Urban Grown roots

While I'm still on the "featuring urban gardens" kick I thought I'd include a couple of pictures of the garden where this all got started. From the time I was a young child, I helped my parents with their modest vegetable garden, planting seeds, weeding, and (especially) eating tomatoes from the vine. Eventually I earned my own plot next to the compost pile. I believe it measured about 5 feet square. The rest is, as they say, well, whatever. Anyway here are some shots of my parents' garden from about a week ago. I'm sure it's grown substantially since then. In the foreground are peas, followed directly by broccoli, bush beans, zucchini, lettuce and carrots (hidden by the zucchini), and way in the back, an artichoke plant.

Against the south-facing garage wall is a row of tomato plants. The plants receive direct watering from a simple drip irrigation system my dad rigged up to deliver water straight to the base of the plant. Using a five gallon bucket and a length of pvc pipe with small holes drilled at equidistant intervals, he can give each plant an equal amount of water by simply filling the bucket. The system does the rest. He usually fills the bucket and leaves the hose trickling (so that the bucket remains full but does not overflow) for about 15-20 minutes so that the plants receive a thorough soaking.

Urban garden update

Just wanted to take a minute to update the growth of my friend Nick's garden. Here's Nick tending the radishes:

As of now Nick is growing peas, carrots, radishes, onions, broccoli, lettuce and cucumbers. Everything seems to be responding well to the relentless heat wave we've been experiencing in past weeks. We've set two rather impressive(sobering) records so far this summer in Seattle: hottest summer since SeaTac started recording weather in the 40's, and lowest amount of precipitation, at less than half the rainfall of the former lowest recorded amount.

Nick has run into a small insect problem with his broccoli plants. It appears as if the leaves have been chewed by cabbage moth caterpillars. I struggled with the same infestation, of which there are two solutions known to me. One involves picking the caterpillars off the plant as they are seen, which has its obvious limitations. The other is to cover the plants with a floating row cover. These can be found at any nursery and perhaps even big box stores that have a large enough garden center. Essentially it's a tightly woven synthetic fabric that is draped over the plants to prevent the moths from landing and laying their eggs nearby. As the fabric is merely sitting, or floating, on the plants, it does not restrict their growth.

Nick's radishes growing splendidly

Peas no more

Ripped out the two rows of ailing pea plants this morning to make way for some winter crops. In all actuality I should have planted seeds for the purpose of growing them through the fall and winter several weeks ago. No excuses.

I planted a row of carrots and next to it leeks and spinach. There are still a good six weeks or so of legitimate summer left, barring early fall rains, so they might have a chance of establishing themselves before the weather gets too wet and cold. I'm going to have to pay close attention to keeping the soil moist so that the seeds actually germinate, a task that may be near impossible if this hot, dry spell we've had lately continues. Inside I've already started several broccoli seedlings which are about 3 inches tall that will go outside as soon as I have more room in the garden.

The trellis pieces will be stored somewhere dry for next year's garden.

An updated shot of the tomatoes planted at the front of the house. I've had to tie several additional pieces of support twine to hold up the abundant fruits on these Better Boy hybrids, and still they hover just above the ground. I'll be keeping my eye out for slugs.

Successful garden installation

A few updated photos of the garden I installed for a friend's mother in early May:

At left is the yellow squash followed by a row of tomatoes

Yellow squash looking very healthy

Jade bush beans with their first blossoms

A vibrant row of peas supported by a simple wire mesh trellis

I asked for a few updated photos to see how everything had performed; I hadn't seen the garden since I planted the seeds several months back. Seems things couldn't be doing better.

Urban Grown seeds are sown

Today I'm featuring the first garden of my good friend Nick. He recently built and planted it after recieving a little inspiration from various sources. His is a raised bed garden, built on top of an existing yard using 4' lengths of cedar. The garden is divided into 16 seperate sqaure foot grids, called the square foot method, a popular method which has had several books devoted to the subject. The method involves a special soil mixture that includes compost, perlite, vermiculite, and other components that provide ample air circulation and retain moisture better than other soils.

At the back Nick has constructed a bamboo trellis consisting of three straight lengths of bamboo supported at the base by stakes. A grid of twine is strung across the space created by the bamboo that will allow the peas he planted to climb. Radishes have also begun to sprout.

A bug's eye view of Nick's first sprouting peas.

One for the road

Leaving for New York tonight to attend my cousins' wedding on Saturday. The ceremony's upstate in Binghamton, but I'll be spending a couple of days in the city with my sister and brother in law prior. Then a few days in D.C. to catch up with an old college friend, Brian.

For the interim, the garden will be in the hands of my able-bodied roommates (I'm praying for rain). I've shot a few pictures of some garden produce as it's coming along.

Dew sprinkled quinoa starting to form the main seed cluster.

Peas overflowing on the vine.

Rattlesnake pole beans filling out nicely.

Pumpkin blossom nestled between the beans.

Scarlet Runner beans and blossoms.

A pic of the garden today (most of it anyway). Even with all my careful attention to spacing, everything seems to have grown rather close together. I guess part of me didn't expect it all to grow so prolifically. The tomatoes in the cloche are beginning to press against the plastic. When I get back next Wednesday I will have to figure out the best way to deal with their rampant growth.

Weeding

Summer's just officially begun and already the days grow shorter. A depressing thought I'll try to ignore as long as the garden's growing green and vibrantly. The pea harvest is in full effect; the plants have grown so large so quickly they're actually causing the trellis to sag! Today Aaron helped me tie the plants back to prevent them from leaning onto the row of beans, which are also growing rather fanatically. The northwest end of the garden has become a bit of a struggle to navigate through, in spite of (what I thought was) ample spacing. This is partly due to my reluctance to pull a volunteer pumpkin vine that sprouted near the end of the bean row.

From here on out we'll have all the peas we can eat and then some.

Aaron and I spent a little time managing the garden this afternoon. We piled some compost around the potatoes to encourage them to fill out with more spuds underground. The spinach and broccoli were also pulled from the garden. In the next few weeks I will be seeding the area where those plants were with crops that I intend to overwinter, perhaps leeks or kale, or some other hardy overwintering variety.

An important aspect of garden maintenance I haven't spent any time discussing is weeding. With proper upkeep this task will take only 1-2 hours a week. It's usually only when the task is neglected that it's a real chore. The main reason to weed is to avoid competition between your vegetables and the weeds. Weeds will use water and minerals from the surrounding soil that would otherwise go to your plants.

I try to break it up to about two times a week. The weeds are given little chance to reach any appreciable size, and the task takes less time. A regular garden hoe works best between rows, and saves your back. Last year I did all my weeding by hand, and definitely made the work much harder on myself and my back. A good hoe is definitely a must have for in-ground gardening. I still pull weeds growing near the plants by hand to avoid damaging them, but by doing this frequently it is a much less tedious endeavor. Here's Aaron demonstrating his technique:


Using the hoe allows you to keep your back straight and exert minimal effort.

And just for fun, a picture of the first eggplant blossom:

Dry days

Today the Seattle area tied the previous record for consecutive days without rain for this time of the year (May-June), with 29 straight days without so much as an isolated sprinkle. For the garden, it's a blessing and a curse. The long hot days have rocketed my plants into top form, with most blossoming or at least showing buds or getting ready to flower. It's only a curse in the sense that the water table is being continually lowered without the usual rain to recharge it. And really, it's not a curse, it just means I have to be adamant about watering. For once I'm actually hoping it will rain! Some pictures of the plants' progress in recent days:

These peas will be ready to pick tomorrow or the next day.

The quinoa is doing great! This is one experiment I'm glad I undertook. The plants are nearly two feet tall already. They should reach a height of about four feet and then will begin to produce seed clusters. According to the research I've done they won't be ready to harvest until after the first frost, at which time I'll cut them down and hang somewhere cool to dry.

The tomatoes inside the cloche are nearly to the top of it already, and readily blooming. Their cages are nearly hidden by the abundant foliage. The slightly hotter temperature the enclosure creates seems to be doing the trick.

Another cloche success story: black eggplant. This is definitely the largest I've ever got an eggplant to grow before, and it trumps the ones I grew last year (which hardly grew more than 8" tall and didn't fruit whatsoever). This one is over a foot tall.

A casualty of the consistently hot weather has been the spinach. I should have planted this crop much earlier than I did, as the high temps have prompted it to bolt (grow spindly and go to seed). I have been able to harvest a sizable amount of the leaves, however, and have been chopping off the tops of the plants in hopes that it will force the plant to shoot out more vegetation and cease flowering.

Buds & Blooms

Thought I'd go easy on the words today and just post a bunch of pictures of the flowering plants in the garden.

Scarlet Runner Bean Buds

Sugar Snap Pea Flowers

Pear Tomato

Black Eggplant Bud (in cloche)

Strawberries growing from containers near the garden.

A caged fruit yet grows

Finally got around to buying tomato cages today. Couldn't find any that weren't made in China, oh well. A lesson well learned: place cages over tomatoes when they are freshly transplanted, before they have a chance to really take off. I made the mistake of procrastinating and letting the plants get bushy, thus making the process of getting them within the confines of the cage needlessly difficult. It required much patience and careful, deliberate movement of the plants' many branches, but in the end all turned out well. Both the tomatoes inside and outside the cloche are now caged and will have the support they require to hold up fruit.

I also took the opportunity to plant three squash seedlings my Dad gave me, two of which I believe are zucchini, and one I think is a yellow squash. He didn't label them so I won't know for sure until they fruit. Keeps it a little more interesting I suppose. Here's one of the plants after a good soaking:

Similar to potatoes, squash appreciate growing from a mounded hill of soil.

The peas have dominated the trellises, and are nearly four feet tall already:

Today I noticed their first blossoms , which means a bounty of snap and snow peas is just around the corner!

All Strung Up

Didn't end up going to Discovery Park today(though the weather couldn't have been more obliging). Instead I built the first of several trellises for the peas and beans out of some bamboo I found for free.


Free is Good

The trellis is constructed with 4 pieces of bamboo, about 6 feet long and 3/4" thick, one piece slightly longer than the length of the row, and as many lengths of string as there are pea plants. You could also build this using pvc pipes or any scrap wood you have lying around. On either end of the row two of the 6 feet pieces of bamboo are stabbed into the ground to form a steep X. I drilled a screw through the two pieces to hold them together securely. The row-length piece is lain along the length of the row between the two X's. Next I tied a string from the spanning bamboo down to the pea plant. You can either loosely tie a loop around the stem of the plant so that it can begin climbing or tie the string to a twig or perhaps a thin stick of bamboo that is staked in the dirt near the plant. I tied the string to some scraps pieces of bamboo.

Peas are natural climbers and should have no trouble finding their way up the string. My trellis sags a little in the middle, hopefully the weight of the vines won't drag it down much farther.

Garden Installation

Today I planted a garden for a friend's mother. The plot was formerly a lawn, but had been dug up (at least a year) prior. Here's a shot of the space before I got my hands dirty:

Overall a good space with direct sun all day that required minimal labor to get started. I turned the soil, as it had become compacted from our usual Northwest winter rains. The garden is triangle shaped, probably around 150-200 square feet. I planted rows of spinach, carrots, bush beans, snap and snow peas, tomatoes, and a small herb garden consisting of cilantro, basil and parsley.

Here's what it looked like after 4 hours of work. I managed to finish just in time to get out of the rain (which lasted pretty much the rest of the day). A great way to spend the morning and early afternoon (and make a little money on the side). With any luck I'll be doing this sort of thing more often in the near future. The Urban Grown garden installation service, a pipe dream now, but maybe someday...

Tomato Plants Spilleth Over

We've so many extra tomato plants it will be a struggle to find good homes for them all, but better to have too many seedlings than too few. All of the transplanted seedlings seem to be fairing well, though the weather has been on the cool side lately (good for spinach and peas, but not so much for tomatoes). Today warmed up nicely in the afternoon, with the sun making a well appreciated appearance. The cloche is still in the planning stages, though I think I've figured a way to keep the pvc flexed and secured so that the entire structure will be mobile. That will allow me to move it as needed should certain plants require the extra vertical growing space. Hoping for good weather this Wednesday, as I've scheduled to consult with a friend's mother about installing a vegetable garden at their house and will perhaps be planting it the very same day!

An updated shot of sugar snap peas, about 6" tall now.

Spring Rains...Sprouts!

This past week has seen the sprouting of the various seeds I sowed recently. Have a look:


Top: Beans Bottom: Spinach

Top: Broccoli Bottom:Peas


All seem to be doing well, with the exception of a few beans who had their tops munched off by some of the local fauna. Today I hope to plant a few tomatoes outside, as well as sow some rows of carrots, onions, basil and cilantro. Though it may be a bit early for the tomatoes, a few of the plants have grown leggy, and so I will have to take a bit of a chance setting them out early. I don't think upping the pot size at this point will benefit it much. Here's hoping they adjust adequately. Before the peas and beans get too large I will be constructing trellises for them to climb.

Sowing Seed

Some mild, partly cloudy weather today, perfect to begin sowing seeds in the garden. Though I likely should have done it earlier (as peas love cooler spring temps), I sowed two rows of peas (pole variety) at the western end of the garden. Next to them I planted a half row(6 feet) of pole beans and a half row of runner beans. At the other end of the garden I sowed a row of spinach seed as well as the broccoli seedlings that have been chilling in the cold frame.

Broccoli in its new home.

For each of the seeds, I followed the sowing directions explicitly, something I neglected to do last year which to crowding and most likely smaller yields. Between the rows of peas and beans, I left at least 2 feet. As these are pole varieties (they are indeterminate and will require some sort of trellising), I tried to plant them to the far end of the garden to hopefully prevent them from shading smaller vegetables nearby. The fact that the rows are oriented north-south should prevent shadows for the most part anyway...

Plant far more seeds than you intend to ultimately grow, as you will be able to thin once the seedlings have grown a couple of inches and a couple of pairs of true leaves. The broccoli plants are spaced 18" apart. The soil can be filled all the way up to the cotyledon leaves. With transplants and seed sowing, be sure to pat the earth down around the plant or the top of the row with your palm. This restores capillarity to the soil, which will help the area around the seedling stay moist and encourage germination. After planting all the seeds and broccoli, the rows are watered are labeled so the different varieties won't get mixed up (and so my roommates don't step on them). Also this was my first opportunity to use water collected from the rain barrel, which was pretty neat.

A (short) planting list of the garden so far:

-Peas (Snow peas and Super Sugar Snap peas, both pole varieties)
-Beans (Scarlet Runner and Rattlesnake pole)
-Spinach (Bordeaux Hybrid)
-Broccoli (Early Green)