My organic garden, 2009

[BailOut]

Despite some initial rockiness my organic garden is off to a great start for this, my second season, 2009.

The rockiness came from my first attempt at indoor seedlings. I could not find any prepackaged organic starter soil and for reasons I cannot fathom now I decided to not use my own soil. I let an employee at Home Depot talk me into creating my own soil-less mix of sphagum peat moss and organic plant food 1:1. To make a long and painful story short this concoction was toxic to my seeds and I lost 2/3 of them - and a month of indoor growing time - to the attempt. Zero sprouts.

Thankfully I still had some seeds left, my food coop had their annual seedling sale and I was able to trade some pedal power (delivering a big poultry watering can from the south side of town to the north side of town using my bicycle and trailer) for a few plants from a friend.

Now, a few weeks later, things are in full swing.

I have expanded my garden in two ways:

1) I will be training all of the vine squashes to trail out of the raised beds. This increases their available space exponentially, though it will take moving them around when I have to mow the back yard.

2) I added 4 5-gallon terracotta pots for overflow.


I have enhanced my garden in 4 ways:

1) I have planted lots of flowers and better placed together those flowering plants that require pollination in order to attract more bees.

2) Today I added something that's been on my wish list for a while: grapes! A 6-foot pyramid trellis with 1 canadice (red seedless) plant and one himrod (green seedless) plant. These replace 2 of the original ornamental landscaping plants that never did well.

3) Strawberries! Some of you may recall a silly issue I had last year where I bought a windowsill strawberry planter whose seeds turned out to be cherry tomatoes. This year I bought organic seedlings from a local gardening place that my wife and I transplanted into two strawberry pots (the kind that have little cups around the sides), and the leftovers went into one of the overflow pots.

4) A dwarf Japanese apple tree. We actually transplanted this last Fall and have been told it should produce this year. This replaced another failing ornamental landscaping plant.


I have prepared for my garden better this year by:

1) Attempting indoor seedlings long before the last frost. I did not succeed but I learned a lot.

2) Getting the proper tools and equipment to better control and expand the automatic water drip system.

3) Reading up on each plant to learn better how to care for them.

4) Lots of compost.


It is still early in the season and the late start will set back my overall production a bit but things are looking good so far.


Lost to the moles:

Cucumber x4
Dill x2
Cilantro x1
Hungarian pepper x1


Death toll:

Moles: 8 plants
Dogs: 3 moles


Here is what has sprouted and is growing well:

Corn x6
Pumpkin x2
Watermelon x2
Zucchini x5
Cucumber x2
Summer squash, vine x4
Summer squash, bush x2
Scallop squash x4
Cilantro x1
Sweet basil x2
Bib lettuce x6
Butter lettuce x8
Multicolored carrots x30
Finger carrots x20
Snap bean x3
Bush bean x3
Snap pea x3
Slicing tomato x2
Cherry tomato x2
Chard x1
Spinach x3
Strawberries x27
Bell pepper x2
Broccoli x3
Cauliflower x3
Nasturtiums x10 (edible flowers)
Chives
Green onions
1 large onion-like plant that I cannot identify but that grew from a sprig handed to me by a friend last year


I intentionally planned to overproduce by a bit for 2 reasons:

1) I want to be able to give some food to the local food banks and programs.

2) I want to learn how to can this Fall.


The tomatoes and strawberries have required lots of pruning lately as they are growing like weeds, the zucchini is already budding, my dogs have 3 confirmed mole kills (I didn't even know we had moles around here and couldn't figure out what was digging in my raised beds until our wolf mix brought me one as a present a couple of weeks ago), I have compost coming out of my ears, I have a ton of wildflower seeds on standby to fill in any gaps and to help attract bees, and the drip system is dialed in.

So far there have been no pests other than moles. No squash bugs, no aphids, etc.but I am ready for them if they show up. The local gardening center sells lady bugs and I know what the squash bugs look like (and they are relatively slow so you can catch them by hand and squash them).

I'm still a rookie but things are looking promising indeed.