I Just Thought This Was Cool

Week Two: The flower edition

My youngest son is going to Hawaii today for 8 days (with his dad and some family friends.)  Being a teacher, I have been teaching him all about Hawaii for a month.  He pointed out that his two favorite flowers in Hawaii are Birds of Paradise and Hibiscus.Being that I'll miss him terribly, and I have nothing else to do, garden-wise, I decided to see if my pink thumb also worked with flowers (I've NEVER been able to successfully grow flowers.)  Surprisingly, both plants were available at Home Depot.  I purchased two Birds of Paradise - one black/white and one orange/white, and five hibiscus.  This way, when my son returns, he'll have a Hawaiian surprise waiting for him.
Digging the holes in AZ soil was the most difficult.  It was much easier when I wet the soil down.  I filled the large holes with a 50/50 mix of Miracle Grow soil and manure.  All hibiscus and one Bird of Paradise are in the front of the house with northern exposure.  The other BOP is in back under a large shade tree with lots of sun exposure.  I topped off each plant with a 4-6" layer of compost mulch.

Week 2 - Getting out of hand

On Day 9 I went looking for ladybugs.  I'd found aphids among my plants and wanted them GONE.  Typical nurseries and Home Depot didn't have any this time of year, so I thought I'd try Whole Foods.  Instead of grabbing the dang ladybugs and leaving like I should have, I roamed the gardening section for way too long.  I purchased a bottle of "Extreme Juice", which is concentrated veggie food, and a copy of Extreme Gardening: How to Grow Organic in the Hostile Deserts by Dave Owens, the "Garden Guy" from TV.  It's also a great book because it gives every detail for planting all different sorts of food.  I also grabbed a sprouting pot  http://www.amazon.com/Handy-Pantry-Sprouting-Jar-Lid/dp/B000EDN8JI/ref=sr_1_13?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1319829618&sr=1-13  
I had seen my sister making her own alfalfa sprouts and thought I'd try it.  It's very easy, actually my 7-year-old son ended up doing all the work.  In four days we had fresh sprouts that taste much better than store sprouts.  I'm making my second batch today.
Last night we let the ladybugs go.  I told my son to tip the container sideways so only half would get out and we could save the other half for another night.  He "accidentally" dumped all 1500 ladybugs out and they got to work.
This morning, I have only seen 5 ladybugs :(
To catch up on what is growing, by today, Day 13, all of the seeds have come up.  The beans look the best at about 3" high.  I thinned them today and felt genuine remorse for starting their life and then quickly taking it away. I soon got the idea to transplant some of them to a large pot, but they're not doing too well a few hours later. 
I read in the book mentioned above how herbs can keep bugs away.  Yesterday my mom and I planted (in 6 pots) basil, chamomile, lavender and cilantro.  We placed the pots around the garden to keep the pests away, so we'll see about that...

Week 1 - Waiting sucks, why not Compost!?

I learned very quickly that planting a vegetable garden is like a bad one-night stand.  You get so excited about what you're doing, then you do it, then it's over and you're left wondering "Did I do everything right?  Is it going to like me as much as I like it?" and then the next few days, "I need to check on it once more before I go to bed."  And the waiting continues.  During this period of waiting, I added to my journal a list of estimated harvest dates for everything I planted.  I added this list to the list of estimated germination dates for my seeds (which, I must say, are overachievers.  All of my seeds sprouted 1-3 days ahead of schedule.)I ordered, received, and began reading a book which was recommended from one of the gardening sites.  The book is called Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal and it is AMAZING.  It is geared toward people with city apartments or small backyards.  The author covers everything from inexpensive gardening to keeping chickens and bees to making your own yogurt and sprouts to composting.  This composting thing really had me intrigued.  My husband (again, the one who takes immediate action), ordered a compost bin from the city for $5. It showed up a few days later and that became my new project...for a day or two.
I used this site to help me set up the bin:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_set_up_a_compost_bin_for_your_garden
We chose to put the bin next to the garden, hoping that it wouldn't smell and bother the neighbors.  Since we started working on it after the sun went down one night, we didn't notice that we'd placed it on a fire ant hill.  Bad mistake if you need to get to the bin each day but we just kept going. 
We started filling the bottom with sticks and twigs to help with aeration.  My two sons (14 and 7) were a big help.  Then we pruned a few trees and bushes and added the branches, some fallen oranges from our trees, and chicken poop (DO NOT ADD DOG OR CAT FECES).  Then a layer of dead leaves and newspaper, another layer of kitchen scraps and green yard waste, then topped it off with hay from the chicken coop, which was doubly good because it had chicken poop in it.  We finished off with a bucket of water over the top to get it going. 
After some later research, I read that red wiggler worms are great for breaking down the compost, so I ordered some from this site:
http://www.unclejimswormfarm.com/
They haven't arrived yet, so I'll update on this later. 
I also found a product called Compost Maker by Bonide.  The guy at the nursery said it helps speed up the compost time AND it's safe with worms.  It's made of ocean kelp, fish and alfalfa meals.  I sprinkled some on my compost but I'm not sure I'll know if it's working or not.  I think I'll stick to my worms once they arrive.
It's not sexy, but it's a hard worker!

Day 0-1 -Planning the garden inside and out

My husband Mike and I thought long and hard about where to place the raised garden. It needed good sun, but not too much since our AZ sun can do a lot of damage. We knew it would have to be raised for a few reasons: 1. our soil is part clay, part sand, part dead dirt (meaning, it's so compact that bugs and vitamins don't even try to get in there), and roots. We knew that good soil is the first part of gardening that you MUST get right. 2. Our chickens. I knew if the garden was on the ground, they'd peck at the leaves and probably eat the seeds. 3. The best place in the yard was in an area where we have bricks placed on the ground. It used to be the ground of an old shed until we took it out.

From just my own knowledge, I knew I could do "square foot gardening", which means that you separate your garden into square feet sections and plant a different vegetable in each. This allows you to have a large variety of foods, rather than, say, a whole garden of corn. I also knew that I tend to bite off more than I can chew when I'm spontaneous, so we scaled back and decided on roughly 8'x8' total. With the brick size, that would leave me with about 7'x7' of soil space.

On October 15th we purchased 84 blocks at Home Depot for less than $2 each and placed them in three rows, making it roughly 20" tall. We filled it with a 40/40/20 mix of Miracle Grow garden soil, packaged manure, and compost mulch (all from Home Depot). Mike added some small 10" fencing to make it a bit taller to make sure the chickens couldn't get in. Then I sectioned off one-foot squares using twine that I attached to the small fence pieces at each side, making 36 squares total.

Mike wasn't sure (and neither was I!) if I planned to plant seeds or transplants, so he bought a few transplants at Home Depot for me to start out.

I researched online before I did ANYTHING, from what soil to use, to bugs. to seeds. A few helpful cites for me learn about general gardening were:

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/index.html

http://www.phxgardening.com/grow-vegetables.html

http://www.gardenguy.com/learn/articles/index.html

http://frugaldad.com/2008/03/03/how-to-build-a-square-foot-garden/

The obvious first step was to figure out what foods should be and can be planted in October in Arizona. I used this as a guide:

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/az1005.pdf

I decided on (I'll list the exact brands in a separate post):

Tomatoes (1 transplant and two varieties of seeds)

Green Bean seeds

Red and green pepper transplants

Peas (2 transplants and one kind of seed)

Cucumber transplants

Broccoli seeds

Basil transplants (good for pest control)

Oregano transplants (also good for pests)

Zucchini squash transplant

onion seeds (not ideal, but I couldn't find any bulbs)

carrot seeds

cantaloupe seeds (this was a favor for my son Jack who loves melon)

Romaine lettuce transplants

Spinach transplants and seeds

The second step was plan out the placement of veggies. I needed to make sure that next door neighbor veggies would play nicely together. I had a feeling that some could harm the development of others if placed together, so I researched and found my saving grace:

http://www.vegetable-gardening-online.com/

This site has pre-made layouts or templates for you to make your own. I like it because it shows you how many of each veggie can fit into a square foot section. That way you know how many squares you want to use per vegetable. For example, we love carrots, so I planned to use 3 squares for carrots. I also knew I needed to leave at least one square open for our sprinkler.

I used a pre-made layout and tweaked it to accommodate my chosen veggies. Here's my final layout plan:

Let me go over my codes...In each box, I wrote the vegetable on the top, then I plotted out how many would fit in each square and drew as circles. On the bottom left corner, I noted "T" if I planted a transplant, S1 if it was a seed I planted in week 1, or S2 if it was a week 2 seed. I wanted to experiment with timing, which is why I planted a few seeds a week apart.

*Side note: It was 90-100 degrees for the first 8 days or so. I planted my first veggies on Oct. 16th.

On the bottom right corner, I wrote the estimated number of days until harvest, according to multiple sites and the back of seed packets. I have a detailed journal, and in there I wrote the estimated dates for which I could expect seeds to germinate (show their tips). I do all of this to make sure I'm doing things right and so that I know if something's wrong. I know it's very detailed, but it didn't take more than 10 minutes to write and I like knowing everything I can about my new project.

On planting day, I made sure I had my layout map handy and planted as the packages said. Some seeds only need to be planted 1/4" deep, so I found it easiest to sprinkle the seeds on top of the soil and then just "fluff" the soil around a bit. I also added a wire accordion-style partition between my tomatoes and peas for them to grab onto (something I didn't know until my husband pointed out!)

The last step was to set up the water timer. Mike set it to go on at 5am for 10 minutes each day. It's important to know which crops need daily watering and which need less. I'll catch you up on that in another post.

Here's the final product:

Before we begin...

I guess I should introduce myself! I'm Kirsten. I'm originally from Minnesota and moved to Arizona in 2002. My father grew up on a farm, and my maternal grandmother's family owned a potato farm. One would assume that the spawn of such successful farmers would be born with a green thumb in her mouth, right? Well, this experiment will prove or disprove those assumptions.

Growing up in Minnesota, my dad always had a large 20'x20' vegetable garden. I will try to utilize what little I remember from helping him pull carrots and gaze ignorantly at the mass of rhubarb that no one seemed to acknowledge. Years later, my mom turned the garden into a flower garden, complete with block paths and way too many shiny chotchkes.

My whole family has slowly, one-by-one, migrated to Arizona. I know that gardening will be 100 times more challenging here, with the extreme heat, absence of rain, dust storms, dead soil, and my backyard chickens.

Speaking of my girls...they are the reason for my gardening desires. We decided on a whim to get chicks one day in 2009. With my husband being so handy, he whipped up a coop, nesting boxes, and a run in one day. That's how we do things around here: I get a crazy idea, Mike makes it happen, and we live happily ever after!

I love LOVE having chickens; They're fun, awesome pets. We currently have three: Piggy, Amelia Cluckhart, and Bella Swan. We've had two fatalities in two years due to excessive heat, but otherwise the hens are healthy and each produce one egg each day, as long as it's not too hot out. We love just watching them roam the yard and eat "stuff". I'll blog about them as I go.

For the past two years, I have loved getting fresh, organic eggs every day. They taste so much better than eggs from the store, and I control what the hens eat - organic feed and yard bugs. No chemicals, no additives, no preservatives. I wanted to go a step further with this food thing.

One day a few weeks ago, I told my husband that I wanted to start an organic vegetable garden. Remember, I had NO knowledge of planting, fertilizing, or harvesting. Within 24 hours my husband made a raised garden pop up in our back yard. And 24 hours after that, our first vegetables were in the ground.

I have kept meticulous records from Day 0 (the day he set everything up), so my goal is to help others who also want to get into gardening with little to no experience. I'm always open to comments, suggestions or questions, so type away : )