Farmer McDoris

Greetings from the garden! It's that time of year when all those seeds and little sprouts that looked so unhopeful and small weeks ago are starting to come into their own. My previous garden posts were about the boxes I made for trees, but today's garden vegetable plot actually came into existence shortly before those boxes were made.

Last winter I saw a Frame-it-All kit at Home Depot on sale (about $100 on the off season) and I just had to get it.  It comes with plastic brackets and  composite timbers that allow you to build a modular garden.  I went for a 4' x 8' plot.  The particular kit is meant to do a 2-level plot but I wanted to just go ahead and make everything 12" tall, so I had to get 2 extra pieces of 2"x6" redwood cut to 4 foot lengths to make up for it.  The plastic brackets make this thing super easy to construct, you just need a drill to attach the pieces and it just stacks together!

After that I did lay a piece of landscaping fabric down although I don't know that it was necessary.  I threw in a couple inches of bark nuggets to help with the drainage (since this will sit forever on concrete,  I don't want it to be sopping wet 24/7, though I think having it be damp when I water it is OK), and then hauled bag after bag after bag into it.  THAT took a couple of weekends because I would only want to buy/haul a few at a time!  I mixed all kinds of brands of dirt, compost, and some pearlite, figuring the type of dirt will all average out in the end.

After that I put in some seeds and seedlings and now 3 months later I have a ton of lettuce, chard, radishes (wait. there IS a slight problem where I don't actually eat nearly enough leafy greens), my tomatoes are starting to fruit and I have some green bean plants and peppers getting more optimistic looking.  I would like to put in a drip watering system for this bed, but the size of the plot, mulch,  and the shade from the leaves means it doesn't dry out TOO fast.  I still have to water it daily on very hot days, but last year I had plants wilt from heat if I didn't get to give them some water twice a day.  This is doing all right and if it gets too hot I can set up a little open shade to cool it down.

Next step: make myself eat tons and tons of leafy greens!!

Basket Fence

Two years ago I had tried to make a hanging strawberry basket after I'd seen a few articles about how you can get this really cute arrangement by putting the strawberry plants out the sides as well as the top.  My first attempted two years ago didn't do very well.  I suspect it was because the baskets either didn't get enough sun or because they simply didn't retain water very well.  Plants would get alternatively drowned and then die of thirst.  Never did get many berries off of them; and supposedly you ought to be able to get your basket to last a few years if you do it right.

I'm ready to try it again  since my local Daiso had very inexpensive wire half-rounds for sale and now I have a whole sunny fence to decorate.  Here I've used wool (scooped up from a seamstress friend who was giving away fabric) as the liner.  It actually works way better than those coconut fiber baskets.  There's gaps in the wool towards the bottom where the odd-shaped pieces I cut left gaps that lets the excess water drain out, but the outside of the fabric is almost never soggy; the wool is a pretty good insulation from excess evaporation from the sides of the basket.  This year, I went ahead and used the moisture control soil AND I put in little watering globe things (the mushroom in the pic) that will slowly release water as the soil dries out.


Basically I cut slits into the wool and gently put in the plants (trying not to damage the roots) BEFORE filling up the basket with dirt and the plants on the top.  I let it sit for a week or two to let the plants settle, then hung them up on the fence.  Here I've got 3 strawberry baskets and 2 pea baskets (in the coco fiber lined ones.  not sure They're doing ok..not that that great. Hohonestly I don't think you're supposed to grow peas this way.)  But I've got a few green berries to keep an eye on!  I'm crossing my fingers for some cheery red berries come June! Enough for a couple of shortcakes? :D

Backyard Progress #2

Garden boxes galore!  Last time I checked in it was about the planter boxes for where the trees will go.  After I got the tree boxes done we had a spate of rain/I got lazy about the yard.  Then one day last week I stopped off at Orchard Supply Hardware and saw they had a whole new selection of spring veggies out and no wonder - it's April!  So I really had to get my butt gear if I was going to be able to plant things on time!

I had planned for low boxes to fit in between the trees.  Ideally I would love for some vines to go up a trellis against the back wall, although the spot is not ideal - it's in open shade instead of full sun for most of the day, but I have an idea to fix that.  And, it would be OK I think for the cooler weather vegetables.  The fully full sun spots are too hot for the leafy greens to really flourish.

I built the boxes the same was as the previous ones, open on the bottom.  For one of the two boxes I made this weekend I had to build a little guard around an existing, painted column to minimize the contact it will have with dirt and water (as I intend to grow some food plants...ha...I'll be lucky if they produce significant fruit but hey, positive).  Then I put down some weed blocker material, then shoveled in a few inches of bark nuggets for drainage.  I really ought to be using river rocks, but bringing bags of that home turned out to be impractical (read: impossible as I can't lift them by myself) ,then topped up with a mix of dirt, compost, and perlite to help keep the soil aerated.

And BAM!  Instant-o garden box.  In the back there's butternut squash and cantaloupe, since they're bitty I have a bit of time before the trellis needs to go in.  I transplanted some chard from elsewhere into this box because I think they were getting a bit fried from the sun.  (The problem could also be the way I was watering them.  Oh plants!  Why do under and over watering lead to the same result?)

Whew, so the yard is getting there. These boxes are 12" high, verses the 24" of the tree boxes, and 2'x4" large.  It's a significant amount of dirt to haul.  I think perhaps just one more small box of about 2'x2' for an herb corner and that side of the yard will in business.

 I hope the vines will come in!  I think they'll look nice against that cream wall.  All the more funny if they produce any melons/squash.  I hope the trees will do well where they are too...they do look a bit spindly at the moment, don't they?  Sadly this last picture looks just about the same as my last one, but this time the boxes are out together and one has dirt in it.  And itty bitty plants.   Grow, grow!

Backyard Progress Report #1

It's February and thanks to our gorgeous California climate gardening season is getting underway. I had plans to get my backyard ready for bare root trees back in December; but between the holidays and not having any time or the money to drop on tons of materials this didn't get going until January through now.  I wasn't too sure about how to go about what I wanted to do either; essentially, to build up a retaining wall big enough for dwarf fruit trees along my back wall.  After some thought I decided - I REALLY don't want to haul that much dirt to make this idea feasible!  It would probably take me a whole year, at the rate I was going.  Planters seemed like a much better idea.  Just build up enough dirt around the tree to get the necessary depth...and I could make it all modular! 

no fancy construction here!

Modular also seemed like a good idea because I really had no idea what I was doing.  If I messed up, it wouldn't ruin everything.  :)  I decided to make the planters open at the bottom and line them with landscaping fabric so they would drain freely and to construct these as simply as possible because I'm not so sure about my carpentry skills.

structure and order starting to appear

I went with 4 planks on each side, held together by brackets and nails.  Wood was bought and cut at Home Depot, common redwood.  Cost for each planter is coming to about $60, $40 for the wood and $20 for the brackets.

Progress!  Three planters made and housing a peach, orange (or maybe lemon which is in the foreground), and avocado tree, and loose planks to mark where the rest of the planter boxes will go. Trees will stay in the pots for this year to see how they'll do in the part-sun location. Next year or the year after when they're big enough I'll put them into the planters directly.

The longer planks are only laying out the probably position so far, and are not set in place yet.

Don't quite know what I'll do with the corners of the yard after that!  On the right side there's my compost heap (and a big pot of blueberry plants) - and not sure how to make a graceful end to the row I have going on here.  Maybe just low beds to complete the retaining wall?  I do need a good spot for herbs!

Farmville!

chard , originally uploaded by dorisaurus.

When I moved into my current apartment I was thrilled to discover there was a patio included in our living space. It's actually pretty sizable, although mostly concrete. There's a dirt edging the concrete and I instantly thought about planting a garden! I'd gotten so far as to put in flower bulbs through most of the before I realized how much fun it would be to start a vegetable garden!

Of course once I had this idea I'd had these dreams of growing enough to just have mounds of fresh leafy greens at my disposal. I'd have beets and radishes spilling out of my vegetable crisper and I'd give them away to friends and family who would be duly impressed.

Turns out growing things from seed during an El Nino year, with limited sunlight at all and poor light in the yard doesn't yield a lot in the way of beets and carrots and radishes, However, I've been having some decent luck with lettuce and chard (not from seed) in a planter box. This picture is my first chard harvest. Weeks of growing and some monetary investment went into producing these leaves that were enough for....one side dish to serve...one. ME! Ha! Not exactly the bonanza of fresh produce I was hoping for!

I just read a great article (thanks Dave!) about a man in Brooklyn running an experiment to see if he could live off his backyard for a month. And he did! Sort of.. .enough for one meal a day for 3 weeks, after spending $11,000 -
http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/37273/

I'll admit even after reading this I still have dreams of having enough tomatoes to make jars of sauce, or enough peppers or squash to preserve for the winter. After all I'm not trying to LIVE off a home garden, and at least I feel better knowing that my parents' garden ALREADY produces enough fruit to make tons of jam. But I'm jazzed to keep on with my experiments in vegetable gardening in a bigger, sunnier space. I think the key will be to aim for plants with higher yields.

Wish me luck!