The impatient gardener
Some of us contrary rustic types just can't wait for "real spring" as in the supposed May 24th last frost date. We have to be persnickety and smartass and cheat a little. Get the jump on summer, get our hands in the dirt after all that grey and snow and get those green little veggies coming up ASAP, pronto, NOW! faster-the-better. Every spring I get ichey palms and just want to get going and digging and composting and greening up the garden and lawn and environs. So I am going to share some of my little dirt secrets ;=) or at least experiments - I don't know if they will all work yet or not - the jury is still out.
The first is a great book - you may have heard of, by the infamous Mel Bartholomew - of Square Foot Gardening Fame. When I read this way back it was a light bulb going off - he made so much sense, and questioned just about every assumption of most row gardens. I tried it in three past houses, in various forms, and it worked - it really did produce tons of veggies in 20% of the space, with 20% of the water and 20% of the work of single row gardening. Well Mel has done it again - with his new book "All New Square Foot Gardening".
One big change is forgetting about years of soil conditioning and starting out with what he calls "Mel's Mix" which is his secret recipe for essentially making your own perfect soil. Davo and I spent an afternoon a week ago mixing, wetting and rolling about peat moss, vermiculite and five different types of compost in a tarp, and filled about half of my nine 4x4 ft plots. My trunk is full of more stuff to do a second batch tomorrow. The main things it gets you is an amazing moisture retention ability, incredible lightness and tilth, no weeds, and all the nutrients the plants need. My leeks which overwintered (barely) are starting to grow nicely after only one week in this stuff, and the new violas, pansies and transplants seemed to perk up within hours of being planted. Another big bonus is it is pretty much impossible to overwater because it acts like a sponge - when full it just drips out excess water. And super easy to dig.
Anyway, my little dirt secret one occured to me last week when we had a long cold, wet week and all my new seeds were in danger of rotting in the frigid soil. Water as you know has an amazing ability to retain heat. Having to get up to water seeds around 6 am before work I just couldn't bear the thought of dumping more ice cold well water on those new seeds so painstakingly planted. Mel suggested using sun warmed water, but what do you do if you are up before the sun and it isn't shining enough to warm an icycle, and you have to work? Well, I dragged out the old (ancient actually) campstove and an old mini propane canister and decided to use all that specific heat of water to warm up my frigid soil, in which no sane new seed would dare emerge, given any sense at all.
So call me crazy , but this Contrary Rustic decided it was worth the few cents of propane from the now-despised-in-campland propane mini cylinders to warm up my water (and my dirty cold hands) before watering every little dot of vermiculite encased seed ground. Actually it was amazing how nice warm water feels on cold gardening hands at 6 am - very nice change from holding a dripping icy achy cold hose. So I did this for a few cold mornings last week, and guess what, it worked! Tiny patches of green emerging, two weeks before last frost date! When you pour this tepid to luke warm water on your new transplanted violas, you can almost hear them thanking you and they seem to perk up and green up really quickly. By the time I leave for work the sun has poked out and the whole garden seems to be poised to burst into life. I don't know why it took me this long to realize something so obvious - but plants don't like ice cold showers first thing in the morning any more than we would. So treat your plants to a little luxury, and jump-start your soil temperature by watering with sun (or Propane) warmed water. It works!
Another Mel-inspired idea is a twist I call dirt secret number two. Mel advises to treat your garden like your kids - keep them warm at night, and don't send them out without a coat in the cold spring. So I have come up with a neat little way to quickly erect and disassemble cold covers, and shade covers. In the past I have tried many different ideas including bent chicken wire and plastic, row covers, individual cloches and so on and so forth. But these variously suffer from being either too heavy, too prickly - sharp wires, or too floppy in wind, and blowing away and so on and so forth. My secret for quickly assembled frames is magnets - glued and taped on dowels. Screwing a beer cap upside down in the corner of each 4'x4' square foot garden raised bed with a drywall screw provides a perfect little concave anchor for a four strut pyramid with four magets meeting on a stainless steel ball vertex. It takes about 30 seconds to put up, is strong enough to hold either fish net shade cover, 0r a tarp or plastic and can be removed even faster. A shorter ~2; dowel inserted in each corner with four more 4' dowels can make a more voluminous 8 cu ft greenhouse like structure. I used neodymium super-strength magnets glue gunned to the ends of 3/8" wood dowels and reinforced with coloured electricans
tape - and they work great. So now I have a flexible, but strong way to rig up many different types of covers, shades etc with no nails, screws or rope, twine or fasterners - all done with magnets! Fishnet makes a good shade cover for new transplants, to keep the harsh sun off. I need to get some 6 mil poly and some clothespins and then I can make my own mini portable greenhouse.
Well, that's all for tonight from the Contrary Rustic. Yes I know I am a bit insane about gardening, but nex to timberframing and woodwork what else could be better on a spring weekend? Sure beats office work. Next assignment - figure out how to keep my $%^&*( cats, dogs and birds from digging up my seeds. The fishnet should slow them down, but I need to get a whole lot more.. I am wondering about hot chile peppers to teach certain retarded digging dogs a lesson - that makes three holes dug up in one week - Sheesh! Not to mention eating my pansies on the front porch. Dogs and gardening don't seem to mix...
More next week I hope. Live long and prosper - keep your hands in the dirt.
The Contrary Rustic.
The first is a great book - you may have heard of, by the infamous Mel Bartholomew - of Square Foot Gardening Fame. When I read this way back it was a light bulb going off - he made so much sense, and questioned just about every assumption of most row gardens. I tried it in three past houses, in various forms, and it worked - it really did produce tons of veggies in 20% of the space, with 20% of the water and 20% of the work of single row gardening. Well Mel has done it again - with his new book "All New Square Foot Gardening".
One big change is forgetting about years of soil conditioning and starting out with what he calls "Mel's Mix" which is his secret recipe for essentially making your own perfect soil. Davo and I spent an afternoon a week ago mixing, wetting and rolling about peat moss, vermiculite and five different types of compost in a tarp, and filled about half of my nine 4x4 ft plots. My trunk is full of more stuff to do a second batch tomorrow. The main things it gets you is an amazing moisture retention ability, incredible lightness and tilth, no weeds, and all the nutrients the plants need. My leeks which overwintered (barely) are starting to grow nicely after only one week in this stuff, and the new violas, pansies and transplants seemed to perk up within hours of being planted. Another big bonus is it is pretty much impossible to overwater because it acts like a sponge - when full it just drips out excess water. And super easy to dig.
Anyway, my little dirt secret one occured to me last week when we had a long cold, wet week and all my new seeds were in danger of rotting in the frigid soil. Water as you know has an amazing ability to retain heat. Having to get up to water seeds around 6 am before work I just couldn't bear the thought of dumping more ice cold well water on those new seeds so painstakingly planted. Mel suggested using sun warmed water, but what do you do if you are up before the sun and it isn't shining enough to warm an icycle, and you have to work? Well, I dragged out the old (ancient actually) campstove and an old mini propane canister and decided to use all that specific heat of water to warm up my frigid soil, in which no sane new seed would dare emerge, given any sense at all.
So call me crazy , but this Contrary Rustic decided it was worth the few cents of propane from the now-despised-in-campland propane mini cylinders to warm up my water (and my dirty cold hands) before watering every little dot of vermiculite encased seed ground. Actually it was amazing how nice warm water feels on cold gardening hands at 6 am - very nice change from holding a dripping icy achy cold hose. So I did this for a few cold mornings last week, and guess what, it worked! Tiny patches of green emerging, two weeks before last frost date! When you pour this tepid to luke warm water on your new transplanted violas, you can almost hear them thanking you and they seem to perk up and green up really quickly. By the time I leave for work the sun has poked out and the whole garden seems to be poised to burst into life. I don't know why it took me this long to realize something so obvious - but plants don't like ice cold showers first thing in the morning any more than we would. So treat your plants to a little luxury, and jump-start your soil temperature by watering with sun (or Propane) warmed water. It works!
Another Mel-inspired idea is a twist I call dirt secret number two. Mel advises to treat your garden like your kids - keep them warm at night, and don't send them out without a coat in the cold spring. So I have come up with a neat little way to quickly erect and disassemble cold covers, and shade covers. In the past I have tried many different ideas including bent chicken wire and plastic, row covers, individual cloches and so on and so forth. But these variously suffer from being either too heavy, too prickly - sharp wires, or too floppy in wind, and blowing away and so on and so forth. My secret for quickly assembled frames is magnets - glued and taped on dowels. Screwing a beer cap upside down in the corner of each 4'x4' square foot garden raised bed with a drywall screw provides a perfect little concave anchor for a four strut pyramid with four magets meeting on a stainless steel ball vertex. It takes about 30 seconds to put up, is strong enough to hold either fish net shade cover, 0r a tarp or plastic and can be removed even faster. A shorter ~2; dowel inserted in each corner with four more 4' dowels can make a more voluminous 8 cu ft greenhouse like structure. I used neodymium super-strength magnets glue gunned to the ends of 3/8" wood dowels and reinforced with coloured electricans
tape - and they work great. So now I have a flexible, but strong way to rig up many different types of covers, shades etc with no nails, screws or rope, twine or fasterners - all done with magnets! Fishnet makes a good shade cover for new transplants, to keep the harsh sun off. I need to get some 6 mil poly and some clothespins and then I can make my own mini portable greenhouse.
Well, that's all for tonight from the Contrary Rustic. Yes I know I am a bit insane about gardening, but nex to timberframing and woodwork what else could be better on a spring weekend? Sure beats office work. Next assignment - figure out how to keep my $%^&*( cats, dogs and birds from digging up my seeds. The fishnet should slow them down, but I need to get a whole lot more.. I am wondering about hot chile peppers to teach certain retarded digging dogs a lesson - that makes three holes dug up in one week - Sheesh! Not to mention eating my pansies on the front porch. Dogs and gardening don't seem to mix...
More next week I hope. Live long and prosper - keep your hands in the dirt.
The Contrary Rustic.
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