The transplants are in!

Yesterday night I went to Home Depot to buy the transplants I would be putting in my garden. Two tomatoes, a bell pepper, onions, and chives were the plants I was after.


Still not really knowing what kind of tomatoes I wanted, I just started scanning the zillions of different varieties looking for one of the indeterminant vine type. I went with the Early Girls because they were supposed to produce in as little at 50 days and with Better Boys because they said that they would produce right up until frost, which should, hopefully, result in having tomatoes for a nice long spread of time during the season.



Peppers were easy, I just grabbed a sweet red pepper plant since I know I like their flavor. I didn't have any choice with chives, there were only 2 left. It was unfortunate that the only quantity of onion starts that they have is in bunches of 60, but they were only ~$4, and I can give the rest to my coworker.


In all, I spent ~$30 worth of plants. The expenses are racking up, but hey, it's a hobby not subsistence.


Today was very sunny and warm, one of the first few days that have felt like summer, so when I had a few minutes I started digging holes for my new plants. Planting transplants was much dirtier then planting seeds, Jeremiah didn't help too much because he didn't want to get dirty. But, we managed to get everything in y garden box and made sure it was all well watered.



From 2011 Garden

Oh yea, I couldn't remember where in the square my chives were supposed to go, so I'll wait until the basil in that square starts to sprout before I plant the chives.



From 2011 GardenThose onions are looking kinda pathetic, but i guess that's the way they normally look right after you tear each one from the bundle. The reason there are so many onions in a single square is that I'm planning on harvesting most of the onions as green onions, then leaving 4 in the square to fully mature into white (?) onions.

Oh yea, I forgot, I have been checking the seeds I've planted almost everyday to see if anything was showing signs of life. Yes, it's kind of pathetic, but in the back of my mind I still have the fear that nothing is going to grow in my box. But today, when I scanned the squares for little bits of green, one spot of spinach and one spot of lettuce has sprouted! Yay there is life!  Grow little seeds, grow!

That was it?

On a side note, the events of this post actually happened today! I've been posting about things from memory that had already happened a few days previous, but I'm finally caught up. Yay!

Anyways, after church, lunch, and putting Mr. 2-year-old-monster down for a nap, Jeremiah and I went out back to plan some seeds. I wasn't sure how many I was going to do but I knew I wanted to start the peas today.

I spend a good while watering my dirt. I know that you're not supposed to be able to over water mel's mix. Any extra water will just drain out. So I watered until I started seeing water coming out of the drain holes in the bottom of the box. It took quite a while longer than I thought it was going to. I has the hose on pretty low, but that dirt just seem to keep on soaking up the water. Eventually it did start dripping out the bottom, and we got to planting!

We poked holes, and Jeremiah got to put the seeds in and cover the holes back up. That was easy! So on to the next set of seeds. A few minutes later, all the seeds I intended to plant where in the dirt.

All I have left to do are they transplants that I don't have yet. We only planted half a square of carrots, and I'll plant the other half in two weeks to help spread out the harvest. But yea, the planting part was a whole lot easier than I was expecting.

Here's that same picture from before. What you didn't know was that this is actually after the seeds were planted!

From 2011 Garden

What's that shiney thing in the front square? That is my answer to sprouting carrot seeds. I don't remember where I learned it, but when I grew some carrots in Alaska I covered them with plastic wrap to make sure they stay nice and moist until they sprout. So what you see is a zip lock back sliced open and held down by some small rocks. Lets hope it works just as well here in Utah as it did in Alaska.

Box: Check! Dirt: Check! On to seeds!

With the box primed and ready for planting, I needed to gather my seeds. My coworker was happy to donate to the cause and let me pick through his seed supply. Even so, I still needed to pick up some new seeds, and some transplants. I have heard of a store called IFA, and it seemed to be a well respected garden store, so I took the family and went to the one in American Fork.

I was both impressed and underwhelmed at the same time. They definitely had a lot of garden and farm related stuff, but when it came down to it, they didn't seem to have any more variety of seeds and things than Lowe's or Home Depot. I perused the seed packet racks and found my seeds (only had to ask for help once!), but then it came time to get the transplants. Knowing my totally ignorance on tomatoes, I decided to 'ask the experts'. However, the people behind the counter were teenage kids, with likely no more gardening experience than I had. I asked anyways, telling them that I barely know a tomato from a hole in the ground, and they called for back up.

The man who came from the back knew more, but upon stating my desire to grow vine tomatoes in a single square foot using a trellis, he quickly said 'well lets just google it!' Any time someone says that it just makes you feel dumb. "Yea, I could have done that at my house!" But,

his search actually didn't produce much on what variety of tomatoes I should grown on my trellis. However, a nice lady happen to overhear my questions and said that any 'indeterminate' variety of tomato should do just fine growing on a trellis.

So now that I know I should be safe with any indeterminate tomato, I just have to figure out which ones are indeterminate and are sold as transplants by the local garden stores! Cake walk....

Mixing Poop Dirt

When describing the type of 'dirt' (compost) I was buying to my 4 year old, I called it 'poop dirt', knowing he would get a kick out of that. So from hence forth, my garden box is now full of poop dirt!

I debated on how I was going to mix up my magic mel's mix, thinking of borrowing someone's tarp to do the folding technique, or mix it in small portions in buckets, but I finally decided to just mix it in the box directly.

Taking gravity into account, I spread out my 5 bags of stuff in layers in my box based on weight. Lighter stuff first. I was hoping that the lighter things would want to come to the top and the heavier things to the bottom.

So, vermiculite, peat moss, then the 3 bags of poop dirt. Using a rake borrowed from the coworker that introduced me to square foot gardening, I just mixed and mixed the stuff until it was more or less uniform. It was after dark by this time, but I think I did a fairly thorough job.

It wasn't too hard to mix in the box, but the mix wound up being a couple of inches shy of the top of the box. About 6-7 inches of dirt in a 9 inch tall box. I would have liked to fill the box to the top, but I don't think i would have been able to mix any more material directly in the box. Next year, I should add 1 - 2 cf of compost to raise the soil level.

Premixing into a wheel barrow might have worked out better, but I was lacking a wheel barrow. If/when I need to mix up more, I think I'll try for the tarp method and see how that goes.

About dividing the box into square feet, doing things by the book has you using thin slats of wood screwed together in a grid and laid onto the dirt. Well, I didn't want to bother with wooden slats, so I decided that twine would be just fine as a divider.

I bought $3 worth of 'garden twine' from the spawn of the devil store (starts with Wal and ends with mart), knowing I could find a way to string it in the box. When I got home I checked my wood working supplies and settled on some pin nails hammered into the inner side of the box a bit and bent over into a hook. After a bit I had a nice green twine grid in my box, with nothing to catch fingers of clothes on.

From 2011 Garden

Plants, the other green!

Now that I've got the dirt figured out, I needed to plan what I'm going to actually grow. Since I'm only doing a grand total of 12 square feet, I want to grow things that will give a high output per square. Also, I want to grow things that are bit more interesting, unlike boring potatoes. Though being from Alaska will make growing just about anything interesting.

I'll forego spewing out the whole list of stuff I was thinking, but here are some of the more pertinent decisions.

Straw, rasp, black, blue berries,: No. I would really like to grow berries because they are yummy and can get pretty expensive at the store, but if i were to dedicate one or two squares to them, I'd probably get no more than a single handful the entire season. If that.

Tomatoes: Yes! I don't think my wife would have let me do a garden without growing tomatoes. Normal bush tomatoes take up a lot of room per plant. 4 squares with a cage in the middle. I don't have the room for that, but I read somewhere the people have had success doing vine (indeterminate) tomatoes in a single square using a trellis. So I'm going for it.

Squash, cucumber: No. These just take up too much space! And I just didn't really seem interested in them.

Lettuce, spinach. Yes! You can pack these suckers four to a square, and can harvest leaves periodically, preventing the "oh crap! I have 5 metric tons of stuff and can't eat it all!"

Carrots: Yes. Similar to the lettuce, but I'm going to plant half of a square first, wait 2 weeks or so, then plant the rest. You don't have to harvest all the carrots at the exact same time, but staggering them should still help us eat them all before they go bad.

Watermelon, cantelope: No, Way to big, never really was in the running.

Herbs: Yes. They don't take up much space, and even though I've got a ton of dried herbs in the cupboard, I've never really cooked with fresh herbs.

Sweet peppers: Yes. Hurray for warm climates! I really like bell peppers, they are pretty expensive at the store, and they are definitively a more 'exotic' plant from my perspective.

And to recap, I decided on...

• 2 sf tomatoes (two plants)
• 2 sf sugar snap peas
• 1 sf green onions, harvesting all but 4 to transition into regular onions
• 1 sf sweet peppers
• 2 sf herbs (cilantro, oregano, basil, chives)
• 2 sf lettuce (romaine and butter)
• 1 sf spinach
• 1 sf carrots

A salsa and salad garden it would seem! Yum!