Today we are going to talk about mulching and moisture.

I was having a problem with retaining moisture in my beds. All the plants were drying and having slow growth. I think the main problem is no shade and all plants get direct sun. The other problem is if you remember in an earlier post, I had buried stone and broken concrete about two feet under the soil. The drainage is very good.

I was trying to figure out the best mulch to use on the beds where I would get the best value to help with productivity. I decided on a peat moss and compost mix. The peat acts as a great barrier to protect against dryness from the hot sun and the compost adds nitrogen to the soil for the plants. It is also appealing to the eye. I love the dark brown color against the terra cotta block, and with the white wishing well and white patio furniture, it’s a win, win situation.

I am so glad with the results of all of this that I had to take more pictures just so you can see how well everything is growing. We had a heavy rain that lasted about 24 hours and I think, really kick started the plants in super fast mode.

As I send you to the pictures I just wanted to tell you about the two square terra cotta pots that are on their second year of sweet William and are finally starting to bloom. Enjoy the pictures and let me know what you think.

Until next time.

Finishing Up But Just Getting Started

Hello Fellow Gardeners and Friends,

I realize that it has been a few weeks since I posted to this blog and I apologize for that. However I have been working very hard on this urban setting and I am happy to say that my project is complete.

I would like now to take you on a small tour of my small urban setting. I am glad that things turned out better than originally planned. If you remember when I started this area was nothing but a mess of soil and patches of grass.

As you know I started out with laying out planks of wood where the garden beds were going to take shape. I then built the boxes with only a 4” height. I made my beds so shallow because of the broken up concrete that is buried 2’ under ground. This has given me ample drainage.

I then decided to raise the walkways to the height of the top of the beds. The beds have now become inset beds. I have to admit that this idea came after I had everything setup and was deciding on the pavers.

I used red pavers and brick for the patio and walkways to the garden. I did this because I just like the colors of the green with the Tara cotta. It just makes for a very tranquil setting. The only thing I am not to happy with is the fact that I had to fence in the garden area as to keep the cats out. Living in the city there are a lot of cats that run free.

Here are a series of pictures of the finished product. I hope you can envision it as a whole as I didn’t have enough room to take a picture of the whole area.



This is the entranceway into the garden area. Notice the now inset beds. You are looking at the right half of the garden.



Here is the left half of the garden. Notice the three tomato plants. Each one is a different variety, Plumb, Big boy and yellow. The white box in front has some cherry tomatoes planted and they will be in the box they are sitting in. To the left and are peas, two varieties.



This is the finished patio. Notice I have a grade up to level on the right side. You can see the old block.



This is from inside the garden. I like the unique shapes I formed out of the wood. I just started laying planks and ran with it.



This is a better view of the tomato beds.



The snow peas are really starting to take off.



This is another view of the Lettuce and spinach beds.



The beans are starting to pop up from the long bed.



Mmmmm fresh salad!




Can’t wait to pick this spinach for dinner!



I built this door frame for an easier entrance to the garden area. I didn’t really need the frame over the top as the fence is 6’ and the chicken wire stretched out nicely. We want to put a small fountain at the end of the frame. I guess that will happen sometime.

Thanks for reading. I hope whatever gardening plans you made over the winter are working out for you. Until then, Happy Gardening!

Update For April 12, 2008

Well here it is April 12, 2008 and we are starting to see some progress with the growing but I haven’t been able to do much work on the garden landscape as a whole. I am confident that I will be finished within the next month.

The Early Crop:

Here is the progress that I have made for my early planting. I have laid it out for you so you can see my plan on how I want to be eating fresh vegetables from late spring right into the winter months.

Plants Started From Seedlings:

Here are the plants that I have started from seedlings and an update on how they are doing. This is coming after a thunderstorm and good rain last night.

The Spinach:

The spinach plants are doing much better. They are starting to get their dark green color back. The shock of transplanting them scared me a little. Perhaps I should have let them harden more than 24 hours before transplanting them. All in all, they are doing ok.

The Romaine Lettuce:

I am still worried about these babies. Although they are about 5” high at this point, they still have a good amount of brown leaves around the base of the plants.

Plants Started From Seed:

Here are the plants started from seed sowed directly into the ground. These are hearty plants and start from seed pretty well. They are early crops and I thought I would give them a try.

The Iceberg Lettuce:

I am starting to see a start peaking out through the soil. I planted a row in the box with the romaine lettuce and a row in with the spinach box. I expect to thin each row to about 5 or 6 plants in each area.

The Snow Peas:

I see one small plant just popping up out of the soil. I expect to see lots more coming up within the next few days or sooner. These were planted in 2 rows spaced about 3” apart and the rows spaced about 4” apart.

The bed where they were planted is a strip about 4’ X 1’. I plan on hanging twine from the top of the cage so they can vine straight up. If I can get the full 6’ height out of each plant, this should yield a nice crop.

The Peas:

These are a standard pea that produces a large pea pod. I see nothing popping out of the ground as of yet but like the snow peas I expect to see results very soon. Like the snow peas they are planted on the other side of the strip and planted the same way. All in all I should have a nice pea crop with 2 varieties.

The String Beans:

I decided to plant one variety of a large bean. I don’t see anything as of yet but I expect to see results very soon. Like the peas I planted 2 rows in a strip that measures 10’ X 1’. I will do the same with the twine hanging from the top of the cage.

The next Phase:

I have seedlings started for cherry tomato’s Beef steak tomato’s, bell peppers and a whole variety of herbs. I expect when things are growing nicely, I will be putting things into the empty beds.

Tomorrow I will be giving you my thoughts on how I plan to finish the landscape work. Please come back and help me get through some of the issues I am having with placing the patio block and brick.

See you tomorrow!

Roots 1 Body 0, Look For The Rebound

Well, I am back.

I was not doing so well, on Saturday I was pulling roots out of the garden from an old tree that I am trying to get rid of and found it was stronger than me.

Here is the story. If you have ever pulled the root system out of the ground before you would know just how much damage it can do to a garden. The root system will dominate everything. It will strip moisture and nutrients from the soil and strangle any other plant within its grasp.

Believe me when I tell you that this tree was only started one year ago when my wife decided that she wanted shade in this area. In one years time this tree grew to be 8’ high and would have taken up way to much space if I would have let it stay. In the fall I cut it down and left a 1’ stump.

We started planning our new garden in the fall and I knew that I had the task of removing the root system. Come Saturday I started digging and pulling. I got a hold of one root and started pulling and out it came about 20’ I think. Then came the second one, this was not as easy as the first. I pulled and pulled but to my surprise my body gave before the root did.

As I pulled I heard a pop. My wife heard a pop and that was it. I immediately let go of the root and gasped for air. The pain was so incredible that I couldn’t breath. My wife thought the pop sound she heard was the root breaking but much to both of our surprise it was me breaking.

After a while the pain subsided and I was back in the garden working on that root system. I finally got the rest of it out and called it a day. After a nice hot shower and a good dinner I was feeling pretty good. I was a little sore but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Sunday morning I woke early and to my surprise I couldn’t get out of bed. I woke my wife for help and we both ended up downstairs with the coffee on. From what I could tell I thought I had a broken rib. The day went on and I worked on the garden, planting and all and didn’t let the pain stop me. I went to bed that night and woke early for work the next day.

What I do for a living is a very physical job. I am a Receiving manager in a very large retail store and Monday is a delivery day. As it turns out I was down three people for that day so into the 48’ trailer I went to give the guys a hand. We unloaded about 1200 pieces with an average weight of about 20 to 50 lbs. (Lots of pain) but I didn’t let that stop me.

As the day came to a close and dinner was over I sat at this computer and was getting ready to write in this blog but I couldn’t get comfortable. I stopped what I was doing and decided to turn in early. I went upstairs and started having incredible pain. I have never had pain like this before. My abdominal muscles were contracting and every time they did I would let out a yell in pain. This went on for about an hour and my son was about to call 911. I think my family was scared and I must admit I was also scared. The pain started to subside a little and I decided to call out of work the next day and go to the doctor’s office.

The results are a cracked rib and the flesh torn from the bone. Today I will find out just how bad it is as the x-rays are back and my wife has to call for the results. I am back to work but on light duty and am bored out of my mind. As I said before I am a physical person and everything I want to do requires me to be physical. I just can’t do that right now.

The worst part about this is I can’t cough; I can’t sneeze, bend or move suddenly. The only thing that keeps playing over and over in my mind is what the doctor said to me. “You are not 25 your body won’t hold up like your 25. You have to realize you are 50”. What a blow to my ego.

Cats!

I spent most of my day away as I had to get x-rays on my ribs after pulling a root system out of my garden area of my back yard. Anyway this is what is leading up to the next problem that I haven’t managed to overcome as of yet.

Cats may be cute and all that but, I am not a cat lover. Some people say they are very clean. I beg to differ with you. Cats love to find areas to burry their waste; unfortunately they think my garden is a community toilet.

When I came home this afternoon I found my spinach plants half buried and the corner of the spinach bed empty of soil. This did not make me happy as when I put the spinach plants in they shocked and were looking a little under the weather. Today we had sun for the first time since I planted and these local cats do not want to give these plants a half a chance.

I also found holes dug in where I planted the string beans and a few of the beans were exposed. Of course I had to get out the small garden spade and dig out the presents that the little furry creatures left me.

I thought about hanging one on the fence by his tail and using him for a scare crow. He would make a great reminder for the others to stay away. What do you think? Just to let you know, I am not into animal cruelty so I just have to re-enforce the fence and not let them into the garden. Although some other thoughts did cross my mind.

It would be nice if people who owned these animals would take responsibility for what they do. I don’t have any pets for the simple reason I don’t want the responsibility. I am just as happy without them.

I am raising a vegetable garden for healthy eating and a cat using it for a toilet is not my idea of healthy. I could go into the nasty scientific stuff but we will save that for another time.

Does anyone have any ideas as to deterrents? I would appreciate any incite on this issue.

Gardening In The City

I guess the best place to start is the layout of what I am trying to achieve. First off, I have been reading up on square foot gardening. Square Foot Gardening is a fairly new technique that is based on raised beds usually made of wood. The concept behind this is to create one foot squares for laying out your garden.

I am varying from this concept a little. I am using raised beds but not the square foot method. The average raised bed is ten to twelve inches but I am only using four as my soil is well tilled and I have this theory that I am hoping will work well for me.

Background Of How This All Got Started

My Wife, Son and I bought this house in the North East section of Philadelphia just about two years ago. It is a small house, only two bedrooms and a small back yard. The back yard measures 14’X14’ and was over grown with shrubs and rosebushes. We decided to take everything out and just have a lawn. We planted grass seed and it took pretty well until we started having backyard barbeque's. From the traffic we ended up with a sizable bald spot in the middle of the yard.

One thing I forgot to mention, 6’ out from the back of the house was a concrete walkway that was all cracked and broken in some spots. I got out the sledge hammer and started to break it away. As it turns out, living in the city, it is very difficult to get rid of the rubble so I came up with this idea to get rid of it.

After digging up the yard to get rid of the shrubs I decided to dig a little deeper and bury the rubble. Thinking of the drainage method used in container growing I thought this would be a help with drainage. As it turned out I was right on with my theory. The drainage in the yard is excellent. I basically designed a 14’X14’ flower pot.

The Garden

First of all we had a cat problem, As you can tell from the first picture we solved that problem by enclosing a 14’X7’ area. Right now the garden looks incomplete as there is still construction that needs to be done.

If you notice in the second picture you can see how I framed in the boxes and the walk area. I am going to raise to level with the tops of the frame terracotta pavers’ and brick. This should give the exact look that I am trying to achieve. I love the color of terracotta and green vegetation. The colors seem to blend quite well.

The Garden In Pictures

I will try to explain each picture as I go along.

The first two boxes you see are for bush type vegetables. The left box is for tomatoes. To the left of that you see a 1’ strip. That is for cherry tomatoes. The box to the right is for bell peppers. Behind it is another 1’ strip and I have already planted snow peas and snap peas. This strip is 7’ long and has two rows. As the peas start to grow I will thin them and hang a rope trellis. The boxes are 4’x2’ and 6” deep.

This next picture is the right side of the garden. We get the most sunlight to this end so I am planting vegetables that don’t grow as tall. Closest to the fence we have planted romaine lettuce and in the empty space I planted seed for Iceberg lettuce. The box to the left has spinach and the empty space is more Iceberg lettuce. The box you see to the bottom right is not planted yet. We are planning on Brussels sprouts and Cauliflower.

Notice the strip at the top of the picture, you can only see part of it here but it measures 12’ long and 1’ wide. In this space I planted string beans. The beans are spaced at 2” apart and later as they grow I will thin to about 6 to 8”. This should net a nice bunch of beans.

I made a video of the garden but for some reason the voice doesn’t match the film. The results are when I am talking about certain areas in the video, the video is somewhere else. Maybe next time I will make a new one.

Until the next time!