To Do List

1. Plant potatoes in bags. I am using regular yard bags, with holes at the bottom for drainage. I may have to wrap them in chicken wire to keep my new destructive puppy from mauling them down.

2. Put 2x4 studs around my beds. And wrap chicken wire around them to keep my new destructive puppy from digging everything out. I was inspired to do this by my destructive puppy -Lexie and by a post on Karl's Garden Blog.

3. Prepare the garden plot in backyard. Clean weeds, add compost, add fence to keep my new destructive puppy from digging everything out.

4. Add dirt and water and plants to all self-watering containers. And, , figure out how to keep my new destructive puppy from thinking that these are her new chew-toys.

5. Sow my Irish Eyes sunflowers that will go in front yard. I did not want to start them too soon.

6. Prepare flower bed in front yard. I got most of it done last Fall but it still needs compost.

7. Plant white onion, Apache salad onion, and carrot seedlings in beds. Sow radish.

I am also very excited that my friend Tim has agreed to help me build my greenhouse made from second hand windows. It is just an idea so far but with Tim's help I may actually get it built.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Consider the humble aluminum can. We don't think much about it. We drink the contents therein and then we either trash it or recycle it and then we forget about it. But the aluminum can is a wonder of modern engineering worthy of a second look. Every aspect of it was designed; more aluminum and you are wasting material; less aluminum and the pressurized contents will end up all over you pretty new shirt. The tab is made just tight enough to keep things in but loose enough to allow even the most delicate fingers to remove it. Then we make millions of exact copies, each performing at the same high level. Yep, pretty amazing.

Is your gardening a high precision enterprise? Do you know the exact chemical composition of your soil? Is your compost controlled to such a degree that you could patent it? Is your knowledge of your plants so deep that you could earn a Botany degree? Are you so tuned to the weather that they call you from the local tv station for the daily forecast?

My sophistication level in the garden rises a little every growing season but I am far from being the guy that understands how fertilizer travels down the soil seeking its point of optimum equilibrium, or any such thing.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to be a Master Gardener and possess such esoteric knowledge (In the age of Wikipedia, is there such a thing as esoteric knowledge anymore?).
But even at my mediocre level of gardening proficiency, I miss the early days. I miss those times when I just naively put seeds in peat pods, left them to get leggy and weak and then transplanted them into the first open spot in the yard. Sure I lost a lot of plants but I also got tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.

All the same, last year I bought a Ph test kit so I could optimize the soil for Blueberries, and a soil thermometer that in no small part, allowed for record germination rates this year. Will I ever become a Master Gardener? Will my gardening ever reach Aluminum-can like precission? Probably not but I doubt my joy for it will diminish no matter what.

How does YOUR garden grow?

Recharging the beds

It finally was nice enough on a weekend to do some gardening outside. My boys and I had breakfast at McDonalds and then went around town looking for 5 different types of compost. When we got home I had:

Humus and Cow Manure
Earthworm castings
Mushroom compost
Cotton Bur compost

I tried mixing compost like this after reading about it in the New Square Foot Gardening book. The theory behind it is that by mixing five different types of compost you get a better mix of nutrients for your plants. It worked really well for me last year.

Here is my compost all mixed and ready to go into the beds.


In the picture, you see my new gardening nemesis. A curious puppy who is only too happy to dig out anything I put in the ground.

I have three raised beds, two of which are truly square foot gardening beds --Mel says that it is not square foot gardening until you have a grid. The grids for the two 4x4 beds are made out of aluminum and I will put them on once I recharge the beds with the compost mix.

The third bed is a plastic one that I bought out of a catalog a couple of years ago. It is 3 feet by 3 feet and 12 inches deep. It has worked great for tomatoes, peppers, and even cantaloupes but this year, it will be my carrot box. Oh, I may put a pepper of two in there.

This year I decided to move the boxes and also I decided to put river rock around them to keep weeds away and to make it easier comes harvest time.

The problem with the river rock is that it is expensive and I did not buy enough to complete the job. I am secretly considering going to the Arkansas river nearby and get my own river rock.

The weather was great though a bit windy. The tomatoes in the self-watering containers (SWC) are still alive after three days of being outside. They look a little beat up but there is new growth on them.




I wasn't the only one who thought it was time to work on the garden. My help came ready to work hard but unfortunately I found their attention span wanting.


I noticed that my fruit trees are budding and that my pear tree actually has leaves. I feel bad for my fruit trees because I know that we will probably have at least one more hard freeze before Spring is firmly here and many of the buds and leaves will fall off.

Gardening in the 23rd century

In the 23rd century, we have mastered GM foods

Wichita Garden Show - first day

I went to the Wichita Garden Show on opening day during lunch. I learned two things right away:

1) Don't be the first one in the door on opening day because a lot of the booths are not 100% setup.

2) Be the first one in the door on opening day because a lot of the vendors have specials for the first x many customers.

Of course, it took all of 10 minutes to run into the booth with the gizmo I could not live without.


Here are some pictures from their website ( I will be posting my own as soon as I open the box):

























I also saw these two really cool Bonsai trees made from Bougainvillea plants at the Wichita Bonsai Club's booth:

This one is an actual bonsai tree:


This one is a Bougainvillea supported by a rigid metal coil. If you look closely you can see the metal coil that wraps around the trunk of the plant. Being rigid , it props the plant up:



I bought a pass for all 4 days because I want to come back on Saturday and really take time to look around.

Correction - It is the Wichita GARDEN show

I just had to post this quick correction. It is NOT the Wichita Home and Garden Show, it is the Wichita GARDEN show and it is primarily about gardens.
The theme this year is The GIVING Garden. I can't wait to see what that means.
It starts today and since it is practically next door to my job, I am going there during lunch. Wohoo!

Home and Garden Show

The Wichita Home and Garden Show starts tomorrow and although it is not strictly a gardening exhibition, some of the nurseries in town will have garden displays and maybe even some plants for sale.
I read in another blog about a Seed Exchange event and I am now thinking about approaching my local County Extension Office about hosting a seed exchange gathering of some sort. Now that would be cool. I am already thinking about the stamp I am going to design for my seed packets!

Ollas again

After watering my plants by hand last year, I was left with a deep desire not to water that way again. Ever.
And so I began looking for better ways to water my plants. I saw many an irrigation scheme on the Internet and I really liked the following:

1) Self-watering containers.
2) Ollas
3) Watering spikes

I want to talk about Ollas today.

Ollas are clay jars that you bury next to your plants, fill them with water and let the plant draw water from them as needed.

The following pictures of Ollas in action came from this web page, which is possibly the coolest post about using Ollas.
I highly recommend you visit their main website (www.pathtofreedom.com) as it has Cool of the highest quality.
I really wanted to try them last year but I could find no Ollas anywhere in Kansas. On the Internet, I found a link to a non-for-profit place in New Mexico that only sold the Ollas locally.
This year, I found a couple of companies on the Internet that sell Ollas (for $20 and up) and a post on the Dave's Gardens web site on how to make your own using terracotta pots.
I will keep the terracotta pot idea on the back of my head for now.

While reading the Ollas post on the Path to Freedom website, I came across a post by Diana, a gardener and potter who said she may make her own ollas. I went to her blog:
http://munge.net/~diana/blog/
and left her a message about wanting to know more about her Olla making.
Here's her response for your reading enjoyment:

"David -
we had such a wet, wet summer (and I was so very, very pregnant) that I never did make ollas. I still think they’d be easy to make, though. I was thinking I’d roll slabs (you can roll clay like pie dough), wrap them around a wine bottle (covered with newspaper, so I could slide the clay off later) to get a tube form, and then slap a bottom on them. The top could be pinched in later to give it a smaller circumference. They wouldn’t be the traditional shape and wouldn’t hold nearly as much water, but they would still work as long as they were only low-fired, not high-fired. They’d just need to be replenished more often.

I’m sure there’s good clay in Kansas, you’d just have to find it (look near a river). The problem with plain old dirt is that it has much larger particles than clay, so it doesn’t stick together the same way - it just turns into mud. Clay’s particles are evenly sized, as fine as silt, and oval-shaped so they slide over each other. If I were you I’d just buy some clay: it’s not expensive. Look at Bailey’s (www.baileypottery.com) low-fire or earthenware clays. Those are clays that mature at low temperatures (1500 degrees), which is what you’re talking about if you want to fire in the old-fashioned way.

The way Native Americans did it is called a “pit firing”, which you can learn lots about just by googling that term. They basically stacked pots in among piles of dried dung and sawdusty stuff, covered and filled them with that stuff, covered the pile with wood, lit it on fire, and came back the next day to sift through the ashes. It can give you some beautiful results, but a) none of it is waterproof unless later treated with fat or wax, and b) there is a tremendous percentage of loss in a firing like this due to the unpredictability of the fire, weight, etc.

I’d encourage you to look up a local community center and see if they have an intro to ceramics program, or perhaps just a place where you can fire your stuff. Everything I know about Kansas I learned from Dorothy, but if you ever have dry summers there then I’d encourage you to experiment."

So now I have an Olla roadmap of sorts.
1) See if there is a pottery class offered at my County Extension Office.
2) Investigate where I can buy clay locally.
3) Find out who has a kiln that I can use.

Gardening in the 23rd century

When I told my sister-in-law that I was growing mint, she told me:
"Friends don't let friends grow mint".
My mother gave me a clump of mint last year and I brought it home to no avail. It did not take. So this year I bought some mint seed and it has sprouted and the little mint plants are doing ok in their peat pot so far.
We'll see.

All that you can be

Someone smarter than me pointed out that man is the only living thing that chooses not to live to its fullest potential. A tree, that person said, will grow to a hundred feet if it is in his genetic make up to do so given favorable conditions. Man on the other hand, even in a favorable environment, may choose to be less than he can be. Potential is what I was thinking when a few Daffodils grew where none were supposed to. The one here is an example of how a Daffodil will grow to its full potential. I am a poor photographer so this picture does not do justice to the beauty of this flower. Last Fall, my brother and I cleared this spot for my lavender and scleranthus. We thought we moved all the bulbs.

According to the weather people, The first week of March around here will see highs in the 60's. My lettuce is looking a little stressed so I need to transplant it to their appointed raised bed. My plans for the weekend include a trip to gather 5 different types of compost to recharge the beds. I got onions, lettuce, and carrots to plant. I will also sow my first batch of radish. This year I am growing my potatoes in plastic bags. I can't wait to get started

Honesty in gardening and in life

I just read an article by Gayla Trail that made me feel a little bit like a phony. Here I am posting about my "gardening philosophy" while she is writing deeply personal and honest stories about gardening and life.
I think I need to stop thinking about this plant growing thing I do and just do it. I need to just shut my mouth and let the experience itself be.

Ugly for sure

I put my tomatoes out the other day for the first time when the temperature got to 50 degrees and the sun was full out. Although I only left them out for an hour, a couple of them did not do very well. So this time out, I devised a quick "cloche" and put one of the Brandywine tomatoes out for half a day. Ugly yes, but it appears to have worked. The Brandywine did not look bad at all when I brought it in for the night.

Also, most of my seedlings are ready to be transplanted into pots. This year I have committed myself to using peat pots so that's where most of these little guys are going. From there they are going into their final containers.

I have one more set of seeds to sow and that will be the last of them. The next step: fighting weather, bugs, curious children and curious dogs.




Peppers and Tomatoes

My Gardening Style

I started gardening 6 years ago. My initial attempt at gardening consisted of going to the local Mega Gigantico Mart and getting some seeds off a cardboard rack in their gardening section, buying a 72 cell mini disposable greenhouse, dropping the seeds --all peppers, into the now moistened cells and forgetting about the whole thing for a week.
I read none of the seed packets; I read no gardening books; I researched nothing on the Internet. Remembering how my mother just put seeds in discarded soup cans with regular dirt from the garden in them and got EVERYTHING and ANYTHING to grow on the windowsill of her kitchen window, I simply expected the seeds to germinate and become plants without any work on my part.

These days I put a little more effort into the whole exercise and also, I have began to think about my gardening style, my gardening philosophy: What kind of gardener am I? Why do I do this? Do I really need to grow 22 varieties of pepper?
I think the answers to these questions are taking shape every growing season. For example, I am now as concerned about the life under the garden as the life above it. This year, I have postponed turning my garden plot because I am concerned about all the little creatures hibernating under it. Then I read about the no-till gardening method and it seems sensible and appropriate to me.

And this concern about the ground critters is not a fad. I recognize a fad! If you want fads, I got fads!

• Upside down hanging tomato planters. As seen on TV!
• Self-watering containers. Home made because it was cheaper and more fun.
• Water walls. Growing season extenders!

Also, every year I learn about a new thing in gardening and I just have to try it:

Square foot gardening. This one may turn out to be a life-long pursuit.
Ollas. Also may keep this one forever, if I ever get one!
Winter sowing in plastic milk containers. Just learned about this one so I haven't tried it.
Watering spikes. They work but are expensive and plastic.
Soil Blocks. These are growing plugs made only out of compressed dirt. They sell the contraption to make them but you can also find instructions on DIY versions on the Internet (of course!).
Tomato ladders. The coolest thing ever but I am waiting on my brother to weld me some.

These techniques and tools may be replaced by the next big thing but my overall gardening philosophy, the base of it all is something more stable and that's what I am talking about here.

The Chiltepin

Year after year I have put chiltepin seeds, also known as chile tepin or chile pequin, in peat pellets, professional growing medium, dirt, etc. with no results; or if you prefer, with the result that at the end, all I had were empty peat pellets, empty pots of professional growing medium, empty pots of dirt, etc.
This year, I tried it once again and pow! one seed sprouted. I cannot tell you how elated I was. I actually did a little jig the morning I came down to inspect my peat pellets and found this little gem. I have nurtured it since and this is what it looks like today, February 21, 2oo9 (see picture above).
The chiltepin pepper and I have history. We go back all the way to my childhood in the Sonoran desert, where peddlers would come to our street selling wild chiltepins that they had harvested in the Sierra Madre mountains.
The little round peppers can be eaten fresh but we always used them dry and are so hot that we used bits of grocery paper sacks to protect our fingers when we crushed them into soups and stews. Just one was enough to provide any dish with considerable kick.
Experts say that the chiltepin is the precursor of ALL peppers. It is a wild plant and so they tell me, it takes a year or two to fruit, but I have read somewhere that people get fruit out of it the first year. A well-tended chiltepin plant can live for a long time -20 or 30 years! although the oldest plant I have seen was reported to be 5 years old.
It is because of the reported longevity of the plant I intend to plant my baby into a large, regular pot and not into one of my home made self-watering containers, which have to be emptied and cleaned at the end of each growing season. Here in Kansas, I will have to bring it inside during the coldest months of the year.

I am hoping that tomorrow is nice enough for me to put plants into the remaining 4 self-watering buckets that I've made.

By now, I usually have all the seeds I am going to buy for the growing season but today I bought some seeds for stuff I hadn't decided yet if I wanted to grow or not, so I will be sowing stuff tomorrow as well.

Crisis!

I've gotten myself in a bit of a pickle. I have way too many seedlings coming up and not enough space under the lights. To complicate things, I am having a guy come and re-floor the downstairs space and that's where I keep my seedlings, which means that I cannot go downstairs today or tomorrow to water the poor things. I fear I may lose some of them and that would break my heart.
I have lettuce growing now (Tom Tom mini head lettuce and Tin Tin little gem lettuce). I have a bunch of onions now. I have at least two strawberry plants sprouting. The Penstemons are finally germinating. I am going to have to think of something quick if I want to start my garden in March as I planned.
Also, seed potatoes are at the stores, as well as onions, garlic, strawberry roots, and blueberry bushes. It makes me giddy with anticipation!

They're off!

I finally put my Market Miracle tomato plant in one of the home-made self-watering containers (SWC) I made out of 4 gallon plastic buckets.
Although I mounted an intensive campaign with restaurants around town, I could never get any 5 gallon buckets. 4 gallon buckets however, were plentiful. Since I grew a Brandywine tomato plant in a smaller container last year, I figured a 4 gallon bucket would suffice for my Market Miracle.
This is not the only tomato plant I have but it is the first one that germinated.
One nice thing about the 4 gallon bucket is that even when full of wet dirt and water, it is light enough to move. My plan is to put it outside when the temperature gets over 40 and bring it inside when it drops below that, at least until the plant has hardened, and then I will only bring it inside at night when the temperatures drop below freezing.
I put one of my Brandywine tomato plants in another SWC just like the one on the picture yesterday as well. In fact, I have enough 4 gallon buckets for 3 more plants for a total of 5. I have two 5 gallon buckets that I bought last year on sale and they will hold another one of my Russian tomatos. I have a number of 18 gallon totes that will become SWC for my peppers, cucumbers, watermelons, squash, etc.
I am really looking forward to this growing season. Last year was terrible with hail storm after hail storm. Spring in Kansas can be really unpredictable so I am hoping that the movable containers will help.

Murder in the Garden

Every year since I began gardening - 6 years now, I do something that brings me great shame and heart ache.
Early in the year, when I do my sowing, I put several seeds in each pot or plug in order to ensure that I get at least one plant. However, it seems every year, more than one seed germinates in each pot or plug. If you grow plants from seed, you know this.
So, in order to allow one plant to survive and to mature, I am instructed by conventional wisdom to clip all seedlings except for the strongest one.
Every year, comes killing time, my chest fills with anguish. I feel dirty. This is the miracle of life people! These plants did their part. They came. That was our agreement. I provided life with the means to come forth and it did!
I think this contract we make with the Universe every planting season is the source of my shame. I feel I am betraying something when I "thin" the plants.
I wonder if anyone else feels this way. I wonder if some day I will grow callouses on my heart and I won't feel a thing.
I wonder.

Thus far...

It's February 10, 2009 and it has been in the 60's for the last 4 days. So far this year, I have started the following:

1 Market Miracle Russian tomato plant
2 Brandywine tomato plants
1 Chiltepin plant (my pride and joy thus far since it is the first time I've been able to grow one from seed)
Multiple spearmint plants
2 Anaheim pepper plants
1 Mini Bell sweet pepper plant
1 Strawberry plant from seed
1 Giant Kale plant (to grow into a cane)
1 California Wonder bell pepper plant
1 Jalapeño M

This past weekend I planted the bulk of my seeds but I still have some to do.

This year I am using a heating pad to help start the seedlings with one pleasant surprise; my Tom Tom mini head lettuce and my Tin Tin lettuces sprouted in ONE DAY! I was expecting them to sprout in 10 days but they sprouted overnight so now I have to figure out a way to plant them while it is still cold outside.

I bought a grow light fixture and I spend the day at work wondering if it will catch my house on fire. Actually I bought two grow lights this year, one is a stand made for a plant but I put several small plants under it.

Next I hope to tell you about some of the other stuff I am trying this year in the garden.