New Garden

I'm so excited! A friend and her husband gave me three 3'x3' squares to do a square foot garden. They had them in their front yard, but decided they didn't want them any more, and gave them to me. woohooo!

For the last 5 years, we've had a pathetic "container" garden. Not much grows in them - there's just not that much space. With these three squares, I can plant 27 squares of stuff.

It's gotten too warm for things like sugar snap peas and carrots. We'll put those in in Aug or Sept. It's time here for the summer plants. I already 2 types of tomatoes, one kind in the container and the other awaiting transplanting. I also have some yellow squash, chives, sage, 1 jalapeño plant and some mint in the containers.

In my new squares, I will be transplanting the tomatoes I was given. Then my friends are giving me some heirloom seeds. I'll be planting pole beans, bush beans, cucumbers, some pepper plants, zucchini, and butternut squash, I also want one watermelon plant. (All the "crawling" things will be taught to go UP some fencing so I don't go outside my squares.) I'm so excited.

Now I need to do something about some soil. I'm not allowed to dig up the soil here, so I'm going to have to shop around/ask around for some soil. I know that last choice is to go buy some compost, vermiculite and some peat moss and mix it in 1/3 proportions. But I'm trying to same myself some money, not spend it. So I'll check with a friend that has some animals to see if they have any manure that has sat for a while. I'll ask around to see if anyone would give me any soil that they have. Problem is, North Georgia is full of RED CLAY. It's impermeable and not good to grow in. The nice thing is, I have some options.

The other nice thing about these squares are that if I move, I can just move the soil along with the frame - which is bottomless. (I would just scoop the dirt into a container/wheel barrow, and pick up the frame. Move it to my new location and refill it with the soil.)

If anyone has any ideas I've missed on getting some soil, let me know.

Thinking Outside of the Box With a Garden

Someone wrote into one of my lists and asked about raising chickens and doing a garden. She had had a friend back hoe her yard a couple of years earlier. They found rocks and she was left with a big hole that she had an excavator level last year. She was wanting to have chickens and a garden, but money is short. Her final comment was on how she was going to need some expensive lumber to do these projects.
This was my reply to her.

NO THEY DON'T (need expensive lumber)!
They require you to think out of the box and to recycle what you have!
I don't know where you live, but if you have any kind of newspaper or other place that gets stuff on pallets, go ask them if you may have the pallets. Take them home, break them apart and use the wood.
Been there, done that and it works just fine! Made square foot gardening blocks and housing for my chickens with them.

Later, after I bought 5 acres and later married, my (now ex) husband worked across the street from a concrete place. He noticed that they had a pile of broken concrete blocks - cinder blocks. The kind that are rectangular, have two flat sides and two open sides, split down the middle so there were two sections in each block. He asked if he could recycle the broken blocks and they said yes. So every evening he would put about 4 blocks in the back of our small truck (don't carry too many. They're heavy and you don't want to damage the truck with too heavy a load.)

I measured out some 4x4' square and set the blocks up so that the holes faced up. That gave me extra planting spaces. I stacked the blocks two high for support. When I had about 6 squares, I called the local "dirt" company and bought some top soil/mushroom compost (from a local mushroom place). (If they don't have any "compost" type dirt, just buy the top soil and find someone with a stable. Then learn how to compost.) A dump truck load cost me $5. I'm positive it would cost more now! But still, even if it's $35, it's worth it. They deliver it and put it in one spot, so pick a spot before they come out. Make sure the truck can access that spot and that you can stand looking at where it's located for a while. Do this AFTER you have your squares built. Also remember a new garden doesn't do as well it's first year.


Why in the world would someone use a BACK HOE to dig up a garden??? Not having any gardening experience, you didn't know any better, but the back hoe operator certainly should have! That's like trying to kill a fly with a cannon ball and did as much damage. People use a roto-tiller to dig up a garden. It only digs down 6-24 INCHES. A shovel works too, just a lot more work.

Let's suppose that there are no brick places, no pallets or other types of "free" wood to build with. Then start asking construction sites if you can haul off their lumber - when they're done with it. lol. If that doesn't work, use your old milk jugs, juice bottles, etc. Cut drain holes in them, add some top soil and then refer to a Square foot book, website, etc. (any intensive gardening site will work.) You can put 1 tomato plant, 2 green pepper or hot pepper plants, 4 small herbs, or about 36 carrots in a one gal. milk jug - if I'm remembering correctly.

Wait until you've got a garden going well before you buy the chickens. (you can go to the feed store in spring and buy a sack of starter feed and they'll give you 6-12 chickens. At least around here they do.) Last time I bought a sack of starter, it cost $7, but that's been several years ago, it's more now. But why should you wait?

If you're having to buy all their food, you're not saving any money. It will cost more in feed than you save with the eggs. Oh, by the way, home grown chicken tastes REALLY different from store bought. Enough that you may not care for the taste. Before you go buying 100 broiler chickens "for meat". Raise, kill and eat one. Make sure you and the rest of the family will EAT the home grown meat. Both because of the taste and because of killing it yourself, you may find rebellion in the ranks. You could also raise rabbits for meat too. But the same thing. Raise and eat one before you go into it wholesale. (After the first time one lay's your arm or stomach open with it's hind feet, you won't have any trouble eating it.) Getting scratched handling rabbits is like getting stung raising bees. It's all part of the fun. (Yes, I did handle them when they were babies and it didn't make a difference. If they're preggers, most of they don't like you.)

Also wait until you've got the gardening down before you add another job. Make sure you can put up the food you grow, or it's wasted. A smaller garden to start with is better than a big one that you throw food away or let spoil because you couldn't handle the preserving of it.

For me, Square Foot Gardening has been a blessing. Minimal weeding, watering and care. Nice amount of food. I'm not having to weed and water the spaces where I walk. I don't have to over-plant and then thin to the proper spacing - saves seeds and my time (we homeschool too). (Or fail to thin - who likes to kill all those baby plants, and have a poor crop because they're so over-planted that nothing can grow properly.) Gardening this way requires no special tools - no shovels (unless you're moving dirt into the squares to start with.) no rakes, hoes, hoses, etc. I do mine with a tablespoon, a sharpened pencil (to poke tiny holes), small scissors and a watering can (recycled metal or plastic can that I used a nail and hammer to poke holes into) and seeds. (I've kept mine in the fridge, in zipper bags and they've sprouted for years after the "good" date.)

Remember, the food from the garden helps with the feed bill on the critters. Start now with a "composting" bucket on the counter. Each time you peel veggies/fruits, scrape plates, toss left-overs, etc teach yourself to put them in the "compost" bucket. Lean what can go into the bucket (no meat, fats, and a couple of other things.) Each evening, go dig a spot in your yard or garden and "plant" the bucket contents. Or make a regular compost pile. When I had chickens and rabbits, I used the scraps to feed the animals with. Just make sure you empty the bucket each evening and clean it out. That way you won't encourage bugs or mice. Also, put a lid on it during the day helps too.

I did these thing when I lived in Florida. Now in North GA, I can't have a garden. Well, no. The rules are that I can't dig up the yard. I can plant stuff in my 55gal drums that I had cut in half and filled with topsoil. I can put stuff in containers on my porch. I can dig up the area under the eves, next to the house. See what I mean by outside of the box?

I just wanted you to know that you don't have to do bells and whistles to have your dreams. It only requires thinking outside of the box. Look at what is needed and then at what you can use to substitute with what you have on hand.

Then DO IT. Get the kiddies to help. You're teaching them a life skill as well as the interesting fact that kids tend to "like" and eat what they've planted. Mine would eat stuff out of the garden, raw. I never cared that they had peas and carrots for breakfast. Straight from the bush to their mouths. (I didn't use chemicals on my plants, and was on 5 acres, so there was no chance of contamination from a neighbor.)

Only you can make your dreams come true. But don't sabotage yourself by thinking you need expensive things to work with or a lot of money to start these kinds of projects. The Pioneers didn't have stores to go to, yet they were able to raise gardens and feed their families. You can too. Recycle, reuse, repurpose, thrift store, out of the box thinking will get you where you want to go. Make a game of it. Teach this game to your kids. (I have a 2'x2' box, what kinds of things could we do with this box. I need plant starter pots, what kinds of things could I use to make them. Then make a list of everything you can think of. These are REALLY good exercise for you and them. They will expand your creativity!)

No I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, things have just gotten incredibly crazy again.

One day I may do a blog on court. Not fun, but the end result was the my ex was found in contempt of court on both child support and custody. I'm not sure when he's going to have to return her, but he's supposed to have to do so. We'll see what happens.

It was sad, he brought her into court to testify against me and she was willing to go along with his lies. He claimed that she always wore rags, that he was always buying them clothes, sending them home and I'd throw them away. Unfortunately, for him, I have pictures over the years of the kids at play and they are nicely dressed and not many of them are with the kids in clothes that he bought, because he never bought them many clothes. The only time the clothes were tossed, were when they were ripped past repair. If they outgrew them, I passed them on to another family.

Then he declared that I never taught her anything, etc. and she was willing to lie about that too. I've done my best to keep the kids out of his and my disagreements, but he's dragging her into it and so twisted everything that was ever said or done that she doesn't want to speak to me. I finally got the DA to mention that if I never taught the child anything, then how did she, never having been to school, get A's in 6th grade, placed in 7th when school restarted from Christmas break and she's still making A's. It set the judge back on his heels a little and he thought about that one for a few minutes.

I've had to go to a moderated blog. They have my blog address and messages are being left that aren't nice ones.

On to a happier note. It's getting to be that time of year again. Time to be planning our gardens for the coming planting season(s). Here in the South, we really have 3 seasons. We have the first plantings of winter veggies in Feb/Mar. Then in April we do our spring planting. Then in Aug or so, we start our second winter veggie planting.

I rent and am not allowed to dig up any of the yard for a garden. So I have several 55gal plastic food drums that were cut in half that I plant in. I was looking for a way to plant without going out and buying more stuff - seedling pots, or plants ready to transplant. I found two really great sites for making your own seedling pots from newspaper.

This one is an origami style one, you only need newspaper to make it:
http://www.geocities.com/newspaperpots/

This one is a video that just rolls the paper up around a drinking glass:
http://www.ehow.com/video_1745_create-seed-starting.html

For a great many of us, it's time to start getting those little seeds into containers to be ready for transplanting in the next month or two. So collect your newspaper and start folding/rolling pots.

Remember, if you want to grow organic veggies, don't use potting soil with added fertilizer or pesticides.

Organic Pesticides

Ok, I promised a few notes on pesticides and getting rid of bugs naturally, so here it is.

First off, one of the best things you can do to avoid using pesticides is to not plant too much of the same thing close together. If you have a lot of the same thing planted, it draws the insects to them - sort of like a crowd of people will draw more mosquitos than one lone person (unless you're me, then all bets are off!). If instead of long rows, bunched together of the same fruit or vegie, you'll interplant them, it helps to be able to avoid bugs.

In my Square Foot garden, I would plant a 4 x 4 square of corn - that does need to have plants next to each other, but then, I would plant something in the next 4 x 4 square that wasn't related to the corn family. Perhaps potatoes (which for the record, you can just dump your cut up "eyes" on top of some hay, straw or pine needles, lightly cover with some more of what you're using. As the plant grows, keep adding more of your cover material. When it's time to "dig", you pull up the plant and up comes the potatoes, nice and clean.)

I would only plant 2 or 3 tomato, green peppers, etc in each 4 x 4 square. Since I had 9 squares, I still could have a lot of the same plant, but they were spread out over several large squares.

My fruit trees, I would plant in small groups. Some trees need others to pollinate and bear fruit. But 2 or 3 apple trees isn't an acre of apple trees. The acre will draw more bugs.

The second thing to do is look at your plants each day, when you water them is a good time to look them over, pull any weeds and hand-pick off any critters. I would take a cup that I would cover with my hand as I went around, when I was getting "escapies", I'd go dump them in the chicken pen. (You don't water because of a watering ban at your place - just take the "u joint" off from under your sink and place a bucket under it, or run your rinse water into a dish pan to rinse your dishes; then use that water on your plants. I wouldn't use water that I washed my hands in after using the "facilities". You don't want any possible E-coli or other nasty bugs in your garden. Do not use water from underclothes, diapers or cloth sanitary supplies, but if you're just rinsing food before cooking, rinsing dishes, regular laundry then that water is safe to reuse. Also, I had a fish tank and when I'd change part of the water in it, I'd dump that on the garden too.)

The next thing is to make sure you don't leave any decaying fruits or vegies laying around. The decaying will draw bugs that feed on that particular plant. So pick up windfalls from under your fruit trees, and make sure you don't leave any vegies on the vine/plants that are decaying. Also, mulch any diseased leaves, don't just till it back into the soil near the garden.

Even having done all of this, you will still have some bugs. They are a fact of life. Sometimes you have an infestation in the soil itself. Then we have to get tougher.

There are several products that will cause the bugs problems, but are safe for people and pets, not to mention the earth itself. Here are three websites that will tell you more about different pesticides that work well and are safe :

http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/HGIC2756.htm

http://gardening.about.com/od/gardenproblems/a/OrganicPesticid.htm

http://wiwi.essortment.com/homemadeorgani_renu.htm

I've put the links up to keep from redoing their excellent work.

One other thing is that there are things you can do to draw "good" bugs to your garden. Or you can purchase these and introduce them into your garden. Check out the seed catalogs or Google beneficial insects and you should be able to find places to buy such insects as Lady Bugs, Praying Mantis and other helpers.

Poor soil and Square Foot Gardening

I had a friend write: We have Georgia red clay for soil in our small family garden and are having trouble getting things to grow. Do you have any suggestions for those of us with poor soil conditions?

I lived in North Florida for 16 years. We actually lived closer to the Georgia border than to Tallahassee. So I dealt with that wonderful red clay myself. Also, I grew up near St. Petersburg, FL and dealt with the sandy soil that we had there, too.

Basically the solution to poor soil has these possible remedies - just keep using the poor soil and learn to grow what will grow in it, amend it or replace it.

Keep using it:

There are varieties of plants native to the area where you are trying to grow your own plants. Go to the local Extension Agent and they can tell you what varieties of fruits, vegetable, and flowers will grow well in your area. Planting what grows in your area will be of some help.

The County Extension Agent is a good resource for gardening information. They are sponsored by the State land college and have a lot of free information about everything that grows well in your state. These guys have a degree in agriculture. The ones I have know have been around the block a few times and can teach you anything you want to know about gardening. They even sponsor a "Master Gardener" program. At one time, when I lived in Florida, I was a "Master Gardener". I went through a course of about 8 weeks of intensive training and then could volunteer to work in the office, answering the phones and helping walk-ins with their questions to help out the agent. If I had a question that I didn't know the answer to, I could ask the agent. They can do soil tests, test for nematodes and other pests in your soil and some will send in water samples to be tests (for those who would like their wells tested).

Amend it:

You can and probably should be using a compost heap or bin. However, for myself, I found that my kitchen scraps were being given to the chickens and dog to eat, so there wasn't much left over to compost. We don't drink coffee or tea, so the only thing to compost would have been grass clippings, which I fed to the chickens too. (Boy did we have some NICE eggs!)

At one point, when I didn't have any chickens, I would take my kitchen scraps and dig a hole in the garden and bury it. Waited a couple of months to plant in that area and it was "composed" into the soil.

If you Google compost plans you can find all sorts of information on composting and all sorts of gadgets that you can make to help in the process. Composting is as simple as digging a hole like I did for bits and bobs of scraps; to as complicated as metal drums on a axle that rotate the compost. You can make it as easy/free or as complicated/expensive as fits your style and pocketbook. I'm a single mom, free is all I can afford.

Here are a few sites to start you off:

http://www.solidwastedistrict.com/projects/home_compost.html
http://www.knowledgehound.com/topics/compost.htm
http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/pc/services/home/environ/waste/recycle/compost/compostbins.htm
http://www.bluegrassgardens.com/how-to-build-a-compost-bin.htm

If you have friends that have animals - horses, goats, rabbits, even the chickens, you can also amend the soil with their manure. We had rabbits and chickens and would use that to add to the garden. Also when you clean you fish tank, the water removed will also make a good fertilizer. A note about chicken "poo", unless your putting it on corn, it MUST be allowed to mellow first or it will burn your crops.

Replace it:

First off, my favorite method of gardening is called Square Foot Gardening. I've used this method for years and had great results. Here's Mel's website:
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

Ok, so where does "replace it" as pertaining to soil come into the picture? It's in the way I square foot garden.

We've already established that I have no money and that I like being frugal - it's what allows me to make the most of the money I do have.

So to make my square foot gardens, over the years, I have done several different things.

My first square foot garden was made out of discarded pallets. I worked for the Tallahassee Democrat, the local newspaper. We had broken pallets in a pile and I merely asked permission to haul them off.
I then took the pallets and recycled them using a hammer to separate them into boards. I then buried about 1" or so of the 4' side of the board. The pallets are 4' x 4', the size recommended for the square, which means that the boards were 4' long, so I butted the ends together and I had my "square" for gardening. This was then filled with soil I dug up from where the squares were, along with a few bags of top soil I bought at the garden center mixed in. For 2 "squares", this wasn't costly.

For my next garden, I was living on my own land and by then I had married. My husband worked across the street from a place that made cement blocks. He noticed that there were piles of discarded blocks laying in a pile. They were the cast-offs that had a broken corner, a chip, crack, or other flaw in it. So he asked the owner if he could have them. He'd haul 3 or 4 at a time home in the car or truck. (He only took a few at a time to keep from overloading the car and messing up the axle.)

We then built our 4' x 4' squares out of these blocks. We stacked them with the openings facing up, 2 high. At the time I was pregnant and at that height, I didn't have to bend down quite so far to work the garden. We didn't bother to use mortar to hold the blocks together, we just butted them next to each other and stacked them on top of each other. When we were filling the squares, I also put dirt down the holes in the cinder blocks, giving me some extra space to put plant and the extra weight down the two sides of the block helped stabilize the bricks even more. Surprisingly, this arrangement was very stable. By the time we moved from there, my oldest was 5, loved to work in the garden and we never had any movement in the blocks.

After we got our squares built, we had a dump truck load of top soil/mushroom compost delivered. This was almost 20 years ago so the $5 I paid then is not going to do it now. But I wouldn't think it would be over $30 for a load of dirt, delivered.
This is indeed a lot of dirt. We were able to fill nine 4' x 4' x 24" squares.

How well did this arrangement grow food? Well, we got buzzed by the Drug Enforcement agency. I heard the chopper overhead and looked out the door. He was over the garden at about 50', so I went out and moved the tomato plant over, pull a tomato off and held it up for him to see. Then I went to the green peppers and pulled one off and again showed it to him. He grinned, waved and signaled the pilot and off they went. lol

The nice thing about using the square foot method with the cinder blocks is that I never touched the soil at the bottom of the blocks. I put the cinder blocks down, then simply filled the square with the top soil/compost on top of the ground. I never turned it in, so it wasn't "diluted" with the clay soil.

Time passed and I took my children and left an abusive marriage. By then, we were in north Georgia. Where I live, we're not allowed to dig up any of the ground for a garden, but I can have containers with plants in them. Square Foot gardening continues with 55 gal barrels cut in half. This time, I've had to use some of the local clay-filled dirt. But into it I've mixed vermiculite, top soil and compost from the garden center. This was more expensive, but done over the course of several years, it was manageable. And it has improved the quality of the soil. I've since been able to get 2 barrels that were cut in half filled with dirt and I now plant some herbs, tomatoes, peas and carrots in them. It's not much, but it's nice to have something homegrown.

A very nice thing about Square Foot or intensive gardening is that since you're never walking on the soil, your never compacting it. It's easy to water, easy to see any bugs on your plants which you then pick off the plant (and feed to the chickens lol). And it's easy to replant. You need no special tools to work this garden. No hoes, shovels, rakes, etc. I garden with an old tablespoon and my garden hose.
The garden squares can be done in beds raised up on "horses" (those things construction workers use to prop stuff up with. aka "saw horses".) to accommodate wheelchair uses, or, like my first one, with just boards on the ground. See Mel's book "Square Foot Gardening" for more information and for spacing requirements for each type of plant.

No, I'm not a paid endorser for this method, it's just a system that has worked better than the rototilled, hoed, raked, planted, thinned gardens that I use to try to work.

Tomorrow, I'll discuss organic ways to rid the garden of pests. (Animal/insect types. You're on your own with the neighborhood kids!)