Linda's Organic Gardening Journal - 2009

Trimming

We started trimming away old growth in March. When I say 'we' I am including my boyfriend, Bob. He helped considerably - especially with an area in one of my flower beds that has a dastardly poison oak plant that comes back every year. This year I plan to stay on that thing and keep trimming it down. Maybe I'll get lucky and it will just die from lack of leaves. Wouldn't that be great? I don't plan to put any RoundUp on it. I'm staying with all natural and organic garden additives.

I trimmed back a rose bush under my dining room window - I hadn't done anything with it in several years and it was totally out of control. Already it put forth a lot of new growth and was quite tall, reaching the window above. I left the new tall growth - didn't want to stress the plant too much early in the springtime. Nooo... don't like to distress my plants... but I used my long trimmer and then my hand trimmer to get at all the old stems that were no longer producing. I think I got most of them, and the bush looks healthy and happy for the first time in several years. It produces pretty pink flowers - I'll probably photograph them later this spring.

Weed-eating
Our house is surrounded by meadow land. We have a north meadow and a south meadow. Because we've got a lot of mountain grasses, weeds, and wildflowers, we've also got to do some weed eating to keep the growth down. It is a fire danger.

Bob volunteered to do the weed eating job. Later he told me he felt sad about cutting down the freshly growing weeds. That's exactly how I felt the last time I did the work. I guess we are just too sensitive to be weed killers, but it has to be done.

Fencing
We chose a short plastic fence for two reasons. First, the price was right. Second, it fit into our car. As we live a long way from civilization this had to be transported from somewhere out there... though we managed to buy the last six fence posts at our local Mercantile. We do love to patronize the Mercantile whenever possible. Anyhow, during March we fenced in two sections of garden. We plan to put more fences up. We'd like to get chain link fencing to enclose a large section of the property so we can let our dog run free instead of keeping him chained.

Preparing the soil
This is a huge bear of a job yet it is one I embrace joyfully. I decided to sift through all the dirt and remove weeds, stones, and whatever else I didn't want there. I'm making a separate lens about this so I won't go into it much here. Suffice it to say - I cleared part of my herb garden then shifted my energy into the vegetable garden - the one that is in front of our house. Big job!

I've been tossing all the rocks into the section right next to the house - I see this becoming a walk way with three stepping stones surrounded by rocks I've pulled out of the dirt. The garden will have three raised rows and the soil will be improved with aged and composted manure and organic soil additives.

Preparing the soil
I'm going to be doing this for a long time to come. I'm currently nearly done with the squash garden which will be separate from the other garden. Then I'll go back to the herb garden and work on that... plus I've spent a bit of time in the flower beds but still have a lot to do there.

The picture shows my dilemma. The weeds here are voracious and have been untended for several years while I was working. Now I want them gone. This photo shows my rosemary plant with iris in front of it. I'm going to have to transplant that iris....

When I get done with the herb garden and flower beds, there's plenty more land to clear behind the house. We're already talking about expanding our vegetable garden next year.

Soil amendments
This year we're adding a lot of things into the soil - because I haven't had much prior success with what naturally occurs on our hill. We're living on what was actually a huge tailing pile from an extensive gold mining operation that used to exist at the top of the hill. The miners washed away a huge portion of the hill to get to the gold - and they deposited rocks and dirt on the section of the hill I now live on. Nothing grows well here without soil amendments except weeds and well, trees. We do have trees.

Anyhow, one thing we bought was Fox Farm Happy Frog Organic Potting Soil. We also bought Whitney Farms Soil Conditioner, Whitney Farms Aged Steer Manure, and lots of some other brand of organic potting soil.

Later I thought the steer manure might be a bad idea because so many cows are now fed bovine growth hormone - probably something I wouldn't want transferred to me through my vegetables... but I have no way of knowing or proving if that could be done and by now it is too late because the stuff is already in the ground. Too bad we have to worry about things like that these days!

Anyhow, what's done is done. I watered the garden repeatedly while waiting for the right opportunity to plant.

What I planted, and when
Here in the southern Siskiyou Mountains (also considered the southern part of the Cascades) we get snow in late April some years. I've seen it as late as April 28... so I waited most of the month with a few exceptions. I planted my Nasturtiums early - in March - because I love those flowers, and they need a good head start. Plus they are hardy and not easily killed by cold weather or bad soil. I also started quite a few seeds in trays on my front porch.

Mainly I went by the seed packet instructions. If it said the seeds needed to be sowed directly into the soil after all danger of frost, then I waited, and planted on April 30. On that date I planted basil, corn, and sunflowers. I also got some starter plants from the local mercantile: Ace tomatoes, paste tomatoes, parsley, thyme, broccoli, and two types of squash: crookneck and zucchini. On April 30 I also planted flower seeds: Silene armeria and Linum lewisii... both are perennials and I'm looking forward to seeing them bloom.

I also set out some plants I purchased at Wildberries Whole Food Store in Eureka: a rose geranium, spearmint, and cilantro. I was going to plant the spearmint next to my roses, on the side of the house with a small lawn... but a gopher or mole visited it the first night it was in the flower bed. The next morning I got up and started watering it - and the water went down into a hole, and as it turned out, the hole was nearly bottomless. I felt a bit grumbly and then decided to transplant the spearmint into the herb garden. I feel in a year or two it will take over the area, but oh well... I'll deal with that problem if and when I come to it.

The rose geranium also had problems.... aphids! Lesson learned: always check store-bought plants for aphids! I concocted a plant spray of water, Dr. Bronner's soap, and pure cold-pressed Neem Oil... and sprayed, and sprayed. Now I go visit the plant and inspect leaves and take off anything foreign looking that I see there. The plant is isolated in a large wooden planter, and sits alone near my wood pile. Still, I think this rose geranium is very pleased with it's location. It seems happy. Yes, I sense the emotions of plants, talk to them, and play music for them (or just sing.)

Sprouts!
My Nasturtiums are growing! All six of the Nasturtium seeds I planted in the long wooden planter box came up. Also four Nasturtium seeds in the flower bed came up, and one in the tomato bed. The tomatoes are being surrounded by Nasturtiums and Basil as they are good companion plants.

Seeds that I planted on the porch that have come up, so far: Feverfew, Marigolds, Chamomile. . . and a few other things (I'm not sure what they are!)

Watering
I already made my first mistake. I thought that since the soil was already damp (obviously) I shouldn't water my tomatoes in the morning. Wrong! Two of the plants dried up and I don't know if they'll make it. The leaves are mostly wilted (forever.) I feel so sad about doing this. Lesson learned. Water every day, anyway. For now... they are so young! I made the same mistake with the squash plants but I think they're going to make it. There's a local plant sale tomorrow morning so I'll go buy more starts.

Compost tea
Bob made the first batch of compost tea for our garden. He used worm castings and fish emulsion. It startled me when he told me to be careful in case a bear came up on our porch because the fish emulsion was bubbling away out there. But fortunately that didn't happen. Still, one of these days, it might! There's a huge black bear that visits my neighborhood. This year he came by repeatedly to inspect my neighbor's garbage can. (We keep our trash inside on the back porch because we had prior experiences with said bear.)

Anyhow, the compost tea turned out fine and Bob spread it around on a lot of the plants. None of them are complaining (or looking distressed.) The compost tea puts microbes into the soil. Apparently plants like this. See the videos below.

A Plant Sale!
Today (May 2) I went to a plant sale downtown next to our post office. This is a very small town, so there wasn't a lot of vendors, but I still got some great plants. I was excited to realize this plant sale was to benefit our town's park. I bought beets, tomatoes, and a bell pepper plant for the vegetable garden. I also bought bulbs, columbine, and English violets... plus got some calendula seeds... I'm excited about that! I planted all the live plants... in fact, went out in a rain storm to do the flowers... then later planted the veggies during a break in the storm. The English violets will border the front of the flower bed, in front of the roses. After I got home I saw that one of the roses is about to bloom!

The Herb Garden
May 3 - Today I worked on getting weeds out of my herb garden. I'm sure this will take a long time - maybe several weeks... and as I go I'm extending a path my son started for me a few years ago. The path is made of the ubiquitous rocks that exist on our hillside. They'll be something like cobblestones throughout the herb garden except in the areas where I'm growing things, and the place where I'm putting our medicine wheel.

Already wheat and oat grasses are seed-bearing so I'm ripping those out as quickly as I can. I also want to eliminate weeds for about a foot around the veggie garden and plant the calendula all around outside the vegetable garden fence.

Broccoli Harvest (already??)
May 14 - My broccoli, which I purchased as small plants from the Mercantile downtown about three weeks ago, already started to flower. I found broccoli harvesting information on the web, and realized I had to move fast. I cut off all the little florets and had fresh, uncooked broccoli with my dinner tonight. It was tender and delicious! The plants should continue producing florets for the next six weeks.

Flowers
May 14 - I'm seeing a lot of new seedlings out in my flower garden. The echinacea, blue flax and catchfly must be coming up! This should be a very colorful summer!

The flowers I bought at the Plant Sale are all doing well including the one columbine start. I found someone online offering pink columbine and requested them... I hope they arrive soon!.

What's already flowering: I've got irises planted in three different places around the house. Right next to the zucchini garden there's an iris with three huge buds - two of which are already blooming. The rose bush is covered with buds that are in the process of opening. And the chives are blooming wildly. The sage is nearly there.

The Zucchini Garden
May 14 - The other garden - the one behind my house that I said was to be a zucchini garden - has been planted. Those zucchini and crookneck squash that got wilted by the sun have come back nicely. Right now I've got three zucchini plants, two crookneck squash, and one scallop squash (all summer squash, which I love.) I had room leftover so I planted cantelope, watermelons, and green beans in that garden.

The Main Vegetable Garden
May 14 - The main garden area contains broccoli, cilantro, oregano, bell peppers, lettuce, spinach, snow peas, corn, sunflowers, parsley, carrots, beets, potatoes, and cucumbers. Tomatoes and basil are right next to that garden in their own planter. The strawberries next to that are being very productive and I already see lots of little green strawberries.

My Schedule
I've been setting the alarm to get up early to water the plants before the sun settles into the valley. I still need to adjust to the idea of going to bed early and getting up before dawn. I want to live like a farmer. Sorta difficult adjustment for a night-owl geek-type person like me.