2014 - Mr Yan

[Mr_Yan]

Last year I managed to grow about 168 pounds in my small gardens. I have a little less than 100 square feet outside my kitchen door (mostly containers), a 48 square foot raised bed at church, and a 50 foot row of potatoes at church. 2013 tended cool and wet around here - really wet until July - and was the first year I really grew greens, potatoes, and broccoli. Naturally I had a few failures and screwed up my harvest time so somethings greatly over ripened on me [snap peas went too far while my wife was in the hospital so I harvested over a pound of dry peas, and the cantaloupes went far past good], the ground froze before I could get the parsnips out, and I can't grow brussles sprouts if my life depended on it. The church gardens also got shredded by a hail storm in early June. As a side note, the community gardens at church donate half of what is grown to the local food pantry (many people donate more than half of what they grow there), and we donated over 7100 pounds over the season.

This year I will change some plant varieties I have grown for a few years to see what happens. I will also try to challenge myself to a relatively tight budget of $50 which will include any new tools. I have placed my main seed order with the Botanical Interests company. I have never used Botanical Interests but the prices and selection of what I want looked good. I also have several seeds left over from previous years and save some varieties. I will still need to buy my shallots, potatoes, lima beans, and maybe a new tomato.

Over the last few years I have grown butternut squash. I'm giving up on winter squash this year. Hard to justify the space when I can buy it for 39 cents a pound.

I have also given up on garlic. The flavor of home grown garlic is great and it is so easy to grow but my garlic heads have been getting smaller and smaller each year and I have not been successful in growing anything as a fall crop after the garlic was harvested so that ends up being low yield space.

I should get soil testing done but am struggling with how. Most everything I grow in are large containers which I filled like lasagna garden beds. I'm almost thinking I should empty and mix all the containers then refill from there and test the mixed soil. This makes me wish I had a driveway or large tarp to mix everything on. Oh well we don't think we'll be here too much longer anyway.

These are the seeds I just ordered:
Bean Bush Royal Burgundy
Carrot Carnival Blend
Carrot Scarlet Nantes
Cucumber Marketmore
Leek American Flag
Pepper Chile Early Jalapeño
Pepper Sweet California Wonder
Rutabaga American Purple Top
Squash Summer Tatuma (Calabacita)
Spinach Monstrueux de Viroflay
Beet Gourmet Blend
Pepper Sweet Yolo Wonder
Tomato Grape Jelly Bean Red & Yellow

I additionally plan on growing:
tomatoes (paste, slicer, and grape types)
tomatillos
green beans (both green and dragon tongue)
spinach
kale
broccoli
beets
mustard
chard
cantaloupe
sugar snap peas
ground cherries
basil

I still have to finish mapping out my garden layout.

 

[Mr_Yan]

So I tried mapping with the flash animation garden planner online. This one was linked from seed savers exchange. Overall I think it did well but it was a little clunky for anything more than a basic rectangular garden layout.

This is what I cam up with.

Again I have a small area and cram in a lot of stuff. What is really hard to see in this is my use of vertical space with trellises.

Anyone have thoughts about moving things around?

 

[w_r_ranch]

Mr Yan, have you ever tried amending your soil (especially you containers) with mushroom compost? FYI, it's potent & doesn't require much so be careful not to overdue it... You can probably find it in bags at a nursury/garden center were you live.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Mr Yan, have you ever tried amending your soil (especially you containers) with mushroom compost?

I have not but I have heard it called plant steroids. I do use worms to compost and have used that to amend my garden. I've also mixed the vermi-compost with water to make a foliar spray.

I have been using osmocote before planting and this get mixed into the top few inches of the soil.

Each of these containers was filled with compost and pre-composted organic matter left to compost in place. For this reason I don't have soil analysis for my garden. I am thinking about trying to mix the soils together adding some native soil too and re-fill the containers but that sounds like a lot of work.

 

[Rahab222]

You need to locate the Master Gardeners Group for your county, i.e. Harris County Master Gardeners in my area. You should be able to do a search for them on-line. They may also have a Facebook page. They will have soil sample bags available (free of charge) for you, along with instructions on how to take your soil sample and where to mail the sample to for testing. For me, it's the Texas A&M Agricultural Extension Service. There are different tests they run on your soil and you choose which ones you want them to run (some of them are combined). There is a small fee for this that basically just covers the cost of the soil sampling. I sent mine in Feb. for the first time because I couldn't grow radishes, which I read indicated a lack of calcium in the soil. I got the results back in about two weeks. Calcium levels were fine, but I needed to add a tad of one item - like .5% over 1,000 sq. feet - larger than my garden. I called and asked if somebody there could translate the test results for me and how I should add that component in? The guy on the other end asked how large my area was and then said, "Four bags of chicken compost oughtta fix it." I said, "What?" The guy just started laughing and said, "Oh, that's right, Houston," (where I live, as in city slicker). The guy goes chicken poop, the residue output of chickens. Just make sure it's been composted for at least a year." I hope that does it because I tilled four bags in by hand, along with general compost I bought from the Master Gardeners at their last sale. I buy all my tomato and pepper plants from the MG's each year - cheap, healthy and GORGEOUS plants

 

[Mr_Yan]

Started the first round of seeds indoors yesterday (3/22/14)
Bell peppers
Jalapeno peppers
Eggplant
Basil
Ground Cherries
Spinach
Leeks
Shallots

I bought one of the 1/2 size flats with the felt to wick water up to the seed starting pellets. This one came with the expanding peat pellets but will work well for soil blocks too.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Man life with little kids gets busy.

This photo was taken about an hour before I potted-up some plants.

At this point I have potted up my broccoli, marigolds, leeks and some peppers to 3" pots from the soil block starters. I used a mix of Jiffy seed starting media and Vigero potting mix to make the soil blocks. Yes this was the expensive way but it worked with the time I had. I am using Scotts-MG brand potting mix to pot-up the plants.

Today I started snap peas in gutters like I usually do. I found this a few years ago on a blog, apparently it's common in England but unheard of over here in the US. You start the row in the gutter then slide it into the garden when they've emerged and have a few inches of growth.

I have three lengths of standard gutter that I blocked the ends of. Each piece of gutter is about a meter long. I had been using tape to block the ends but this year I cut wooden blocks that are held in the gutter with two screws.

I found that adding a strip of cloth on the bottom helps in pulling the plant row out.

We filled the gutter with some of my container mix where I had carrots growing last year. Then seeded the peas. I like to seed snap pea rows really heavy but only have the one row. Each gutter has a double row spaced about 2" between seeds.

I've been collecting and savings these seeds for a few years now. They're a taller sugar snap pea - four or five feet tall - and are mostly purple flowering now.

This weekend I need to get off my lazy hind quarters and start my tomatoes, beets, more spinach, collards, and chard. I should have some good pics of that operation and my soil blocks.

 

[w_r_ranch]

Looking good Mr_Yan!!! I see that you too are highly supervised!!!

 

[whistech]

Real nice Mr Yan.

 

[majorcatfish]

was looking at your end caps, now most people would have gone out and just bought end caps, but you took it a step further and spent the time and made your own, very impressive workmanship..... my hat is off to you.

 

[Mr_Yan]

was looking at your end caps, now most people would have gone out and just bought end caps, but you took it a step further and spent the time and made your own, very impressive workmanship..... my hat is off to you.

a few minutes, a band saw, and a few scrap 2x4's is all you need

 

[Mr_Yan]

Lesson Learned: Start leek and shallot seeds in typical 6 packs not soil cubes.

Started tomatoes (2 cherokee purple, 2 brandywine, 3 roma, 1 yellow jelly bean, 1 red jelly bean, 3 celebrity), fordhook swiss chard, brightlights swiss chard, collards, beets, more marigolds, and more spinach today. 50 new starts in all.

Built new box forms to hold the soil cubes.

These are pine 1x2 (2 inch true dimension) with 1/4" mesh hardware cloth bottom. The frames are simply nailed together and the mesh is stapled to the bottom. Not bad for scrap material sitting around and $1200 in tools.

I formed up the soil cubes.

I have the five 1.5" soil block maker and this year used bagged mix bought at a big box store. All told it took about 10 minutes to form the 50 blocks.

I then used child labor to place the seeds in each block. We'll call this developing fine motor skills - at least that is what the preschool teacher calls it. Just place one or two seeds in each block.

Sand gets poured into the dimple over the seed and a maker flag inserted to the block.

These blocks allow me to start about any small seed indoors I want. Tomatoes, peppers, and the like get potted up. Spinach, greens and lettuce can be moved directly to the garden after emergence. Heck even root crops like beets and carrots can be started indoors.

 

[Mr_Yan]

So this was a busy weekend.

I eliminated some containers that I didn't do well with last year and dumped / mixed them into my main raised bed. I also emptied 4 of my larger box containers into my main raised bed. With the boxes empty I installed some water catchment to hold water into the container. Last year I built 6 of these boxes and filled them with a mix that drained too fast so watering was a waste and became a real chore. These boxes are made of 4/4 redwood and the boxes that I lined with plastic fared much better than the two I did not line. The water catchment I installed veried based on the material I had on hand. Two boxes have the cut off lower 2" of buckets. The other two boxes have a sheet of plastic formed into a bowl in the center. These reservoirs don't cover the whole bottom so much of the water will still drain around it.

Here's one of the boxes after I lined it with plastic and placed the 2" bucket in the bottom.

With all the container mixing I did I now have a more homoginous soil among the containers; and sore arms shoulders, legs, and feet. The container mix did top off all the containers and beds I will use this year.

Again it is hard to get far enough away from the garden containers to get a good pic. This is the 5th year for the main bed.


Remember the peas we planted in the gutters?

Here they are a week later.

We slid them out to transplant them in the main bed at dusk today. By the time I finished with the other transplanting it was too dark to shoot pics well.

I also potted up the tomatoes we started last week. Transplanted the leeks, spinach , and shallots.

We hit 80 today. Daffodils are up and open. Some frasynthias are starting to have some flowers. The leaf buds on my peach are starting to look a green. Privet, grapes, and maple trees are still barren brown sticks. Looks like a low in the 50s with t-storms for the night.10 day forecast has us anywhere as high as 75 F to lows in the upper 20s with rain more days than not.

 

[Mr_Yan]

This is about the best year I've ever had for starting seedlings.

These are the tomatoes I started last week

One of my egg plants and two peppers. The center plant is a California Wonder bell pepper.

I have the peas, shallots, spinach, and leeks in the raised bed - these went in on Easter.

I set a new record for plan deviation. I had a great plan starting this year and it was all mapped out but after I set the shallots in the ground I realized I was one foot off and put them under the trellis where I wanted the tomatoes. Now I'll have shallots, tomatoes, and peas intermixed in the planting area. I figure I will place spinach where I had the shallots were on the map.

 

[majorcatfish]

very nice looking plants you have there....

"set a new record for plan deviation" i think everyone here has done that a time or two

 

[Mr_Yan]

"set a new record for plan deviation" i think everyone here has done that a time or two

Normally the plan last at least 4 hours into the season though.

 

[w_r_ranch]

Yep, kind of like war plans... all is good until the first shot is fired.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Yep, kind of like war plans... all is good until the first shot is fired.

This reminds me. There is a guy at work - one of the engineering supervisors - with a quote from Eisenhower
"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything"

 

[whistech]

Good looking plants Mr_Yan!

 

[ErnieCopp]

I will add what i have been telling my employees and children for 60 years." Always have a plan, but understand the most valuable use for it is as a platform to change as circumstances require."

Ernie

 

[w_r_ranch]

Right you are. I always plan my gardens, sometimes they work out exactly as I envisioned & sometimes they don't, but you learn to roll with it. Come canning time, I never even think of my 'mistakes', although I do try to learn from them occasionally, LOL!!!

 

[ErnieCopp]

This is my fourth garden here, and the ground did not agree with my first plan, so now as i am learning which grows best where, my plan is much different. No embarrassment from changing our garden plans, but when i was training my sons and other young me to be supervisors i found some of them were ashamed to change the plan they started with for fear the men would think less of their ability. So i started emphasizing to them that as soon as they could see some way to improve their plan to do so. From that, i just started using that quotation.

I picked and processed another box of loquats this morning and found out that inserting the copper tube from the stem end does a better job of cleaning the connective tissue out as the tissue is fastened at the exit. Nothing wrong with changing my plan and following my own advice, i guess.

Ernie

 

[Mr_Yan]

So week 19. We're starting to get some warm days - almost 80 here today - and things are starting to grow again.

This year I hope to post weekly photos from about the same locations to document the growth of the garden.

This is the pallet / inground area. I have broccoli planted in the pallet because I had no clue where else to put it. I hope to seed beets, spinach, and greens this weekend.

Rhododendron is in full bloom.

So are the jane magnolias

I have four totes of seedlings now. I found that the totes are great for moving them in and out to harden off the seedlings.

I got the netting trellis up for the snap peas today. I'm running the peas down the middle (N/S axis) of my main raised bed and along the north end. This keeps both sides of the peas plantable and I should be able to reach in from either side to get the pods. I used a U post screwed to the bed frame at the south end and a stick of 1/2" EMT conduit for the top bar. The north end has a wooden trellis with wire mesh over it to allow plants to grip it better. This year I plan on having three tomato plants trained along the north trellis.

More of the same but you can see the spinach on the left.

Peach tree

 

[majorcatfish]

thats a really smart idea using totes to move the seedlings around.

 

[Ibtsoom]

Beautiful! All of you guys have given me the urge to up my efforts to start plants from seed. I've been fairly successful at it but not on the level I'd like.