Garden, Garden, big and strong

I am the queen of brown thumbs no more. Since I'm now living in the country, I've decided, I'm going to be a country girl. Squeal! How fun. I have this thought in my head of being

You know, sans red hair, freckles, green eyes... Oh, all right. :( An Asian Jessie.

Well, part of being a country girl means growing your own food. At least in my book. Enter, the home patio garden.

I have to preface with my history of gardening attempts. The flooded mint, the leggy and dried up lemongrass, the withered rosemary. But no letting my past getting to me, no siree. I decided I wanted a proper vegetable garden. With garlic and onions, lettuce and tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. And thanks to Barbara Kingsolver, my determination was solidified.

Oh, the fact that my patio only gets 4 hours of direct sunlight? No problem.

The fact that my patio is only 4'x10'. No problemo.

They will feed on the fury of a determined 5' asian girl.

All jokes aside, it's now May, and my garden. Well, it's succeeded. Somewhat. It's still too early in the season to know how prolific this garden's going to be, but with certainty, nothing has died! SQUEAL!!!!!!! :) :) :) :)

So feast your eyes on the Garden of Eden. My jardin paradisiaque.

From left to right. Tomatoes (yellow bell cherries and Pink Lady beefsteak), garlic, sugar snap peas, radishes, cucumbers, lettuce, green onions, eggplant, pepper, basil, thai basil, more lettuce. The yogurt cups have more peppers and eggplants. I don't know why I didn't just plant them in their final container... T.T

*Sniff* Beautiful, I know. Just brings tears to my eyes.

I started out a couple of months ago with some IKEA bins, potting mix, and seeds.

Turns out, those red plastic toy bins they have on sale at IKEA for $2 make really good potting containers. Just drill a couple of holes in the bottom of one for drainage, then stack it on top of another red bin and you have the perfect, well insulated, rectangular gardening pot.

I read in one of my gardening books that starting plants from seeds really isn't that hard so I went ahead and set up a germinating station next to the window. Unfortunately, not enough light came through, so I had to amend the station with some CFLs.

I thought it was pretty ingenious. On a technical note, I'm following the square gardening method. I bought organic potting mix (peat moss based), amended the soil for the lettuce with vermiculite (moisture retention), perlite (aeration), manure compost, and 10-10-10 fertilizer. During transplanting, I made sure to add some mycorrhizae. Darn my goal for perfection.

For my fruit bearing crops, I also added bone meal(for phosphorus) and agricultural lime(for the calcium).

In terms of spacing, each tomato plant has a 1 foot diameter IKEA garbage can to grow in, and the greens about 4-6" space in the IKEA bins.

On March 17, they went outside.

!!!!!!! LOOK AT THE PUPPY BUTTT!!!!!!! kawaii~ ^^

The orange 20gallon bin had radish seeds. The toothpicks were there to mark where the seeds were planted so that I could water more effectively. While seeds were sprouting I used spray bottles so that I wouldn't accidentally wash away the seeds. Also, seedlings got sprayed with diluted liquid seaweed (potassium + other micronutrients).

On April 26, they looked like this.

Well, and today, everything is looking positively healthy and green.

The shoots in the green bin are garlic. Paul and I are part of a CSA (community sustained agriculture) and we go there a couple of times a week to work on the farm. Craig, the owner, had some leftover garlic (like a whole grocery bag full) of excess garlic from last year's harvest that were in dire need of eating, but they started to sprout before we could use it all. Well, I stuck them in the green bucket to see if anything would happen. I would have to argue that something certainly did!

Tomatoes are about 2' tall now, and going strong. They suffered a little from fungal disease (it was really wet and humid for a while) but it seems to only have affected the lower leaves, so I will probably just cut it off and hopefully drier, warmer weather will help it some. The top leaves look absolutely amazing and healthy.

I also got these upside down planters at the Beattie Christmas exchange.

Something weird happened though. After wrestling with the poor plant to get it into the upside down planter, I set it out and watered it plenty and thought everything would be OK. But you see how it's growing?? The poor thing is curling up towards the sun to try and get some more of it. This was quite unexpected. I'm thinking/hoping that as it grows, the weight of the plant will straighten it out... but we'll see.

Well, the lettuce is doing positively well. They tend to love the shade a bit and don't require too much sun. I started nibbling on them a little but, for now, I'm letting the rest of them grow to full size before I harvest.

Last of all, but definitely not least are the radishes and snap peas.

There are beets in there too, but for some reason, they aren't getting very big. The radishes, however, have completely taken over. It's quite a confidence boost to see a tiny seed thrive in a plastic bucket. The snap peas are relatively new, and the trellis just got put up this past week. The interesting thing about peas and other legumes is that they actually fix nitrogen INTO the soil. This is probably why farmers often plant a soy crop after doing corn. Corn ravage the soil of their nitrogen, and soy puts it back in. Oh nature, you silly thing. What I'm planning on doing however, is that for the fall season, I will plant a crop of lettuce and other greens in the bucket. Lettuce and other greens tend to be vigorous nitrogen feeders so this extra boost to the soil should out with the fall/winter harvest.

I've managed to harvest already several radishes (sorry, no pictures). Paul and I ate the roots raw, and made a masala with the tops using homemade panir (I'll save that whole adventure for another post). It was SO good. The leftover whey is in the fridge being used for things like pancake batter and omelettes.

In terms of fertilizing schedule. For now, I think the soil has been amended enough to support the plant life feeding off of it. However, I may start a fish emulsion for the greens and add some epsom salt (magnisium) and liquid seaweed (potassium+ micronutrients) to the fruiting plants to help increase fruit yields. I will have tomatoes to can this year. I must. At least, that's the plan.

Well, that's it for now. Stay tuned for fossiling, farming, and puppy adventures!

And as an adieu, here's a bonus Tank picture.