New Beginning in 2009

So last year...well I guess I pooped out on the blog earlier than I pooped out on the garden. This year is a new beginning and hopefully things will be better.

First, I've expanded the garden. It's nearly twice the size now and I plan on it being close to three times bigger than it was last year. We still have to double dig some of it...ugh...but it's getting there!

Second, I've discovered a few fun sites that I'm liking. One is called the cheap vegetable garden, http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/ and it is full of good ideas. I'm always open for ways to do more for less. Another is this list of garden blogs by area: http://www.sustainable-gardening.com/BlogsandSites/Blogroll.php

Third, I planted the early spring crops in the early spring this time! So maybe they will work better. I also planted two kinds of seeds - some of the heritage brand that I had last year (I guess I'm eternally optimistic, since most of them just didn't seem to do anything), and some of another brand to just hedge my bets.

Fourth, I've ordered potatoes already and this time I'm hoping to make boxes for them to grow in instead of just putting them in the plain garden. I hear boxes increase the yield 2-3 or more times (but not so much with early varieties).


Fifth, I've ordered two extra backs, one pair of hamstrings, and three spare knees. I wanted to order four or five backs, but they were on back-order so I'll have to wait. Hopefully this way I'll be able to keep working in the garden all summer.

Update (now that I have a camera)

Wow, so much has happened in the past 6 weeks or so! My camera met with an unfortunate accident as do so many things in life...although most of them are not forgotten on the back of a car and fall off in the road! Camera loss discouraged me from blogging but I found the courage to pull out the old icky less than 2 megapixel camera from the closet. Better than nothing.

Much of what I planted in April just did not come up. What a bummer. I guess it was a combination of it being perhaps too early (?) and/or lower than hoped for seed germination rates. I'll have to find some of the beets that are used in the Square Foot Gardening book (if you look at the germination percentage tables in that book - not sure which edition - you'll find that at certain temperatures beet seeds actually germinate at rates approaching 200%!!! Thanks to my aunt for that information)

Lettuce, spinach, onions and peas mostly (but not all) failed to come up. Things I planted inside in pots did come up but slowly. So next year I definitely need a better system. This means I'll probably have to either give up on starting plants inside or get an actual real grow light. I'm pretty sure that the $10 work lamp just ain't cutting it. You get what you pay for.

I replanted all of the above and I've had better success in planting since May 1. I've had a great time being completely obsessed with it. You can see the chair upon which one can sit and gaze (although I can't manage to stay seated - I just get pulled onto the ground and next thing you know I'm running my hands through the dirt. My son thinks I'm addicted to the bacteria that acts like an antidepressant). I put in a brick walkway in the front so that weeds and grasses don't take over there. I wander through it every single day I can, pulling a few weeds here and there.

Here we have some tomatoes and garlic. I tried to start some tomatoes from seed and they did indeed grow. But not very well. So I found my organic tomato source from last summer and lo and behold she was selling some extra tomato plants! I bought 5, each a different kind. Stupice, Prudence Purple, Black Japanese, Amish Paste and Fourth of July. Still impatient, I also bought a patio tomato plant from a local orchard (so impatient!) and a cherry tomato plant from a local garden center. You can see the beautiful garlic next to the tomatoes.
And more impatience on my part...I also bought some broccoli. You can see it there on the left, beyond the banana potatoes. There are beets above the broccoli and potatoes, although you can't seem them well in the pic. It was not even remotely in my plans to have broccoli. In fact, I had considered it and decided against it rather strongly. However, there it was at the garden center, looking so...appealing. So here you see the broccoli and the potatoes. Yes the potatoes came!! (Roningers, and I bought ONLY 8 kinds because I am ONLY that crazy). I "chitted" them in the attic for a couple weeks until they were just slightly green and most importantly had little buds on them. I cut them before putting them in the attic to "chit." They were in great shape...and there were lots of them! Blue potatoes, yukon gold, colorado rose, maris piper, banana, french fingerline, desiree, romance...I guess if I have them all off the top of my head I am obsessed. These are what take up most of the south half of the garden. There's a row of red winter kale on the end, then a row of sugar snap peas (Sugar Daddy), and then begin the potatoes. And they are budding beautifully now! After the potatoes come the broccoli (sharing it's "row" with the banana fingerlines) and then a row of beets.

The potatoes were planted about 2 weeks after "chitting" began, so that would have been on May 7th. (I'm pretty sure...I know it was a Wednesday...). The kids helped me and did a great job. It's been 3 weeks now and they are vigorously growing, having just broke the surface of the soil about a week ago. The pictures here don't do them justice because they were taken Monday and today is Wednesday and since Monday they have REALLY grown! Anyway, after planting all those potatoes, I realized that I had completely forgotten about the beans...and zucchini...and pole beans...and cucumbers...and eggplants, all of which were actually trying to grow under a silly work light in the attic. Yeah. So I dug up another 2/5 x 6 foot area. Oh yes I did. Double dug, too. All in one day. And guess what -- beans just don't transplant too well. At least all mine died. So next year, no planting beans early. Just not worth it. Eggplant didn't die...not right away. I think I still see it there, weakly attempting life. I ended up buying eggplants and pepper plants at a local roadside stand...along with some romaine lettuce plants. They had impatients too but I didn't buy any. Apparently I already have plenty.

I also had strawberries that came from Raintree nursery, along with a black currant and a gooseberry. I was not that impressed with Raintree (really expensive shipping charges that were mostly a surprise) so I probably won't order from them again. I supplanted the strawberries with more that I bought from the local garden center and the Raintree strawberries have already caught up. The currant bushes are also looking good. Pictures of them next time...

Digging and Planting

I got my seeds in the mail from heirloomseeds.com. Whoo hooo! What a fun package to get. It was raining, so I couldn't do much in the garden. But a few days later, I soaked the seeds overnight and got ready to plant cold weather crops.

To get ready I added nitrogen and potassium to the soil using some organic dried blood (seems like a paradox doesn't it?) and some potash. Did you know there's a world-wide shortage of potash? I "double-dug" the area I was going to plant -- a little over 1/3 of the total garden space. Actually to be accurate, I started the double-digging and the whole family contributed, Ron doing the lion's share. After deeply tilling the soil we created a slightly raised, rounded bed that I then marked with twine to show where each planting area was.

Next was the really fun part...but by this time it was getting late and uncomfortably cool, so I just did the planting as fast as I could. It was still light but the sun had gone down and my hands were cold. Here are the seeds I bought:

GOLD OF BACAU BEAN - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.50
BLUE LAKE BUSH BEAN - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.50
WHITE DIXIE BABY BUTTERBEANS, Price:1.75
MINIATURE WHITE CUCUMBER - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
MUNCHER CUCUMBER - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
ROSA BIANCA EGGPLANT- CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
BUTTERCRUNCH LETTUCE - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
CRISP MINT LETTUCE - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
YUGOSLAVIAN RED BUTTERHEAD LETTUCE - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
HEARTS OF GOLD MELON - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
SUGAR DADDY PEA - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.50
MONNOPA SPINACH - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
DARK GREEN ZUCCHINI - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
LITTLE FINGER CARROT - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
BULL`S BLOOD BEET - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
WINTER RED KALE - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
WALLA WALLA ONION - CERTIFIED ORGANIC, Price:2.00
PURPLE TOP WHITE GLOBE TURNIP - CERTIFIED ORGANIC,Price:2.00

I planted the spinach, the lettuces, onions and peas. I saved a couple spots to plant more lettuce and onions in a couple weeks. Probably too late to plant another crop of spinach this year but I will try for more in the fall, assuming I haven't pooped out on the garden by that point.

I also ordered some herbs and seed potatoes more recently (herbs from heirloomseeds.com and potatoes from ronnigers.com). These should be coming sometime in the next week or so. Potatoes should be planted soon but the herbs will have to wait a bit.

I did plant beans, zucchini and melon in little pots to put in the attic. Hopefully they will get some good growth before I transplant them to the garden in about a month.

Finally, here's the garlic I planted last fall: starting to look like it's really going place.

Garlic looking gorgeous

Doesn't it look pretty? The garlic is up and growing and I have seeds sprouting (or hoping to sprout) upstairs in the attic under the window. Yesterday it was 62 degrees and today is sunny and almost as warm. I think spring may actually happen!!

Checking Soil Structure

No pictures today, just finally getting the soil sample together to send to the lab for analysis. How many things get in the way? I mean, literally, what if I were to count how many things got in the way of me doing this before now? And how many were true obstacles vs. obstacles of the mind. So here they are, labeled.

The original plan called for me to do this in the fall. Then I didn't do it because I had just planted alfalfa and I didn't want to disturb it. Seriously -- I'm taking about a cup of soil out of the ground and I really think that this will disturb my entire planting of alfalfa? Uh huh. I just let that thought get in the way.

Second, it was winter and snowy. I suppose I could have dug under the snow and found some dirt. I'm sure it's still there even though there is snow on top. As far as I know, the soil does not actually disappear in winter. I have no actual empirical evidence, however, that my garden plot did not actually cease to exist when there was snow on it because - you guessed it - I did not dig under the snow to extract a mere cupful of soil for a sample.

Third, I didn't think of it much. It wasn't actively high on my to-do list. Plus, it was very, very easy to put off. It was not something that HAD TO BE DONE. However, I'd hate to waste all my efforts and resources in planting if the soil needs a fix (pun! ha ha!).

I didn't know what kind of a container to put it in. In my head, I pictured test tubes or specific plastic containers. After letting this buzz about in my head for a few weeks (or more!) I actually looked it up online and found out you can just send it in a plastic baggie.

Of course, I had just run out of plastic baggies. Plan forward....

Didn't think I had the spare change to do it for awhile. I mean, I had to buy the baggies, pay for the sample and the postage. Come on, $20 is $20!

The ground got cold. Even without snow, it was cold. Yeah. Like the ground was completely frozen, hard as a rock. Uh huh. I could still have easily extracted a mere cup of dirt even when it was cold. I mean, it was around 20 - 30 F. Not, say, 40 below.

So busy. So many other things to do. So easy to just do those other things.

Finally, last weekend it rained. Lots and lots of rain. And an amazing warm breeze caressed us (in the rain). The kind of breeze that gets you thinking about spring and the possibility that it may actually happen sometime in the next, oh eight weeks or so. Ha ha. But the ground was sopping wet and who wants to dig up a sample when it's wet outside.

So today I was outside (having just returned home after an errand) and I noticed something: I was outside. I had freedom to dig up soil. I had time. I had a baggie. I could get online and look up the address. I could go to the post office. I had $20 to pay for it all. I mean, here I am blogging about it and even though I type pretty fast, it's taken me as much time to blog about it as it has to go and do it! So I did it.

Course then I realized you had to print out the paper from the lab. I had no ink in my computer and I don't plan to get more ink today. But I didn't let this stop me. I copied the paper in longhand (not so much to write) and gave them all the information they wanted. Now...now is the time to go to the post office. Now. Now...see, I'm going...going...gone...as soon as...

Sample 1 = garden spot. Sample 2 = currant bush spot.

Goals for 2008: Putting it Together

I've been thinking, in a background sort of way, about goals. I've been learning, whether I like it or not, that fundamentally I have to prepare the ground before I expect any good outcomes. That is to say, if I have no energy, nothing happens and in fact, things disintegrate. There's a baseline level of necessary energy just to maintain the current level of organization in my life. I know what contributes to good functioning and now I have to practice it. I need to create better soil for my life. So if I wanted to grow things like being more patient with my children and getting out of debt ("Debt is normal...Be weird"), two of my more important goals, then it is crucial that I have good soil in which to grow these delicate and thirsty plants. Energy level underlies everything. What a blessing a garden is for learning.

Musing further, what is the compost? What leftovers can I throw in a pile that will turn into an infusion of energy nutrients? I will think on this...(the picture is of my compost pile behind the shed).


So, I now have an overall goal for 2008 that I work on, with three outcomes that I will nurture. 1) Soil: ENERGY, and 2) Produce: Patience, Debt Reduction and a Literal Garden.

Of further interest is the way I keep thinking of myself as a division, particularly in terms of physical health and spiritual health. Like the "mind/body problem" it seems that spiritual/physical is a sorely misleading and stultifying separation. So I can stop thinking of exercise or sleep as a physical need vs. a spiritual need and I can stop thinking of spiritual work as "only" spiritual and not physical. The holism is obvious but to carry that holism forward into my everyday thinking and action is not so obvious.

Also, the effect on wisdom and guilt can't be ignored. I wouldn't expect depleted ground to yield good fruit, and I wouldn't blame the lack of good fruit on the garden in the sense that if the garden just tried harder, the fruit would be there. It's just a truth that the garden has to be "pleted," not depleted.

Specifically, it doesn't make sense that I could have expected to work normally on a day where I had zero sleep the night before. Yet I had this expectation because I thought I could do it if I just pushed myself. Would I make my garden do this? No, because you can't just "push" your garden to do what it can't do, due to poor soil. You already know it ain't gonna happen.

Here's to good soil in 2008! That is, reliable good sleep, reliable good eating/water drinking, reliable exercise, reliable prayer and study, and reliable nurturing of energy. No expecting seeds to grow overnight and no impatience with my own soil when it takes time to "plete."

Alfalfa coming in!

The sticks are my temporary markers for where I planted garlic. The plan is that I'll have tomatoes inbetween each row of garlic. So far I have four varieties of tomato seeds and I think I'll keep it a that...unless I plant a cherry tomato. I have a beautiful deep red basic tomato, a green tomato, a zebra tomato and a fuzzy peach tomato. See, here's a basic problem I have - starting out with pictures of the alfalfa I'm now talking about tomato seeds. And speaking of ADD, I need to order some more krill oil.

I was reading about some pragmatic and inspired ways to be more productive and less distracted on a site called zen habits (www.zenhabits.net). The ideas I've taken away so far are instilling a morning routine and cutting down to the three essential things you need to do each day (plus one more thing that's related to achieving your goals). I'm also paying attention to all the little things that get in the way of me being effective. This requires the ubiquitous skill of mindfulness, something I've been teaching for years and still learning for years. So in the past 24 hours I've realized that the following things get in my way: there is not a place for everything in the kitchen so it's awfully hard to put away dishes when you don't know where they should go which in turn gets in the way of actually doing the dishes; when I walk around the house on hardwood floors in my socks, I slide around enough that it's uncomfortable and affects my knees and perhaps I should invest in some socks with grips on the bottom because otherwise I find myself reluctant to walk around; trying to remember my morning routine from memory takes time and brainpower I don't have at 7 am, so I wrote it down and taped it to the wall near my bed.

Thanks to zen habits, I rewrote my goals yesterday. Not in a detailed way...yet...but I jotted down the ones I could think of. In no particular order, they include Home (organized, peaceful, light, clean and attractive); Food (eating organic, producing at home, garden); Family (time spent nurturing each relationship, looking into adoption); Work (improving my skills, perhaps ABPP certification); Health (increasing energy and fitness); Finances (ha ha ha); and Not Ignoring Talents (music and writing for instance). I haven't worked backward from each goal, heck I haven't even done a good job of specifying the outcomes! But it's a start. Just like my garden. I'm preparing my own ground and with that I'll stop beating the analogy.

So today the goal-related task I have in front of me is to figure out where to plant the zillion too many fruit bushes I ordered. Here are pictures of the various areas around the house that all need (desperately) improving. Above is the front of the house, forsythia bush on the left. I need something in front that works well in shade and I don't know what yet. Suggestions??

See that little slice of sunshine at the edge? I'm thinking a currant bush can go there and still get enough sun. I think that any further in is too much shade.

Moving right along, here's a beautiful (not) bit of what is supposed to be a two-level planting bed that's under the (dying) maple tree in the backyard. Hmm. Can't even see the retaining wall under all the mishmash.

And a shot of what's to the left of the house. Garden, pear tree, overgrown apple tree, forsythia beyond that. Perhaps I'll take out some of the forsythia hedge and put in highbush cranberries. Perhaps I don't know. Either way, I have to figure out where to put a white imperial currant bush because it's sitting in a cardboard box on my back porch!