Gardening

Today I attended a three hour course on the basics of organic gardening, which was very good. I did know a lot of the basics but the big one that never previously clicked for me was about doing what you can to not (roto)till the soil. The main problem with tilling is you kill the micro organisms in the soil like bacteria and fungus. While the bacteria is able to bounce back the fungus is not quite so adapt. Weedy species like the higher ratio of bacteria to fungus but most of the plants we are interested in growing strongly prefer something close to a one to one ratio. Which might explain the ever increasing use of fertilizer to try and compensate for the nutrient imbalance. There is a much longer story which it too long to start talking about at this late at night.

I went ahead and signed up for organic gardening 102 and plan to attend all of the second Saturday work parties where the cover topics like bio-intensive growing, intro to permaculture, fall/winter gardening (without a greenhouse),...

Now that I finally bought a 4-way water (hose) splitter and have my soaker hoses laid out, last night was the first time we experienced the joy of the soaker hose. Just being able water the garden while making dinner is very nice. I need to get another soaker hose to water the areas that I set aside for planting the next round of veggies.

A couple weekends ago I started the second wave of pea & bean plants for the garden. Just to try something different, I started 15 bush beans in half gallon pots just to see how it went. Today when I transplanted these 15 bush beans into the garden I noticed that the beans had already developed an impressive root structure, which should help produce more beans.

Ofcourse only time will tell if this actually improves production, but given that you can pick up a 40 pound bag of organic potting soil for around $8 it seems like a fairly cheap way to get a lot of beans and improve the over all quality of the soil in the garden.

I spent about six hours working in the garden & yard yesterday, mostly figuring out a pattern to lay the soaker hose, weeding, and getting a second round of seeds started.

This year I'll be using soaker hoses to water the garden which should save time watering, water the garden more effectively, and keep the weeds down. The idea is if you control the water, you control the plants and I'm rather partial to which plants do well in the garden. We should be able to weed using a hoe in the walkways and only have to hand weed along the soaker hoses and as soon as the vegetables get to a decent sizes they should be able to crowd out the weeds.

I was planning to get a second round of seeds going so we could have multiple harvests of broccoli, peas, beans,... I decided to do it yesterday have discovering that we already have a sizable number of snap peas to harvest. I should be able to get several weeks of snap peas before those plants stop producing and hopefully my new snap pea starts will be ready by then. Next year I'm going to 'start' snap peas every two weeks so I can reliably harvest every continuously through the summer.

Yesterday'sround of seed starts included:
six green peppers
six yellow tomatoes
six lemon cucumbers
six cucumbers
six brandywine Tomatoes
four yellow zucchini
20 pole beans (several varieties)
20 snap peas (several varieties)
15 broccoli (directly into the ground)

What I already have in the ground:
30 snap peas
six beef steak tomatoes
10 broccoli
4 zucchini
several short rows of lettuce, spinach & beets

While it isn't much of a harvest, two snap peas, this is the earliest harvest I have had. Even the Strawberries are going wonderfully well, several of the plants have substantial berries already started. I already see a few things I would do differently, but isn't that always the case?