First blood

Only three weeks in and already I'm getting pests. The beans were first. I guess that's appropriate since they were the first to emerge. I don't know the names of pests and I should have taken a picture before I squashed them into their ancestors. But these little worms bite out two small cuts from the edge of the leaf and perpendicular to it. Then they fold the leaf over on themselves for protection. Very clever. Here's a picture after I removed the bugs.

I'm also seeing some leafminers on some of the bean and cabbage leaves. Not sure what to do about that as the pests aren't available to squash like worms.

Here's a very healthy new leaf triplet from one of the bean plants. I picked some eggs off this one, presumably the same pest species that were eating the older leaves.

Last weekend I replanted some of the plants that did not germinate: a couple lettuces, spinach, sorrel, chard, turnip, and one black bean. Still waiting to see the germination rate this time around. I think that maybe I should have started the seeds indoors in June. Then they would have had a bit of a headstart. A week ago Thursday we got a frog-strangler rain that nearly wiped out the tender new seedlings. We got about 2 inches of rain in 45 minutes. The beets were battered; the carrots, creamed; the spinach, splattered...

But most plants seem to have recovered. All in all, the garden looks pretty good.

Suburban diversity

We don't even try to maintain a perfect lawn. I actually like the occurences of the varied species that pop up. Occasionally we get something really interesting, like this Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora) that appears in the fall. It looks like a fungus, but is actually an herbaceous plant that does not have chlorophyll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora

We also get some edible plants, like the Florida betony (Stachys floridana). The white tubers taste kind of like a radish without the bite and are great in salads. The flowers are pretty, too, but this plant is extremely invasive and hard to get rid of -- and so is hated by monoculturists.

http://pubs.caes.uga.edu/caespubs/pubcd/C867-11.htm

There are so many different species that grow in our yard, that I would have a hard time cataloging them all. Many invite pollinators and other benficial insects into the yard. Others provide flowers and textural interest. And so they are welcome, with a few exceptions.

The exceptions:

• Chinese Tallow (Triadica sebifera)-- not aggressive in my yard, but is a real problem in nearby Payne's Prarie.
• Climbing fern (Lygodium japonicum) -- stays in one spot in my yard, but it's an invasive exotic and it keeps coming back.
• Air potato (Dioscorea bulbifera) -- Horrible stuff. Propagates in many ways. Impossible to get rid of. Very evil.

Garden update

One week later, most plants have emerged in the square foot garden. I planted 2 small sage plants, a cabbage plug and an established pepper plant, but all the rest are from seeds. The black tepary beans came up overnight and are already getting big enough that we need to think about getting the trellis ready.

The little photo above is a nasturtium sprout, planted 4 seeds per sqaure foot. Below are beets at 16/sf with spinach (4/sf) in the square behind them.

For lack of something more suitable, I used plastic knives as labels for each sqaure.

List of plants in east box:

• 4 nasturtiums
• 1 sorrel
• 16 beets
• 4 lettuce (2 squares)
• 16 carrots (2 squares)
• 4 spinach
• 4 marigold
• 1 chard
• 16 onions (2 squares)
• 1 brocolli (2 squares)
• 1 sage (2 squares)

List of plants in west box:

• 4 marigolds
• 4 spinach
• 4 turnips
• 4 lettuce
• 1 chard
• 16 beets
• 1 sorrel
• 16 carrots
• 4 nasturtiums (2 squares)
• 1 brocolli
• 16 onions
• 1 cabbage
• 4 black tepary beans (2 squares)
• 1 poblano pepper

Pale Green Things

"Pale Green Things" refers to a song by the Mountain Goats from their Sunset Tree CD. The song is amazing, as are the Mountain Goats. But it in no way describes my life or background -- I just like it. Aside from that song, "pale green things" also refers to our lifestyle. Wendell and I are trying to live green, i.e., making choices which support sustainability of our planet's resources. But we aren't fanatical about it. We are just making hundreds of small decisions which, as a whole, add up to a more economical and healthy lifestyle. So we aren't super-green, just pale green.

A new garden

I'm not a bad gardener. Really. It's just that I've had to deal with not enough sun (I like my trees), marginal soils (sand underlain by clay), not enough time (working mom), etc... But it was time to ramp up my efforts. Take it to the next level.

Last year my husband, Wendell, bought me Mel Bartholomew's book "Square Foot Gardening". At first, I kind of dismissed it as being a nice idea, but probably not something I would do. But after thinking about it, it seemed to combine a lot of my philosophies about gardening: lots of variety in a small area, minimal upkeep, organic methods. So I thought we should give it a try.

The method involves building a raised bed using a mix of peat moss, compost and coarse vermiculite. No native soils -- start from scratch. So we went down to our local recycled building supply store and found some fantastic 4x6 tongue and groove cedar framing members. We bought enough to construct two 4'x4' planter beds that share one common wall. The idea behind the 4'x4' bed is so that all parts of the garden can be reached without walking on, and therefore compacting, the soil. So the two beds, although they are connected, are staggered so that all areas are reachable from the sides.

Finding the peat moss was easy -- any garden supply store sells it. Coarse vermiculite was supplied by my son's girlfriend, Crystal, who works at a garden supply store in Gainesville. I searched high and low for a local source for compost. I compost all of our vegetable scraps from the kitchen and much of our leaf litter from the yard, but I had no where near the 9 cubic feet of compost needed for this project. But the smallest amount of compost that I could buy from a local source was 1 cubic yard. So I ended up buying the bags of Black Kow compost that are sold at Home Depot. It's not certified organic, but it is good quality and all that I could find in our area.

Each 4'x4' box is divided into 16 squares, each to be planted with a different crop. Depending on the size of the plant, each square will be planted with 1, 4, 9, or 16 seeds. Broccoli, for instance will have only one plant per square, but onions can be planted up to 16 per square. Our 12" squares are delineated with screw-eyes threaded with nylon string.

The pavers around the perimeter are so that we can mow around the boxes. We still need to build a support on the north end for the climbing bean plants. Maybe next week.

Materials list for boxes:

• 4"x6" Cedar framing members: ~70 LF
• Angle braces: 16
• Screw eyes: 24
• Nylon string
• Newspaper underneath the boxes for weed suppression
  
• An inch or so of sand to hold the newspapers down (~2.5cf)

Materials list for fill

• Coarse vermiculite: 2 bags (~3.5 cf ea.)
• Black Kow composted manure: 8 - 50 lb bags (~1 cf ea.)
  
• Peat moss: 4 - 2 cf bags
• Homemade compost: ~2 cf

Materials list for border

• sand: ~8 bags
• 16"x16" pavers: 24
• 4"x8" pavers: 28

I have not added up the total cost of this project. Some of the materials we had just lying around, like most of the paver blocks. Whatever the final cost, it will take many, many gardens to break even economically. But that's not really the point of gardening, is it?