Behind The Times Garden Planning

Now that spring's almost here, so many are posting pictures of their garden plans. Every last one I've seen has been made in either an on-line garden hosting program, the google sketch, Excel and even Audocad (sp?). For however computer savvy I may consider myself to me, all of these programs are so far beyond me. I prefer graph paper and pencil. Yes, I hear the stomping of dinosaurs as well, and no, I didn't walk to school both ways uphill in the snow.

I'm not comfortable sitting in front of a computer and mapping things out. I get fidgety, or there's someone that needs something, and if I want a quick change in something I have to go to the computer, load the program, wait, and then fix it. Keeping my plans on paper allows me so much movement. I can take the plans to work or to watch the kids play in the park, but honestly, I mostly take them to the couch with me at night. Planning the garden and holding that pencil, knowing I can change the whole feel of the garden with one stroke is so cathartic to me. There are times when I just lay on the couch with the pad on my lap and never really change one thing, but I know that I could.

This year I've taken to keeping a graph paper notebook which is infinitely better than the loose leaf papers I have had scattered around. I've a colored graph for each season and each of my three garden sections have their own page within that season. For example:

This is this past fall's plan for the corner yard. It's obviously been well loved and I've written in actual planting days and successes and failures as the season continued. I have a red graph for each of the two other beds on the immediate following pages.
Here's the plan for the spring side yard. This is my section with the most sun and you can SERIOUSLY tell in the difference in production. The onions are already in place and I'm thinking of leaving the far right box empty and doing half of the left box with turnips and leaving the other half blank for early summer planting. I wrote several notes and questions to myself around the graph. I obviously got caught in the rain with this page opened.

Last, this is the tentative summer plan for the other corner yard, again with the questions and comments. The main corner yard's summer plan is going to be under serious review in April when I find out if I've gained any more sun with the removal of the overhanging tree. You can also see my notes in the first graph that acorns were a problem, but they should be greatly minimized this next year.

Looking at the graphs I realize that I need to change my color coordination. The blue should be fall, green spring like it is, and the red summer. I might do that for next year. The good thing about having it all in this notebook is that I can go back year after year and see what I planted where and try to rotate things as much as sun exposure/shade factor will allow.

How's your planting grids coming?

The morning comes early. Especially when you have a boy who doesn't understand it's against the law to wake up at 5:30 on the weekends.

Sweet gardening dreams.

Keeping Garden Secrets

"Mom!" screamed the boy when exited the school bus, "Why can't a garden keep a secret?"

Note elongated pause while I dutifully played along ...."Well, I don't rightly know, honey. Why can't it?"

"Because the potatoes have eyes and the corn has ears!"

It's such a timeless joke told most likely from generation to generation. I remember getting a kick out of the same joke as a child, but I'm not sure my reaction was anything like his. He was hysterical. He had just told the best joke on the planet and his laughter at his own joke couldn't be contained. He staggered to the car, consumed with his laughter, and lay prostrate on the floorboard of the car, literally unable to pick himself up because he was overcome with the belly laugh and the snorts and repetitive utterance of the punch line over and over. "Potatoes and eyes!" he eked out between the giggles. "Potatoes, eyes and corn-ears!" The boy laughed so uncontrollably, tears streamed down his face. I couldn't help but join in.

He came to himself again. Picked himself up from the floor of the car panting and wheezing to calm himself down. We drove in silence for about 30 seconds when he said, "Mom. Potatoes can't see me and my corn didn't listen last year when I told it to grow. That joke makes no sense."

That's precisely when I pulled the car over and gave in to my own hysterics.

On to the gardening! The cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli seedlings are coming along. All of the new broccoli seeds germinated, but you can still see they're behind the others. Thank goodness the broccoli is in its own container so I can separate them from the other flat.
The lettuce seedlings are still under the Saran Wrap waiting to germinate. I can't remember off hand how long it takes lettuce to germinate, but hopefully we'll see some growth soon.

Oddly, last fall I dumped out a packet of lettuce seeds by mistake when the dog brushed my arm. They germinated earlier this fall, but had almost negligent growth. Not even the size of a quarter. The 8 degree temps of a few weeks ago did them in. So I thought. Now I've got quarter sized lettuce growing and I'm wondering if I should just thin them and let them be or remove them entirely so I can amend the bed if I ever get a dry weekend. We can't seem to go three or four days without rain. We're expecting freezing rain this weekend. I can never remember a winter with 2 winter events. Odd, that.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

On Lettuce Seeds and Lobsters

There's a lot of debate regarding our impact on the Earth. We deplete the ozone layer, contribute to global warming, fill her with trash, rage against her weather and garden pests and generally behave towards her like a spoiled child as we stomp out our carbon footprints as we march off towards our room to slam the door.

She'll win in the end. She always does. She puts the most succulent of meats inside a rock hard shell, terms it 'lobster,' prices it to where you have to mortgage your house to afford it and laughs her pretty self silly as she watches us with pliers and bibs, cursing and raging to the point we swear we'll never eat that blasted thing again. Until the next time.

Lettuce seeds are right up there on her payback list. I started some of my lettuce in flats tonight...I think. I had the seeds in my hand; that at least I know. I picked them up, placed them in the soil, only to find some hiding under my finger nails three cells later. Which cell didn't get planted? Were these extras that hitchhiked rides along the way? Who knows. I'll let them sprout and then figure it out. You won, lady. You reign supreme, hands down. Your flowers, sunsets, mountains and beaches aren't so shabby, either.

I had two types of lettuce mixes that I ordered one was a gourmet blend and the other a heatwave blend.
The seeds I attempted to work with tonight were the gourmet blend. I'm going to wait to direct sow the heatwave blend since hopefully they'll withstand bolting as long as possible. I remembered to water down the soil before I planted this time and covered the flats with plastic wrap until they sprout. I know some lettuce needs light to germinate so these went directly under the lights to join the cole crops. In a few days, I should know what cells those rogue seeds came from.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Following The Example of Others

Ever since I expanded the garden no less than three times last year and went from 18 sqft to 204 sqft in one year, I now realize I have almost enough room to plant everything I could ever wish for. Then I think to myself, does anyone REALLY need 9 sqft of carrots or 20 sqft of radishes? I've found the answer is yes! Yes you do, especially if you spread the love through different varieties.

We're not adventurous eaters. I know I could grow all sorts of different squashes or peppers and cucumbers, but really, one kind is usually enough for us, given the exception of tomatoes. Yet I've been reading the seed lists and planting schedules of others recently and decided there were a few areas I could really branch out, namely carrots and radishes.

I've already planned on growing the basic red radish, my father's black radishes and the German blue radishes Stefaneener sent realized this wasn't such new territory after all, so I ordered some watermelon radish seeds as well which I hope will prove a nice contrast with the basic red ones.

I also ordered a purple carrot and a white carrot to go along with my basic carrot seeds I already purchased. There should be one more bright yellow carrot coming in the mail shortly.

So there you have it. I'm entering new territory and living on the edge, or at least it's as close to the edge as I'll get this year....anyone see the need for an armenian cucumber? Or rather, what off the beaten path variety of veggie can you not live without?

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Movin' On Up - The High Rise Is Complete

For my birthday last year, the man agreed to let me build three more boxes in the other corner yard. They only got built in June, so I didn't get much use out of them, but I had high hopes for them for this year since the location gets a bit more sun than the main corner yard does. I built the boxes rather quickly and honestly thought that the six inches and eight inches I chose for the depth would be fine even though I knew from my first foray into raised beds from Fall of 2008 that it wouldn't be. Still, I chose to save the money on the wood and build them anyway.

Now I'm adding an addition to them and turning them into a high rise to be the depth they should have been all along.

The man, graciously as always, cut all of the boards for me. In the other corner yard, there's two 3x3 and one 8x4 bed that need additions.

I stacked the boxes.

The screws we had were too long, so I went out and got some two inch lengths and went outside to try my hand at screwing in the connecting blocks, myself. I could do it. Why couldn't I do it without help? It's a drill and screws; it practically works by itself.

I'm shamefully not as cool as I thought I was.

My Bert and Ernie arms couldn't hold the drill, press down on the drill and then hold the block in place while making sure not to shift the box on top. I got one side of one box done, practically stripping the screw bit to do so, and if you lean your head to the side, or have a stiff drink before viewing the picture, it doesn't look too bad. OK, so it looks bad. EG, I saw you cringe.

I gracefully conceded defeat, however the dog who witnessed my crushing failure wouldn't agree that graceful was the right word, but I packed it up and came to ask for help. The man's right. I'm "not qualified."

We went out to tackle the job together and I don't know if I feel better or worse. He struggled almost as much as I did. It turns out I couldn't have bought worse screws if I had tried. They had no bite whatsoever. So it wasn't all my shortcoming, but I was responsible in the long run. So, does that make me more or less qualified?

Here are the finished raised-raised beds. Next weekend looks cold, but sunny for both days, so I'm likely going to get the compost then to try to start filling these babies and top off my other beds as well.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Seedling Update

The broccoli seedlings I replanted are starting to germinate. I hate it that they're going to be behind their cabbage counterparts, but it should be good in the long run. There's only one cell in the middle of the back row that hasn't sprouted. That's okay odds with me. Some of the cells have two seedlings, so maybe I can manage to divide one and use it to fill the spot in the garden.
The soil dries out very quickly as you can tell. We have a dehumidifier in the basement which sucks all of the moisture out. If we didn't have it, I'd be growing mushrooms as well. I just have to make sure I water everything frequently.

The cabbage and cauliflower seedlings are doing very well. They're actually looking robust which is nice for how cold it is in that basement. It gives me hope that those broccoli seedlings will toughen up as they grow.

See! Some are even starting to sport their true leaves. Just a few more short weeks and they'll be in the garden.

I'm hoping to get the additions to the beds on this weekend and fetch the compost to refill the beds. It's going to rain on Sunday, so if I'd need to get it done on Saturday if anything.

I know the added depth is going to be a huge asset when it comes to larger harvests. I don't know why I didn't just go ahead and make the beds to the depth I wanted to begin with. Hindsight and all that, I suppose.

I'll be starting some lettuce and spinach seedlings here in a week or two. The fun's really about to begin!

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Onions Thinned, But Not My Waistline

I'm just amazed to see the stems of those onions expand like they are. Last year's onions were a total flop and I can honestly see that these onions are really going to bulb up. I went ahead and thinned out some of the plants that were looking too close together and boy were those roots deep! Take a look:
For each one, I actually had to dig down below the bulb, hook my finger under the bulb and through the roots and pull with all my might. It was more difficult to get them out than I thought it would be.

They didn't weigh much, but I'm starting my 2010 totals on the side. Last year I kept the weight by vegetable, but this year I'm thinking I may just keep an over all total. What do you all do?

We had my parents over for supper the other night and baked a brie topped with the conserve I made earlier. This is before it was baked, but it was nice and buttery, nutty and sweet.
I'm going to try to fix my bowed boxes and hopefully build my high rises this weekend so I can fetch my compost either this weekend or next. It's getting to be about that time. My records show I had already planted out a LOT of things by this time last year, but I also remember much of that failing or needing to replant a lot of it. I'm thinking to keep the spring veggies light this year. Covering everything with straw on and off last year was for the birds. I'm itching to get started in earnest with the summer crops!

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.