Virgin Gardener

[slannesh]

Posted on dealnews: Buy an Osmocote Outdoor & Indoor Plant Food 3-lb. Container from any retail location and get $10 off via this $10 mail-in rebate (until 30 June 2012). Walmart, Lowe's, and Home Depot offer this food for about $12 before the rebate.

US only or is there some Canadian love there too?

*Fake Edit*

Oh yeah, I also got oversight approval to build my first raised bed this week too. Just have to sort out the details of how i'm going to fill it now since I've been given a hard cap of $100.

[tripleryder]

That's am awesome deal, thanks!

[tripleryder]

Posted on dealnews: Buy an Osmocote Outdoor & Indoor Plant Food 3-lb. Container from any retail location and get $10 off via this $10 mail-in rebate (until 30 June 2012). Walmart, Lowe's, and Home Depot offer this food for about $12 before the rebate.

US only or is there some Canadian love there too?

*Fake Edit*

Oh yeah, I also got oversight approval to build my first raised bed this week too. Just have to sort out the details of how i'm going to fill it now since I've been given a hard cap of $100.

Check around in your paper and craigslist for cheap compost... at least around here, there are hippy clubs that like to get together and make compost whilst enjoying their cannabis... you can get it from them for a steal [exact price varies, mostly dependant on intake of aforementioned cannabis]

[slannesh]

I know I can get it from the regional landfill here cheaply. Just need a way to transport it since I don't own a truck and they sell it by the cubic metre.

[prepper7]

Oh yeah, I also got oversight approval to build my first raised bed this week too. Just have to sort out the details of how i'm going to fill it now since I've been given a hard cap of $100.

That is awesome!

[prepper7]

That's am awesome deal, thanks!

My pleasure!

Coupled with the Kellogg's soil rebate and/or the Miracle Gro soil $3 coupons, one can save a bit on garden staples.

[slannesh]

Picked up the lumber for my first Raised bed and got the construction taken care of.

I chose to use SPF lumber since it's a lot cheaper than Cedar. Eventually i'll do Cedar for the longevity and looks but if I wanted to get any gardening done this year it was going to be pine. I built an 8' x 4' box 16" deep.





And then put it out the yard upside down. I don't have the weed cloth installed yet since i'll do that just before I fill the bed to minimize weed seeds in the soil from the dandelions my front yard is inundated with. The level area it's in I think I can easily put 3 more beds of the same size on the level portion between it and the house leaving 3' between each bed and staying away from the trees in the third picture.





Thankfully my house faces south so the front yard get a lot of sun.
The picture makes it look a lot further than it is, I can get another 4' wide box beside this one with a 3' gap between them before the yard starts to slope up towards the house and i'd have to do some digging.



I also bought some PVC and had some plastic sheeting laying around to make a hoop house style greenhouse mounted to the outside of the bed. I just have to get my schedule to mesh with my brother in law's to pick up a load of compost and we're good! Hopefully i'll get it finished and planted tomorrow at the latest.

[tripleryder]

Nice box, and Super nice place!!

You may consider lining the interior of your box walls with plastic sheeting before filling, will help the pine last longer. That being said, I didn't do mine. We have 4 lumber places in town, and NONE of that have cedar, other than fencing.

[prepper7]

Picked up the lumber for my first Raised bed and got the construction taken care of.

I chose to use SPF lumber since it's a lot cheaper than Cedar. Eventually i'll do Cedar for the longevity and looks but if I wanted to get any gardening done this year it was going to be pine. I built an 8' x 4' box 16" deep.

Well done you, for getting something done this year. Nice box. Nice, garden, too!

[slannesh]

Well done you, for getting something done this year. Nice box. Nice, garden, too!

Thanks, my parents are in town and my dad helped me with some building and soil mixing today. My mom and I ended up in a garden center and picked up some new plants.

I can't take credit for the front yard garden, the previous owner of our house (We took possession in May) was an avid gardener, all the stuff you see there is perennial flowers that come up every year.

On to today's adventures!

My helper makes another appearance!


Along with my slightly more senior helpers, mixing Sandy Loam, Peat moss and compost to make my Raised Bed soil.


And we're done. Hoop house constructed!
The plastic is some stuff I had laying around and it's not very thick and I had to use 2 pieces to cover the bed so i'll pick up some better stuff asap.


And some new plants to go in it. I know these were more or less outside during the day at the garden center but they did close the roof at night so I ran out of time to plant today. The Rhubarb will go in our flower garden but the zucchini, spaghetti squash and peppers will go in the raised bed. I'm planning on trying "Square Foot Gardening" in there to see how it goes.

[prepper7]

My, that hoop house looks nicely constructed.

Does your little helper have a plant of his own to tend? Nasturtiums are pretty, thrive on poor soil and "benign neglect", and have edible leaves and flowers.

[prepper7]

With my lettuce bolting (it's a cool weather crop, and I'm really trying to stretch...), I know that I need to find something new to plant. The problem is, I can't make much sense of all the planting maps and information.

Fortunately, the Urban Organic Gardener has put together a system -- The Veggie Virgin Formula -- to help fledgling gardeners determine what to plant when. You can find the information (and video) on this blog entry. I think this is just what I need to get unfrozen; I hope it helps you, too.

[slannesh]

My, that hoop house looks nicely constructed.

Does your little helper have a plant of his own to tend? Nasturtiums are pretty, thrive on poor soil and "benign neglect", and have edible leaves and flowers.

He's a bit young to tend anything, won't be 2 till July so he's more of a "love it to death and dismemberment" type at the moment But he does like looking at daddy playing in the dirt and he does love my loam pile for his tonka trucks.

As for the hoop house, I wasn't at all happy with the plastic, it's really thin drop cloth stuff so I picked up some 3.5 mil stuff that will cover the bed in one piece instead of two and installed that tonight. I was happily surprised that even with the crappy thin plastic the hoop house was a full 6-7 degrees warmer on a windy cloudy day than outside in general. I should have great results on a sunny day.



As well as laying the grid for my square foot garden plan



I was going to plant the stuff I got from the nursery the other day but we have a heavy rainfall warning and are expecting a bit of a storm as well as up to 40mm of rain in the next 24 hours so I figured i'd just set up the new plastic and hope it weathers the storm ok. I'll plant later this week, but I just didn't want to risk the plants and have to rebuy them. I'll continue hardening the store bought as well as my seedlings over the next few days.

[tripleryder]

Looks great slannesh!
Do you have an outline of your planting plan?

[prepper7]

Here are the one month results of my Vegetable Thrive experiment (Thrive container is on the right). The plants were from a six-pack purchased from a garden centre (two each of three kinds of lettuce). They were planted in identical sub-irrigated planters.

The experiment is ending because we're going to eat the results (with warm weather moving in, I don't know how long the lettuce will last before going to seed)! I am delighted with the results across all the plants in the garden and am a very satisfied customer (in addition purchasing Vegetable Thrive, I ordered a free sample of Flower Thrive and the nasturtiums are bountiful).

If you were too lazy (or suspicious) to order a sample when I originally posted the offer, it's not too late. Here is their promo page

[slannesh]

Planted my 8x4 raised bed today. I have 2 square feet free still so I need to figure out what will go well in the last 2 spots. The top of the bed is north.



Edit: Corrected Garden plan, only 2 squares free and corrected a mistake or two

[prepper7]

Inventive small-space garden of the week Tilt Out Window Garden

[tripleryder]

Update:

everything has sprouted, some are a few inches high. Definitely gonna have to do a lot of thinning. I was a bit... overzealous in my seeding
Lots of green cherry tomatoes, a few green silver fur tree tomatoes.
a dozen or so little baby peppers
about 5 1-2" long english cucumber babies

I lost one of my rocky cukes. and one of my gold standard cukes. Now it looks like one of my english is starting to wilt. Did I plant too close together? Too much sun? I leaned a piece of trellis in front, we'll see if that helps. Maybe they got too hot for little plants?

Anyone harvested anything yet? other than lettuces...

[slannesh]

I'm a long ways off from harvesting anything just yet. Stuff is growing though! I've lost a few of my zucchini and spaghetti squash that I planted from seed but bought some bigger seedlings to replace them when I planted the raised bed. Looks like I may have lost a couple of bush beans as well. I've planted a few more of those too so we'll see where i'm at in a few weeks.

[zombiepreparation]

tripleryder/slannesh: Am enjoying your gardens, pics, & reporting! Definitely longing for space like yours. Ah me.

P7: The "Tilt Out Garden" is a Five Star find! Clever clever clever people. Have been sitting here trying to figure out how I could talk the Powers That Be in this building into letting me do this next year. No chance in .... um, no chance at all because of the overhang and possible liabilities were there to be some kind of problem that resulted in things dropping. (poor construction, liquid on people's heads, big winds popping up unexpectedly, etc) But what a solution to a problem!!!!!!!!!!! Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

And am also liking the way you have planted your buckets; several items in each. I am noticing myself keeping my plants rather small so that would work for me too.

My lettuce, kale, spinach, & basil are harvested daily keeping the plant with only a few leaves left growing. It is interesting. I never thought of doing this, it just sort of started happening. Everyday I harvest as many leaves as I feel is safe to still maintain a sturdy (though very small) plant and everyday each plant SHOOTS up replacement leaves and the leaves I had left the day before have become harvest-able size for today. We (the plants and I) have gotten into a rhythm doing this and I have food every day. I get enough for a single serving salad daily but usually blend what I have into a 'green' drink which I enjoy. My neighbors and the gardeners keep regular size plants but their lettuce and spinach are starting to bolt now. So far mine are giving no indication of doing so. They just keep sending out new leaves for me to eat each day. We'll see.

My two tomato bush plants look sturdy and healthy. There are three tomatoes growing. Time will tell though because there 'were' five tomatoes but two began rotting at the bloom area while green (blossom-end rot). Some gardeners have this happen with first tomatoes, then it disappears. Some say calcium uptake is the problem, some say water. I'm in a holding pattern until I see if more tomatoes succumb.

I have been observing/gathering information for next year's garden. Are you satisfied/pleased with the self-watering system you have? If so that's on my agenda next year. I am displeased with watering the buckets and having the water draining each time. There is also a balcony that I can see from mine that has a really simple foot wide shelf-like table made from an eight or ten foot 2 X 12 board lining the sunlit portion of his/her balcony. Effective, simple, and increases the amount of space left for human use. Definitely what I am doing next year because one foot deep is the reach of the most useful sunlight and I now know how little storage/work space this garden needs. And this will be cheap to build.

And there is noooooooooo mold anywhere. But I have a bee that hangs out in the potting soil. After googling about it I see it might be a type of solitary bee called miner or mason bees. Interesting chaps. Don't live in hives. Dig little holes in soil to live in.

[ODA 226]

I've never grown anything before in my life, but here's my first attempt...Please be gentle! LOL!

http://s790.photobucket.com/albums/yy187/ODA226/?action=view&current=MOV00550.mp4

[zombiepreparation]

I've never grown anything before in my life, but here's my first attempt...Please be gentle! LOL!

ODA, no need at all to feel nervous about your first efforts at harnessing nature to feed you and yours because your garden appears quite admirable. Oh yeah, and this is the Virgin Gardener section anyway. Besides, I was suitably impressed with this 'first attempt', would be pleased and happy to have this as my own garden. If you haven't already go back and read my first attempt at balcony gardening and its descent in flames to a crash and burn. Your first attempt is rocking and rolling.

As you said in the vid, keep updating what you experience happening there for this thread. I read everything here in my quest to learn gardening myself. I find I need all info, both successes and details of how and why things didn't go as planned, to be necessary to my learning process. All the things like 'this is working', "I damaged myself doing that", 'this was how I did it', 'that plastic didn't work on the project', to be the very things I'm looking for. I am learning from this. And the tips being shared here are at times worth just even having the thread.

Change of thought:

I can't find it now but someone mentioned they are doing square foot gardening. My other garden a few years back was based on that concept and was happily successful. The square foot watering method of watering under the plant and nowhere else took away that pleasant experience of standing with the water hose spraying everything down, which though was fully balanced out by weeding that took only a couple of minutes a week and a water bill that was so low it challenged my neighbor's belief compared to her garden water bill that was shooting through the roof and making her garden product so much more expensive than mine. And her garden bugs and plant problems widly differed from mine too.

My in-ground plants downstairs (in ground loaned by the plot holder) are being wildly different in their successes. I have planted, replanted and nurtured plants that in different sections vary from will-not-grow to stunted no matter what I am doing. Even marigolds which seem to thrive anywhere. While in other parts of my donated soil the plants run from slow growing to spindly to thriving. I'm guessing it is a soil composition thing that needs some better understanding for next year. Wouldn't I just love to make the donated ground a little linear raised garden bed for next year with improved soil.

[tripleryder]

Well. My cucumbers are dying. I've lost 3, and the other 3 are on their way out. I talked to a few experienced growers around here, and they are all having cucumber trials as well. One is on her 3rd planting of them.
Makes me sad, cucumbers are one of our favorites (at least they're cheap...)

[slannesh]

Well. My cucumbers are dying. I've lost 3, and the other 3 are on their way out. I talked to a few experienced growers around here, and they are all having cucumber trials as well. One is on her 3rd planting of them.
Makes me sad, cucumbers are one of our favorites (at least they're cheap...)

Mine weren't looking so hot when I checked on them the other day either. Still green but the original leaves were looking pretty yellow but they did have new bigger leaves above them that looked fine. I'll have another look when I get home since I didn't do anything on the weekend with the hoop house.

Beans, now those are just dead. I got new ones started but we'll see how it goes.