The Modern Victory Garden

The celery and some lettuces have been in need of transplanting for more than a week now.   I really had to get this taken care today as the celery plants were getting rather root bound.   They have been completely hardened off and were sitting outside unprotected (morning and night) for more than a week now.          

The bed area to be planted was given a broadcasting of all-purpose organic fertilizer, which was then lightly raked in.   I used my six-inch planting jig to establish the plant spacing.                          

I then planted 12 Utah 52-70 Improved celery, 4 Red celery (seeds given to me by Dan), and 24 Super Gourmet Blend lettuces.                        

Right next to the newly planted area is the bed of spring broccoli.   They are coming along nicely.                                             

The spinach patch has gotten to the stage where I can start harvesting some baby spinach leaves next week.   I may even pick a few leaves to add to some lettuces for tonight’s dinner salad.                                           

The pea patch and onion/garlic patch have also really taken off in the past week.   The allium bed has two kinds of garlic (Elephant and Inchelium Red) and several types of onions some started from seed and others from sets (Walla Walla, Candy, Yellow Storage, and Sweet Red onions).              

The Elephant Garlic is particularly impressive this year!              

The set grown onions are racing ahead of the onions started from seed.   These are the Yellow Storage onions.                                   

The blueberries and bush pie cherry plants are loaded with buds and are about to bloom.  The asparagus patch is getting more active in sending up fat shoots.   If the weather would warm up a bit (it’s rather chilly today), everything would explode with new growth and blossoms.   Unfortunately, the weeds and grass in the walkways are also bursting with new growth and I am going to have to pull the weed whacker out of winter hibernation soon and give everything a tidy up.   

I got started late yesterday afternoon and wrapped up this morning with prepping the beds in the newest section of the garden.   All the beds not planted up already were loosened and aerated using the broad fork and then lightly cultivated and raked.   Two of the beds are destined to be the 2010 tomato patch and cucumber bed.   I wanted to get these covered with red plastic mulch so that the soil would have a chance to really warm up before I plant them up mid April.   

You might have noticed in the second photo that my cat Sid was performing his usual and customary role of supervising the work being done in the garden!   He is a cherished companion and is always close at hand when I am outside working in the garden.                                               

Lots of things are emerging from the earliest of the spring plantings.   The spinach patch was planted using my planting jig for the first time.   The plants are getting their first true leaves and are getting easier to see in photos now.                    

The planting jig worked beautifully.   The plants are well spaced and there is only a few gaps where some seeds did not germinate.   I also used the planting jig to direct seed the pea patch as well.   The peas are now emerging and look like they too are going to be nicely spaced in the bed.   I think I can safely say that the planting jig design is performing well.         

The Cascadia sugar snap peas I transplanted out a week ago are thriving.   They seemed to particularly enjoy the bright sunshine we had today.

Sid was enjoying the sun too.   He was sticking close to me in the garden but taking every opportunity to soak up sun himself.                    

The swiss chard I transplanted earlier in the week all seem to be doing quite well too.                                            

Not much work to be done in the garden at the moment because I have now completed all of the spring bed prep and the planting out process will be spread out over the course of many weeks.   It’s a great time to just stroll through the garden and enjoy the new growth and take in the start of the spring bloom cycle.   Our property has quite a few really beautiful specimen sized rhododendron trees and azalea bushes.   Most of them bloom in April and May but we have a few early ones too.   Here’s the first azalea bush to bloom for 2010.                         

The first rhodie to bloom each year is really a beauty - tucked into the edge of my vegetable garden area but largely hidden by other trees and bushes.   

Sid convinced me that the rest of the afternoon should be spent sitting on the deck soaking up sunshine and admiring the blooming rhodie at the gardens edge.   Wise cat!                                 

With the exception of a 3-week deep freeze in December, our winter has been very mild this year.   Because of this, the soil temperatures have warmed up much faster this year and I can legitimately give thought to planting early crops extra early – but only with the added insurance of protective covering to hedge against a sudden reversal of weather fortunes.

I prepared the large 4-foot by 12-foot bed that would hold the pea patch yesterday so that I could take advantage of the forecasted beautiful weather for today (Sunday) to do the actual planting process.   Once again, I used my new planting jigs – this time the 2 inch spaced one.                     

Each square foot has 36 seeds with a 2-inch spacing, so the entire 4-foot by 12-foot bed had a total of 1,728 seeds placed in it!    Normally I would block plant a large area like this, but I want to see if the more carefully spaced seeds produce a more productive crop.   It took longer to seed the bed then it would have with a block planting approach - about 30 minutes to seed the entire bed with the assistance of my daughter.   It would have probably taken about an hour if I had done it all by myself.   I think that extra time invested in the planting will produce better results  - but only time will tell.          

Once the planting was completed, I watered everything thoroughly and then added my horizontal trellis support system (last year’s shop project).  

The final step was to top it all off with a protective covering of plastic sheeting. 

In addition to the pea planting, I did a few other garden related chores today.   First, I laid out all the seed potatoes on flattened cardboard boxes near one of the windows in the shop to encourage them to begin sprouting.   

I counted out 176 spuds and I will need 210 pieces for planting, so the larger potatoes will need to be cut.    Luckily there are more than enough large sized tubers in the mix to allow that to easily happen.     

I also moved the first planting of pac choi and lettuces out to the unheated greenhouse and planted them up. The lettuce was tucked in between the onion plantings and the pac choi took up the third half barrel container.    

The mache has been really dawdling along but is now getting some growth going.   Hopefully, we will be able to start enjoying some in salads before the end of March.                

The Chinese cabbage and the kale plants that I transplanted last weekend are doing really well in their new home in the greenhouse.   Hopefully the pac choi will settle in as nicely too.                                               

The greenhouse greens fill in a void during the early spring when the garden is starting to be planted up but is far from providing harvests and after all of the overwintered crops are depleted and removed.   Behind these greenhouse crops will come the garden rhubarb and not too long after that - asparagus.   In the meantime, we continue to use up the overwintered carrots and parsnips and the last of the overwintered cabbages to supplement our frozen and canned produce.                            

I hope you were able to do some garden related activities this weekend too.

I was previously going to wait until the plants emerged from the seeding process before sharing with you my inaugural use of the new planting jig.   However, that may take quite a while given it is early spring and the soil is cool (which will slow the germination process down considerably) so rather than wait, I have decided that I will just give you an update later on how things progress with the seedlings and give you the initial report now.               

Last Saturday, I gave up on my attempted salvage operation on the bed of overwintered spinach.   I had failed to get it covered with a grow tunnel prior to our deep freeze in December and then (to add insult to significant injury!) the marauding rabbit ate most of what remained of the feeble plants.   My salvage attempt included covering it with a grow tunnel and giving it a drink of fish emulsion tea.   Last weekend, I came to the conclusion that the few plants that had revived were not worth the effort to keep nursing along.   I pulled all of the plants out and composted them.   The grow tunnel cover had definitely warmed up the soil in that particular section of garden though, and it seemed like a great opportunity to just get a very early jump on the sowing of the spring spinach crop.   On Saturday, I did the bed prep necessary to get this 4-foot by 12-foot section of bed ready for direct seeding.   I pulled the grow tunnel cover off long enough to do the re-mineralization (greensand and rock phosphate) and to broadcast the bed area with organic all purpose fertilizer. I used a hoe to cultivate it all into the top six inches of soil - removing any remaining plants and weeds as I went.   Before putting the grow tunnel cover back on, I raked and watered the bed.   Since it has been covered for over a month now, it was getting dried out.   The next day I came back and checked the soil temperature in the bed and it was almost 50 degrees at about 10 am.   I needed it to be at least 45 degrees before I would consider planting it up with spinach.   

So Sunday morning, I did a final smoothing and raking process and used one of my new planting jigs (the four inch spaced one) to plant the spring spinach patch.   It is always important when planting seeds directly in the garden to get the seedbed as smooth and clod free as possible.                                

Before getting underway with the seeding, I brought out the planting jig and my regular 2-foot by 2-foot plywood board that I use for firming in seeds when doing a block planting process.                                            

I used the planting jig to then press out 2-foot by 2-foot sections of 4 inch spaced planting holes down the bed on both sides – 9 spaces per square foot.   Each jig impression provided 36 seeding holes and there were 12 of them to cover the entire surface of the 4-foot by 12-foot section of bed, which calculates out to 432 individual planting holes!                                      

I then just placed a seed (sometimes two) in each hole.   Once the seeds were in the jig holes, I smoothed the surface slightly with my gloved hand to fill in the top of the holes and then used the 2-foot by 2-foot piece of plywood to firm down and ensure good seed contact with the soil.                            

The last step was to water the bed well using warm water and then putting the grow tunnel cover back on.                                                  

It took me just a half hour to plant up this entire bed and the jig worked beautifully.   My only concern is that with smaller seeds (like these spinach seeds) I may be ending up with the seed too deep.   I will have to be particularly light handed with the really small seeds like carrots when making the impressions in the soil.   All in all though, I am very happy with this design. 

So there you have it!   The next candidate planting for the new jigs will be the big pea patch for 2010.   The soil temp is good enough to plant right now, and the forecast is for a really beautiful weekend coming up so I probably get this underway soon too - using the 2 inch spaced planter for that one.   Things are really getting underway now!

It was drizzling rain this morning, so I spent several hours in the shop making progress on the planting jig construction project.    Last week, I completed the 2-inch planting jig, which was the prototype of the design.   Today, I completed most of the assembly of the 3-inch, 4-inch, and 6-inch planting jigs.   They need to sit over night now to let the glue dry and set before I can complete them by attaching the handles on the back.   I did change one thing with these 3 planting jigs from the first one I constructed.   I went up to a 5/16th inch dowel pin, which is a little bigger and should make a larger hole impression in the soil.   I used a 5/16th drill bit to widen the holes in the pegboard where the dowel pins would fit.   That worked very well.   Easy to drill and the pegs fit in quite snugly.   Here’s the 6-inch planting jig - fully assembled with the exception of the handle attachment.  

By the time I wrapped up with the project work in the shop, the rain had stopped and the sun was making a partial appearance.   Took advantage of the break in the weather and got a start on some early spring bed prep work.   There are several beds with a green manure crop of crimson clover growing in them that need to be turned over in the next few weeks, in order that the plant material can sufficiently decompose prior to planting up the beds.   I like to get this done at least six weeks before I expect to be planting up a bed.   Most of the early crops are scheduled to be planted in mid March, so the green manure crop needs to be turned over by the end of January.   It’s not that hard to turn over crimson clover, but I have enough area planted up in it that I try to break it up over a period of several sessions to avoid over doing and hurting my back in the process.   I have one big 40 foot long by 4 foot wide bed that will need to be turned over.  

And I have a 12 foot by 4 foot wide bed that needs to be turned over as well.   The back most portion of the bed has compost on it instead of the green manure crop, because it had cabbages growing in it until very late in the fall and missed being planted with crimson clover as a result.   I decided this bed was the better one to get started with today.       

I use a garden fork and just turn a fork full of the clover and soil over on itself – such that the roots and soil are facing up and the vegetation is turned down into the dirt.   I work my way down one side of the bed.      

And then I work down the other side until it is completed.                      

In about two weeks, I will need to come back to this bed and use a hoe on it to cultivate the top few inches and chop up the few clover plants that will manage to get roothold and attempt to grow again.   Using a green manure crop reduces the amount of compost I have to use each year to add organic matter to the soil.   Given the number and size of beds that I have in the garden, if I were to use strictly compost I would have to have a huge compost making operation to keep up with it.   By using a combination of compost and green manure crops, I keep my garden sufficiently replenished with organic matter without having a monumental sized compost system set up. 

While I was out in the garden, I also did bed prep on the adjacent bed to the one I just turned the cover crop over in.   I added a thin layer of finished compost and then emptied out old potting soil from containers into the bed and raked it smooth.                                                           

I use potting soil in containers for at least two years, rejuvenating it with the addition of compost and organic fertilizers.   However, after several years of use, I recycle it into the garden beds and replace the container soil with a fresh mix.   I had several containers that had old soil mix in them that I have been holding through the winter with the intention of adding to the garden beds this spring.   Both the 12 foot by 4 foot beds are now initially prepped for spring.     

Before they are planted up, I will use the broad fork to aerate them and will also broadcast a general-purpose organic fertilizer over the beds.   For now though, they are basically prepped for the season.   I have lots more to go over the course of the next several weeks.   First priority will be to turn over that large 40-foot bed of crimson clover.   I will need to break that up into several work sessions.   If it does not rain tomorrow, I will try and get one part completed then.               

Have a dinner engagement to attend this evening; so no harvesting was done today.   Well, I should say that I did not “intentionally” harvest anything today.   During the course of turning over the crimson clover, I unearthed over 3 lbs of Butte potatoes!   This was one of the potato patch beds last year and (as usual) I managed to miss quite a few spuds when I harvested them last fall.   They overwintered in the soil nicely and are really good looking potatoes.   Probably have them for dinner tomorrow night.

I hope you are having a good weekend and managing to get some time in on some garden related projects.

It’s a cool and wet weekend so the outside options are pretty limited, however it is a great time to do some shop projects.   One of the tasks I had on my list for this weekend was to repot the Chinese cabbage and kale starts.   They are a month old now and have totally outgrown their starter cell packs.   I want to keep them under lights for another month before permanently planting them up in containers in the greenhouse.   Saturday morning I popped them into sturdy 4 inch pots using organic potting soil I have on hand in the shop.                 

This morning (Sunday), I also planted up 2 six packs of Super Gourmet Salad Blend lettuce, 2 six packs of Ching-Chiang pac choi, 2 large flat packs of Walla Walla onions, and 2 large flat packs of Candy onions.   These were then covered with a plastic dome and placed on the heat mat under the grow lights.   As soon as the seedlings emerge, I will remove the plastic dome and lower the lights down to just a few inches above the plants.                                    

The bigger project I had on my list for this weekend was to construct the first prototype of an idea I have had for a planting jig.   As of this morning, I have completed the first one, which is a 2-inch spaced planting jig.   I intend to make 3 more of these – one with 3-inch spacing, one with 4-inch spacing, and one with 6-inch spacing.   These are the most common within row (in all directions) spacing needed to intensively plant garden beds.   I made the jig a 2 foot by 2 foot size because I rarely plant single squares of any one item, but rather do multiple blocks of a crop and often work my way down a large section of bed.  

This is the list of materials that I used for this project:

• One sheet of pegboard - 2-foot by 4-foot dimension (you will use half of this for one jig)
• One sheet of good quality plywood – 2-foot by 2-foot dimension
• Two packages of Fluted Dowel Pins – ¼ inch diameter, 1 ¼ inch length – 72 count per package (need 144 for a 2'x2' board with 2 inch spacing)
• Package of #8 X ¾ inch wood screws – (get self tapping, I did not and regretted it)
• Carpenters wood glue
• Two 5 ¾ inch door pulls (comes with short screws)

Here is the list of tools I used for this project:

• A power jigsaw (you could use a table saw as well) to rip the 2’X4’ sheet of pegboard in half to make two 2’X2’ pegboard sections
• A power drill with a screwdriver bit attachment
• A rubber headed or plastic headed hammer (you could gently use a regular hammer instead)
• Measuring tape
• Straight edge Carpenters Square
• Pencil
• 2 pieces of scrap wood to use as blocking

Here’s a picture of the plywood and several of the materials and tools used (not all).   You can purchase 2-foot by 2-foot squares of plywood (and 2-foot by 4-foot panels of pegboard) at places like Home Depot or Lowes.                         

Step One - cut the sheet of 2’X4’ pegboard in half to make two sheets of 2’X2’ pegboard.   I held the wood while my husband cut this using a jigsaw.        

Step Two – place some carpenters wood glue over the surface of the 2’X2’ section of plywood.                                     

Step Three – place the 2’X2’ section of pegboard on to the glued surface of the 2’X2’ section of plywood.   The idea is to provide a backing to the pegboard to make it stronger and to put a floor at the base of each pegboard hole opening.                      

Step Four – turn the pegboard and plywood panel over and screw together at each corner using the #8-3/4 inch screws.   This is not the best picture, but it is a close up of one of the screws.   Once completed turn the panel back over so that the pegboard is facing up.                                                            

Step Five – using the spacing you desire for the planting jig, place a big dollop of carpenters wood glue in each pegboard hole and place a ¼ inch fluted dowel pegs, tapping it firmly in using a plastic headed hammer.   I am making a 2-inch spacing planting jig so the pegs are spaced every other hole from one another.   The pegboard holes are spaced 1 inch apart which makes setting up the grid very easy to do.   Once they are all in place, let this sit over night to let the glue set up and dry completely.     

Step Six – the next day, carefully turn the peg board section over and place it on some lengths of scrap lumber (thin enough to fit between the rows of protruding pegs) such that the board is supported without putting pressure directly on the glued in pegs.   The next two pictures show this – including the last picture which shows the clearance maintained between the pegs and the surface of the work table.                   

Step Seven – measure five inches in from each side and make a mark with a pencil.   Do this twice on each side to establish two points from which a straight line can then be drawn.   Similarly, measure nine inches from the top of the panel and make a mark with a pencil – doing it twice to facilitate drawing a straight line from point to point.      

Step Eight – use a carpenter’s straight edge square and line it up with the pencil marks and then draw a straight line using your pencil.   Do this for a vertical line on each side (spaced 5 inches in from the edges), and one horizontal line spaced 9 inches from the top.                              

Step Nine (last one!) – center the door pulls over the vertical lines and abutting the top edge against the horizontal lines and screw them into place.      

That’s all there is to it for the construction.   Here’s how it works. Holding it using the door handles, lower it over a section of prepared garden bed soil and lay it flat on the surface of the soil so that the pegs are facing the soil.   For shallow holes, just set it in place and do not press down – the weight of the board is sufficient for a shallow hole.   For a deeper hole, press down on the board with your hands.      

Works nicely!   Too early to actually plant anything to really try it out, but I think this will make closely spaced planting much quicker and easier to do.   Having a 3 inch, 4 inch, and 6 inch jig as well will give me good options for the coming planting season.  I have all the materials I need to complete the remaining three jigs with the exception that  I need to purchase more dowels.  This is a really fast little project to put together so I should be able to finish them all up very quickly - once I purchase the rest of the dowels that I need.