Spring Garden is Complete!

After a few hours of my first official weeding, I have a good vibes about the future. Everything has been planted and seeded for my spring and summer garden. I made the decision to add mulch from last years garden to the beds and hopefully it will help deter weeds from rising up in the masses. This years plan was focused on beauty, simplicity, and therefore less weeding. 

Prior to planting, I got out the soaker hoses and began bending metal scraps to keep the hoses where I wanted them which is just a little tricky.

Highlights of today

This buttercrunch lettuce is going to be delicious

Gords!!! Wifey is gonna love to have her own loofah sponge from the garden.

Red Russian kale

Corn coming up

Herb Garden: Lavender, Rosemary, Thyme, Parsley, Basil, Chives

Those onions are growing too fast

Potted rosemary, carrots, mint, oregano, chives

Curious hens and Eloise comes out to see me. 

Growing peppermint, chocolate mint, kale, thyme, and lemon thyme at the front door.

Leggy Plants

After receiving a few comments from friends and fellow gardeners on Facebook, I decided to revamp my entire seed starting operation. I attempted to use the mini-greenhouses for a few days and decided that my plants still needed more light given how cold it was outside. With a few 20 dollar bills, I drove to Home Depot and confidently walked into our pantry with two plug-in T12 lamps. My wife glared at me with those, "what are you doing eyes" and I tried to explain with my best smile, but I don't think it went over real well. The results from using grow lights has got me excited about growing seedlings indoors next year. I cleaned up an old shelf from my shed and hung the lights with some additional S-hooks along with the chain provided. In addition, I also purchased two fans to encourage stronger plant growth given that they "have it too easy" inside the house without mother nature raising them. This whole "leggy plant" thing was a learning curve for me given that last year I direct sowed everything. I had thought, "Oh, I have a wonderful sunny window. Great!" Wrong...

I was able to finish all of my natural borders in the garden and trim up the muscadine and scupperdine vines. Hauling rocks tirelessly from the front yard to the back to create a 6" tall border around the garden bed was not my idea of a fun Saturday. For my 30th birthday, my parents bought me mulch and a wheelbarrow and it will transform the garden area. Whenever people asked me what I planned on doing for my 30th birthday, there was always a look of disappointment mixed with confusion when I said, "Laying mulch in the garden!" I suppose I was supposed to say "strippers and booze!" (Nothing following that last comment is going to sound right, so just keep it movin').

No mulch, but all natural borders are complete

Hardening off my seedlings

I'm anxiously awaiting the time I can plant my seedlings. They will need to wait until this coming weekend because I started the hardening off process yesterday. To start, my seedlings got around 2 hours of clouded sunlight, which is ideal from what I have read on the internet. They sat out for 3 hours today and I hope to increase the time that they are out by a half hour to an hour each day. 

The herbs from last year are screaming "SPRINGTIME" inside the screened in porch. I have added some wild onions that I found growing in the yard and these were particularly large compared the groups of small wild onions I have seen in recent years. They must be a different variety than the typical onions I see around the yard. 

Wild Onions

An easy, fun, and cheap way to start your garden is to grow your own ginger. It's as easy as putting ginger from the store under a light to get it to sprout. Once it has sprouted, (don't quote me on this because I'll be doing my own research before planting it) you can cut it up like you prepare potatoes for planting and let it dry before planting it in a pot. I can't wait to prepare some candied ginger for snacking and stomach health! 

Ginger starting to sprout

My chives have really grown up this year. I'm not sure if they are bigger their second year because they are biennial plants but it is hard not to notice the difference. I remember thinking how pathetic they looked last year after direct sowing rows of them. I have put some in pots and they are easily a foot tall. I've planted onions as well and looking forward to having a variety of herbs and vegetables such as carrots and potatoes from container growing. Container growing has advantages over raised beds given that you can control it with more ease. 

Mostly herbs still going from last year

Chives

I have gotten 5 lemon seeds to grow into seedlings and I hope that in roughly 3 to 4 years we can be picking ripe lemons for lemon meringue pie. 

Lemon seedlings

Flash back to 1 year ago... on March 1st, 2014. What an awesome year it has been. To be truthful, I have to say that gardening is spiritual and sacred to me. I feel more connected to this earth when I'm in my backyard, hearing my chickens cluck, watching my son eat strawberries by the fistful and yelling "I found one!", pulling weeds up, and the smell of the earthy ground. I can't fully put it into words and it doesn't go without saying that there are days where I want to act like the weeds don't bother me, but they do...If you haven't done this yet, try it, but start small. Help a friend that started their garden and maybe you'll appreciate it too!

Day 1

One of the many moments that make it all worth it!

Mini Greenhouse and Natural Borders

Here in Georgia, we are just seeing the ground again as we were given a wee-bit of snow from ol' mother nature. Eloise is my favorite hen, not that you could tell...

I was inspired to make these easy mini greenhouses for hardening off my plants and helping them get better lighting before spring starts. My seedlings have appeared leggy due to not getting enough light. I should invest in an indoor grow system with lights, but I can only do oh-so-much each year.

Each container has roughly 15 holes drilled into it for ventilation as it is an important part of any greenhouse. These mini greenhouses are not an ideal set-up, but for 25 buckaroos(got them at Home Depot), it suits me and my small garden just fine. They will only be useful for a short period of time, but they will definitely help.
I am re-purposing milk cartons for my larger seedlings that needed a larger pot. Given my experiences last year, I feel that I have one toe up on the season ahead.
I am excited about my new project of creating natural borders from dried out crape myrtle trimmings from my yard. It is free, but labor intensive. They are looking good so far, but they aren't done yet. I have a lot to do still including laying mulch and a rock border around the garden, EEEKKK! Traditionally, you would use willow branches, but I am using what I have on hand. These pictures are just a quick update of what is to come and what is being done as we approach spring! Woohoo!

Get-R-Done!

I'm starting early this year and I refuse to scramble at the last moment trying to get a beautiful garden put together. These are most recent additions and ideas for the garden, but there is much more to come. Cold or no cold, I gotta get this stuff done!

Check out fancy ol' Elouise struttin' her stuff! 

With the help of batman and my loyal chickens, we tackled the task of digging up two new 4ft x 25ft long beds along with a 2.5ft by 12ft long herb garden. 

Just got in my newly ordered seeds and planning out how the plants will be arranged. I can't explain the nerdy-kind-of excitement that comes from the moment your seeds arrive and you get to think about all the lovely ways you can set up your garden. For me, it is the best feeling! People that love gardening know that feeling. It is hard to put into words.

This year, I had more money to spend on setting up the garden and my latest addition to the garden plan, a new chicken run! Last year, I spent the majority of my budget on building up my soil, fertilizer, soaker hoses, supplies for building a chicken coop, other gardening tools, and a variety of seeds....I got a little carried away. I decided to go ahead and spend a little extra cash and bought he mini-green houses for planting from seed and I'm having some results already. I finally got some lavender to sprout, lemon balm, and a few other herbs. Last year, I direct sowed almost everything and had great success. I found articles that suggested there isn't much of a difference and that it was better to direct sow if possible. To cure my itch to garden, I am trying out growing seedlings indoors this year.

It is important to add organic fertilizer, leaves, and compost into your soil when preparing your beds, especially if you didn't plant a cover crop which I swear I'm going to do this fall. I slacked off last fall and still feel like I missed out on a good opportunity to make improvements to the soil's condition. 

I raked the surrounding walkways so that the ground was smooth and carved out a small trench surrounding the designated garden area. Then, I put newspaper down before laying a weed-block fabric on the walkways. I'm not done yet, but you can see the progress so far.

 The posts have been set and I'm ready to start putting up the framing! Their new chicken run is going to be amazing and I can't wait to see them happily flying and running about in their new protected home which will be 20ft by 8ft with a height of 7ft. Their current chicken run is roughly 6 ft by 6ft and roughly 3ft high which is why I let my chickens run free most of the time given there is not an immediate danger of hawks. My wife and I have spotted numerous hawks flying around as of late. Scary...but my worries will be put to rest soon enough.

Prepping for Spring

With Spring around the corner, garden planning is a constant thought process that is playing in the back of mind. I might have a few more grays because of the stress. I thought gardening was suppose to be relaxing...

The to-do list of gardeners before spring comes:
1) Garden layout ideas
2) Go smaller or bigger
3) Watering system
4) Ordering seeds
5) New additions to your garden such as: hoop greenhouse system, netting, fencing.
6) Planting seeds or buying seedlings later
7) Timing is essential

Tips: Plant what your family loves to eat, try something new, and learn from the past.

I would show you a sketch of the garden plan I have in mind, but I think it might be hard to decode with my sloppy drawings, notes, and scribble-scrabbles.

Also, I am planning on building a new large walk-in chicken run to keep the chickens from eating all of my seedlings. They are excellent at killing pests, but they tend to eat plants when they see me working in the garden.

Take a look at some of the prep work from recent weeks.

Sprouting lemon seeds: Break off pointy tip and peel outside shell.
Place on paper tower, dampen, and place in plastic bag until they sprout.
Takes roughly 2-3 weeks.

Leaf compost is one of my new additions to this years garden along with chicken manure. Keep pooping, scooping, and raking!

Garlic sprouted in the refrigerator....why not plant it?
Seems happy.
Note: It is too late to plant garlic, but nothing to lose.

Cleaned out all the dead plants and moved most living plants including herbs
inside the screened-in patio to protect them from the moisture and freezing winds.

Garlic, Chives, Rosemary, Mint, Kale, Thyme, Oregano

Clean up, Santa is watching!

Getting ready for next year's spring growing season is already in motion. Small things may seem small, but always lead to time consuming pain-in-the-arse moments. One may think to one's self, "Ah, a rake and one hour shall do." No, not quite. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was unintentionally making my life more difficult than it needed to be.

For myself and my family, organic gardening means using everything we have at our disposal to provide nutritious and healthy soil for the plants to thrive on throughout the growing season. There is no right or wrong way, it is about doing the best you can with what you have, what you can afford, and what you learn. I find that I'm more creative when there are restrictions on what I can use and have discovered ideas for how to prepare and create food for my plants on a budget. My plan for this year is to start using the chicken manure compost that my chickens and I have been working on since last year. which you can see below. I did the scooping, they did the pooping!

Current - Composted for 6 months

The picture above is chicken manure with pine shavings, as I often use shavings to keep their coop dry. Pine shavings take a long time to decompose, so I started a second pile for just chicken poop and other compost material.

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne

The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination. ~Terri Guillemets

The raked leaves will be another form of compost to add to the garden when the time comes. Compost provides balance to the pH of the soil and helps keep plants disease resistant. Last year I relied heavily on bagged compost from Home Depot and this year I hope to depend less on outside sources to fuel my garden. It is easy-peezy to make a leaf compost pile: stake four wooden posts in the ground and attach chicken wire around the outside to hold it together. Now for some color to this winter garden post!

Thyme still looks beautiful - smells great!

I read somewhere that you can bring bell pepper plants inside for the winter and replant them the following year. So I figured, there is nothing to lose given the cold would surely kill them. After two nights below freezing, I dug up the bell pepper plants and brought them inside. They lost all of their leaves and the upper stems turned brown and black. I thought, surely they won't survive. After trimming them and giving them some organic fertizlizer, I waited...and waited. "They are alive" <in my Frankenstein voice> "Muhaha." Hot damn, it worked! Plants are a metaphor for people facing challenges in life, as they show resilience and can survive and grow through life altering changes. I'm excited beyond measure given that my first planting of bell pepper seeds were a flop, and my second planting was so late in the season that I only got 5 bell peppers total between the two plants. As Robert Byrne said, "Up yours" I say to the freezing cold. So next year I plan on eating yummy bell peppers all season long.

Last but not least is my other prize from the growing season. The only other plant I found difficult to grow and keep alive was rosemary for some reason or another. This pretty plant is a perennial, so it should stay strong as long as it is fed compost and fertilizer on a regular basis. All that is left to do is set up the beds for spring. I'm still thinking about whether or not to use rocks as a border or wooden boards, but I'll know in good time.

Rosemary seedling to small plant - Success!