First (small) Harvest!

Got the first harvest from my "kitchen garden" today. A good serving of string beans and a bell pepper! Looks like I'll have a good harvest beans every couple of days and the Jalepenos should be the next item ready followed by the Roma and Marion tomato.

Also this week I'll be putting down 2 4x4 raised beds (this gets addictive) and work up a plan for what to fill them with. My main goal is to have small continuous harvests throughout the season instead of a single large harvest.

Garden Update 4/17/2011

Well the garden's have all been coming along nicely with great germination among all the various vegetables I plants. Today I thinned the corn to roughly 1'  between seedlings. That left me with about 30 seedlings of sweet corn in total. That should be a good first harvest for me, giving me plenty to roast for a bbq as well as some to put back an freeze for later. I'll get a few more plantings of corn in the ground in the coming weeks so I can really stock up.  I'll be thinning the rest of the vegetables (carrots, chard, spinach, leeks) as they get a bit bigger.

First Sign of Life

Corn Seedling

You get a great sense of satisfaction the first morning you go out to "water the dirt again" and you're rewarded with rows of green peeking through the surface for the first time. That happened today as overnight the Sweet corn all sprouted in unison, along with the first few sprouts of spinach and swiss chard. For those that are keeping score that's 5 days from seed to sprout for the corn and 6 days for the spinach and swiss chard.

Swiss Chard Seedlings

Strawberries

Strawberry plants have shallow root systems allowing you to
plant several plants in this Strawberry Pot

  Strawberries are a very easy to grow fruit that will produce year after year. You can plant thing in beds or rows but they grow easily in containers and "Strawberry Pots" like the one I chose to use can hold several plants.

 For your strawberry pot you'll need the following things.    

• Terracotta Strawberry Pot
• Strawberry Plants
• 1" Diameter PVC long enough to reach from the rim of the pot to the lower most pocket (the holes on the side of the pot)
• Potting Mix
• Plant Food (optional)

  A section of 1" PVC with holes drilled along the side and just long enough to reach from the rim of the pot past the lower most "pocket" will allow the water to reach all levels of your pot more easily.

  Add soil up to the lower most "pocket". Place your first plants in the bottom pockets and then place the PVC section just off-center of the drain hole.





  Continue adding your soil mix and plants. When you reach the top you can place a couple of plants in the center too. Water well and place in a sunny spot and you'll have sweet ripe strawberries in little over a month.

Rainy Day Gardening

Just because it's pouring rain all day doesn't mean you can't make progress on your garden. It's the perfect time to peruse the seed catalogs, revise your plans for current beds , make plans for you next,  catch up on a little light reading in your gardening books or favorite websites or even clean and sharpen your garden tools. I took the opportunity to order some seeds from Burpee.com for my two new beds. A few of which are great looking heirlooms varieties of French origin, the descriptions of which sound like they will be perfect for my kitchen table.

They are:

• Carrot, Touchon
• Bean, Triumphe De Farcy Bush
• Bean, Green Anellino
• Pea, Oregon Sugar Pod Organic
• Leek, Blue Solaise
• Celery, Tall Utah 52-70 R Improved
• Cucumber, Picklebush
• Garlic, Early Italian

How to make a simple rain gauge

  There's no need to purchase a rain gauge if you looking for pure functionality. Take any clear container with a flat bottom. The mouth of the container should be the same size as the walls. The pasta sauce jar I used has just a slightly smaller mouth than the sides but it's close enough to give me a relatively good gauge of how much rainfall occurred.

  Take a ruler or tape measure and place inside the jar against the bottom and mark off your measurements. Place it in your garden or yard away from building and with nothing hanging overhead other than clear sky.

Laying out new beds

 While my back-door "Kitchen Garden" is a great start at growing my own produce I want to start up another raised bed to grow larger variety of vegetables. I think I've chosen a great spot next to the main garden that my parents tend in a more traditional "row crop" fashion.

The Steps to starting a new bed:

1. Choose location based on what you intend to grow.
2. Plan the site.
3. Prepare the existing soil.
4. Build the sides of the bed (if using supports)
5. Raise the bed by adding soil and compost.
6. Set the plants.

 A pole barn extension to an existing storage building cut off this section of the garden so it'll makes a perfect nook to place a raised bed. I measured the area and decided my best option is to build 2-4'x8' beds. The long sides will run east-west and one bed will be set north of the other. While a fig tree shades the eastern side both beds will still be get a full day's worth of sunlight for most of the year.

  So after deciding on the location and size of beds I like to go ahead and make a plan of what I intend to grow. Now this won't be written in stone and subject to change after I make a trip to seed store but planning now will give me a better idea of the number of plants I can manage in this area. This gives me the opportunity to make changes to my layout before I break ground. I just sketch out the shape of my bed using a simple scale of 1"=1'. Then plot the location of plants according to how far apart they need to be planted.

  It may still not look like much but the two 4'x8' sections have been tilled to a depth of about 8". This is one of the few times where it's OK to till because the soil had been heavily compacted by foot and machine traffic over the area. Also a rich layer of soil will be built up over this patch to form the actual raised portion of the bed. I'll be using reclaimed fenced paneling I have on hand to make the sides of the bed. This is the same stuff I used for my compost bin. You don't have to use side supports for your raised bed as you can just pile on the soil and compost to raise the area you're using. I just prefer to have a neat edge to hold everything in place. After a season or two when the bed is well established well defined I may remove the supports and use them on new beds I start.

Here are the two beds completed, filled with some good composted soils from a local farm and set with the first plantings.

I'm really going to pack the plants in close in these beds to see how intensively I can grow in this rich loose soil. I'll also be staggering my planting times to try and take advantage of our long growing season here in the south to harvest some of my staple produce items all season long.