Further Down The Rabbit Hole

I spent most of my free time today reading from Growing Vegetables West Of The Cascades. There are astounding gaps in my gardening knowledge which I will have to fill pretty quickly. At times like these I find it helps to remember the words of Socrates when he said "the only thing I know is that I know nothing." It's important to approach gardening, or any subject for that matter, with the utmost of humility and readiness to learn.

I read most of the chapter on soil, and while it is true that the soil in our backyard is "relatively" good as I wrote in an earlier post, that still doesn't mean there isn't a substantial bit of preparation left to do before we will be ready to plant anything in it. Our soil in the Northwest is typically high in potassium, so I won't be adding any of that, but it does call for lime, phosphate, and plenty of compost. Looks like a trip to the nursery is order.

Green Festival

Yesterday I attended the Green Festival in downtown Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center. Talk about information overload. In addition to stuffing myself on free organic samples and filling my backpack full of awesome swag, I sat up front for a presentation by Paul Stamets, perhaps the most knowledgeable man on the subject of fungi in the world. I bought his most recent book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World. He has developed a method, which he calls "mycoremediation," in which mycelium is used to break down toxic pollutants. I was thoroughly amazed to realize just how little we really know about these limitless organisms. In the book he also discusses a method called "mycogardening," that is, "the companion cultivation of mushrooms with garden vegetables," which can greatly increase the yield of vegetables while enriching and building the soil at the same time. Can't wait to see if we might be able to incorporate some sort of mycelium within our garden.

Today I'm returning to the Green Festival to see Amy Goodman (of Democracy Now) and John Perkins (author of Confessions Of An Economic Hitman) speak. Also, to fill up on more free food.

My signed copy. The transcription reads: For Mars- To the Earth!

Rest

Taking it easy today after a hard day of tilling. On the recommendation of my friend Erik I bought a copy of Steve Solomon's Growing Vegetables West Of The Cascades, 6th Edition. I haven't read much, but what I have seems really comprehensive and climate specific to our little corner of the Pacific Northwest. As far as soil compositions go, and what we will need to do to amend ours for optimal yield, I will be consulting the book, as well as for various other gardening aspects. For only around $20 brand new, you can't really go wrong.

Sifting The Day Away

A bit of balmy spring weather culled Nathan, Galen and I outside to finish the sifting of the new grow space today. It's certainly a relief to have all that hard labor out of the way. Now we can start to focus on how our vegetables will be situated in the garden. We' still need to turn the soil of last year's grow space and move the compost pile to the other side of the concrete path, but that will be cake comparatively. To sift the remainder of the soil, we used the wire mesh we'll be employing later to build a new composter. The mesh is a 5'x3' piece of 1/4" hardware cloth you can find at your local hardware store. Four zip-ties are used to hold it together. It's placed on the ground, loaded with clumps of grass and rolled around until the majority of the dirt is separated from the grass.

Nathan later managed to escape from his mesh prison.

Rain Barrels

Today I acquired a couple of 55 gallon food grade plastic barrels that I'll convert into rain barrels to collect some free water.

A good place to look for similar barrels might be a soda bottling plant, or you can do like I did and just cruise the industrial area of your city and hope to get lucky. Thanks to Leslie for letting me borrow her car to pick them up. A quick trip to the hardware store for parts and we'll be in business.

So stoic they seemed in the basement's morning light.

Prepping: Continued

Aaron and I braved the cold/rain yesterday to work on sifting grass roots from the newly turned garden space. This is definitely the most labor-intensive aspect of setting up an urban garden (don't get discouraged now!). Luckily we have relatively good soil to work with (i.e. very few rocks and no major roots from the nearby hedges). We still need to sift about half of the new area, which will have to wait until more amicable weather presents itself. Here are some pictures of vegetable seedlings we have under way:


Seeds-eye view of brocolli (left) and tomatoes
(at right) planted 3/5/09



The seedling station in our basement. Seedlings are fragile so it's important to keep them warm (70 degrees or so) and under plenty of light. Seeds germinate best at the same temperature. Our lights are kept on 18 hours a day. At left is my GlowPanel 45, an LED grow light that uses only 45 watts and seems to be giving the plants just the right spectrum they need. The fixtures to the right are compact fluorescent bulbs rated 5000K (2 at 13 watts and 1 at 30 watts). Underneath the table is a two bulb (40 watts each) T-12 shop light fixture with regular cool white bulbs. As long as your lights don't produce too much heat, you'll want to keep them as close to the plants as possible (usually within 6 inches or so) to prevent them from becoming spindly. If you're planning on starting an outdoor garden this year, it's not too late to start planting seeds indoors. Carpe Diem.

Prepping the grow space

Last year's garden was a bit underwhelming (we still had plenty of zucchinis). Though I've been gardening since I was a small child, it was my first full-fledged foray into small-scale urban agriculture. This year we're more than doubling the grow space. So far we've roto-tilled about half of the new area and today we will (attempt to) tackle the rest (weather permitting).

Some pictures of the initial tilling from a few weeks ago:

Nathan starting to till


Me, David and Nathan hacking it up (yeah I'm wearing slippers)


Clumps of grass and dirt which we'll now sift to remove unwanted roots

It begins

Today we commence upon an experiment in urban garden maximization, that is, how much food can one group of highly motivated, young urban dwellers grow on the dirt patch surrounding their rented house. "Sustainability" and "green" are great buzz words for the emerging neo-environmentalist movement, but what are their practical applications? In other words we've asked ourselves the question, "What can I do to start leading a more sustainable, less-consumptive lifestyle (not to mention save hard-won cash on groceries)? At least part of the answer lies in producing our own food. Let the growing begin.