indoors last year, but this year our indoor plants have claimed that Southern window space as their own. Here are some good videos and links to whet your appetite.

Click here to estimate your last frost date, so that this video makes sense. The video also includes information on which plants do well with an indoor start and which ones do best waiting for in the ground planting. If you have a cold frame, then you can begin growing earlier and continue later into the fall.

Tips: using cinnamon and/or chamomile tea helps to ensure that plants don’t “damp off” or get fungal growth from the indoors conditions. This video offers some basic seed starting tips:

Preparing to garden in droughts by using ollas (oy-yuh’s):