Back Yard
We have a small lot of land to begin with, so every square foot is precious. The back yard garden is a "Boardwalk Garden," where I laid 6 inch by 8 foot boards into a cross grid with 9 zones (think tick tack toe). Three of the boards were cut in half. The entire garden is about 12 feet x 16 feet. Doing Raised bed wastes too much real estate between zones.
This year my battle with squirrels continues. A few mornings I've got up in the morning to see squirrels in the garden. Once in April a saw a group polishing off a planter full of swiss chard, and this weekend a saw one chewing off an old lettuce stem.
While I started planting in late March. what finally sprouted doesn't look like what I expected. I planted a half-zone of string beans and wax beans (with the other half an assortment of carrots. None of the beans have sprouted after 60 days, and I suspect squirrels digging out the seeds. I expect the same happened with the corn I planted in mid-April.
I also planted lettuce, spinach argula and swiss chard. What I observe can be best described as "seed creep" where the plants sprouted in an assortment of locations within the garden. I assume the shallow-panted seeds were spread by the many cold April showers that were common this spring. The swiss chard is ready for picking (at least I think it's swiss chard and not a weed ;-).
Some of the peas have sprouted, and the onions are doing well. I have planted additional corn and beans for a later harvest in the garden in the past few days.
Basement - Grow Lamp
In early April, I moved the planters of my winter farm outside to make room for growing early seedlings. This approach will be covered in a future blog entry. After a rough start, the planting for transplanted have started to take off in late April! I planted about 40 tomato plants, 30 pepper pants, and an assortment of 32 cukes and squash. The pete planter tray for the squash fell apart and I needed to quickly transplant them into other containers, including milk containers, coffee cups,and anything else i could find in my recycling bin. They grew significantly faster than the other plants, literally stealing the light from the grow lamp from the other plants! I was forced to transplant them outside in early April. They had a definite shock from the transplant, but I'm starting to see flower buds in the squash this weekend.
Tomatoes have done outstanding! About a week ago I transplanted about 30 plants out front, they seem to handle the transition easily, and the warm weather in late May is helping them grow quickly.
The peppers, oddly, haven't done so well with the exception of one plant. I have transplanted that plant this weekend since it is at least 18 inches high. I had it in a six inch planter in the basement for about 3 weeks.
One difference between the peppers and tomatoes is the size of the pete containers. The peppers were in small containers, while the tomatoes were the largest containers I could find. I am finding out that there is a big difference in the size of the container, but there is only so much space under the grow lamp, so I did a lot of early planting in small containers, and than transplanting into plant pots. Large plant pots, being circular, are also inefficient in the use of space where every square is precious. :-(
I started a second indoor planting phase, which is more like"rolling planting." Some of the pod containers that didn't sprout was used to start peas, cukes and more peppers. The tray I used for tomatoes now holds 4 half-gallon cardboard milk cartons with beans plants growing. Instead of recycling the carton, I cut away one side, punch about 10 holes on the opposite side, fill it with a planting mixture, and put a few bean seeds. They are sprouting away from squirrels and are already 4 inches high after only about 3 weeks. The other advantage of the milk containers is they are square, allowing them to be packed closer together under the grow light. I hope to transplant the entire container in one step.
The second round of pepper plants are probably 3-6 weeks behind the one I already planted outside. After not getting anything out of the containers after 30 odd-days, I decided to replant and see what happened. They are now between 2 and 6 inches high. Not bad, but I will wait until they are close to the size of the plant outside before I transplant. This may be as late as early July.
I am also trying Cantaloupe, again. The first batch of plants didn't take in the pod containers, so now I am trying three inch planters to see if I can get anything.
There are still some pete containers, I've even planted a few heads of lettuce, just to see how effective these are planting.
The front yard is full of transplants: tomatoes, cukes, and a squash plant I thought was a cucumber. This year I tried growing potatoes in a barrel/planter. The potatoes have gone crazy, and I've already covered them once with dirt. I'll probably fill the container by July. There is one small strip of dirt that I planted romaine lettuce. It gets plenty of water and sunlight
Next steps
Urban Farming is all about trial and error, the indoor pre-planting has been very successful. Unfortunately, outdoor gardens are managed by the seasons, lessons learned can take a year to try again. I will plan the farm a little better before next spring. Overall the indoor farming is probably my greatest experiment. Unlike my winter garden with automated watering, this one is watered by hand, with a small bucket capturing the spill for the next watering.
Farming is a slow, patient project. Rarely does nature do what you expect. I'll keep this blog up 2-3 times per week, as long as I farm, which I do year around.
