The Garden, Week 2: Watching (and thinking about) Dirt

My little pods of dirt didn't see much action this week. I am supposed to keep them warmish (70-80 degrees) so I stuck them on a heating pad in the kitchen window. We had a few days that topped out at 80ish, so I put them outside on those days.

(Can I take a minute to say this is THE BEST WINTER EVER? Seriously, it's like I'm living in California except with a dramatically lower cost of living! It's 60 or 80 almost every day, it hasn't snowed even ONCE, I have worn my winter coat ONE MORNING and right now I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt. THIS IS AMAZING.)

The lids got very condensation-y, which was satisfying and made me feel as if science-like things were going on. To my great surprise, they actually sprouted this week, on day 4! Not all of them, but SOME of them.

Just look at that! I grew something! And now that they're alive I find I am consumed with panicky thoughts about how I'll probably manage to kill every single one before I plant them in the yard. (This is why I planted 72 seedlings. A few should survive, right? RIGHT?)

This was all very good news but it is very boring to spend time looking at dirt and fretting about toothpick-sized plants dying. What I tried to spend my time on last week was figuring out where the garden is going to live in the yard. We have two trees and a large Maple next door that shade most of the space. The house faces SE/NW, so we do get some decent sun, but these three trees combine to make sure that no patch gets full sun, all day long.

Here, I drew you a picture, because writing that was super boring and I am pretty sure that even if you READ it, you still have no idea what my yard looks like.

See? There's not really a good spot to put the garden. If I were to get rid of that Bradford Pear (a totally crappy tree if there ever was one: they split easily, rarely live longer than 30 years [ours is about 20 years] and have a shallow root system) the whole left THIRD of the yard becomes a prime garden area. Plenty of space and sunshine for all of my vegetable dreams.

I called a tree dude and he said he'd remove BOTH trees, grind stumps and haul it all away for $550, which sounds pretty freaking cheap to me. I would like to just ditch the Bradford Pear for now, since Charlotte's swing is in the Magnolia tree and this is a nice baby-containment-device for when Claire and I play outside. (Which is every single day, as winter never really arrived to this part of Texas.)

Once it gets hot and/or Charlotte starts to walk (imminent!) the Magnolia will have outlived its usefulness to me and then it can go. (I've mentioned before about how it was planted too close to the patio and the leaves ohmygod THE BOAT-LIKE LEAVES I hate this tree.)

Now that I had imagined myself a sunny area of yard, I was trying to decide if I should dig up a section of yard to put the tomatoes in or if I should do one of those fancy raised beds, like this:

Source: ana-white.com via Brooke on Pinterest

 

But, that looks like a lot of work and it also means I have to figure out where to buy quality dirt and then have the dirt delivered and something tells me that even though it's just DIRT it is probably kind of expensive. Digging up the yard sounds....simpler, somehow. 

THEN I went down a rabbit hole about the Mittleider Gardening Method and I was all, "Chris! WE SHOULD DO THIS! HIGH YIELD HYDROPONIC WHOOZITS!" but after reading I think it's a lot more work than I am willing to put forth. I am already wondering how to build cages for the tomatoes and keep our flock of neighborhood bunnies away from my tasty vegetables. While the Mittleider Method provides very specific instructions (which I am a HUGE fan of) I think it's too many instructions, even for me. 

After that, I decided I had not spent enough time worrying about my seedlings for the day, so I bought a clamp light and a grow light bulb. Seedlings inside are supposed to get 14-16 hours of sunlight/day because (I think?) the quality of light isn't as good as the actual sun so they need more of it. I'm not sure if these were The Best or The Right things to buy, but I bought them because the only window that gets direct sun only gets it for about 2 hours a day and I figured something is better than nothing.

Comments

[Jesabes]

Man, so many things to think about. This is why I don't garden. I am going to be SO jealous of your tomatoes, though.

[Jenny B]

We bought these raised bed corner thingys even though they were kinda pricey because we are the least handy builder people ever. Then we bought lumber that didn't fit. So now I have anxiety that I still haven't started my garden when everyone else has. But the raised corner things seem like a good idea.

[Jenny B]

Um that link didn't work: http://www.gardeners.com/Aquacorner-%238482%3B-Raised-Bed-Soaker-System%2C-12%22-Corners/40-216,default,pd.html?SC=YNA7200A

[Home Sweet Sarah]

Dude, you know when you see Free Dirt signs on the side of the road? THERE'S A REASON. That said, my Chris found a really nice dirt-ery (as we call it) and got a whole truck bed-full for something like $30. I bet you can find something like that.

[Holly]

My neighbor that grows every vegetable known to man, and year-round to boot - there is still much bounty even right now - uses raised beds. He's also a contractor, so building said beds was easy peasy. He also does drip irrigation so as not to waste water and water more effectively. They look quite nice really.

[Mia B]

In droughty-land like OK (where I am) and TX, raised beds are harder to keep watered adequately, so I go with in-ground wide raised rows to pack in the most bang for my buck. Last year was my first big garden and I learned a lot, and I was so proud to get anything during that hellacious summer of doom. I like the Internet to tell me what to do, too, so you should check out GardenWeb, especially the Oklahoma Gardening forum (which gets a lot of action, you can check for a TX forum but I don't know how much participation there is) as conditions are similar and we accept all comers. I have a smallish garden this year since we just moved, and will be planting in my own version of Jeavons Biointensive method, which is based on French Biointensive techniques. More veg in less space.

Note about siting - in our super hot sunny climate, your garden may benefit for late afternoon shade. All those recommendations in books and seed packets for "full sun" seem to be for people in New England, with weak, wimpy sun. Check your yard every couple of hours for the day and see where the shade moves, and think about siting your garden where it gets good most-of-the-morning-and-early-part-of-the-afternoon sun. Long summer days mean at least 6-8hrs of sun for your veggie garden is good. Gardens that get 12 hrs of TX/OK sun can fry like bacon. My garden got sun from about 9 or 10 am until about 5pm. I didn't want to remove a lot of shade trees, because they shade the house and keep the a/c bills down.