Our Garden Plan

I started plotting out the garden beds with pen and paper, then tried a spreadsheet and while each worked just fine, I was thrilled to come upon this garden planning software.  It is super easy to learn, filled with helpful information, and customizable to your particular climate.  It even has good information about companion planting and crop rotation.  I measured out our front and back yards, plugged the data into the software and went to town.  Looking at our yard in this way actually helped us to identify more areas we could use for our edible garden.

This is the plan for our front yard:

This is the back yard:

The program also provides really helpful information about when to start indoors/outdoors and has room for personal notes.

 

I know the text of these images is likely to small to read, but hopefully you get the idea. We are growing the basics, tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and trying a few more uncommon items like rutabaga and kohlrabi.

We measure our growing area in feet rather than acres, and have been inspired by the idea of square foot gardening.  I don't think we fall under the umbrella of a true square foot gardener, but we are growing most of our plants more tightly spaced than traditional recommendations.  We will know is several months how this pans out!

A day in the life of a seed

 I've started plants from seeds a handful of times, but watching them come to life makes me giddy.  There is nothing, then poof, there is life!  I wrote about starting our second batch seeds just last week.  We started them on Wednesday evening.  When I went to bed on Saturday night there were containers of dirt and a dream.

On Sunday at 7 am we had this:

At Noon, we had this:

At 10pm, we had this:

And this morning I awoke to this (well and a hungry kid):

It's a great way to start the week!  Grow seeds grow.

Our Seed Selections

Just before Christmas I stumbled upon a great blog Northwest Edible Life.  It is full of useful information for urban gardeners and it is written with just the right sense of humor for my taste.  We were deep in the seed selection process and actually experience stress over it when I read this post.  It takes a very even handed and thoughtful approach to seed selection.

The bulk of our seeds came from Botanical Interests for no other reason that their selection was ample without being overwhelming and their seeds packets are beautiful and contain a lot of very useful information about growing each plant.  We also purchased several seed packets from Totally Tomatoes.  They offered a better selection of hybrids that we wanted as well as several larger variety tomatoes.  We also have several seeds left from Cornucopia Seeds that I bought at our local Ace Hardware when we were rushing the calendar to get a garden in last fall.  In all, this is what our seed selection looks like.

Seed	Year	Source	Notes
Arugula Rocket Salad	2013	Botanical Interests
Basil-Large Leaf Italian	2012	Botanical Interests
Beans-Blue Lake	2012	Cornucopia
Beans-Improved Tendergreen	2012	Cornucopia
Beans-Trio	2013	Botanical Interests	Bush bean yellow, green, purple
Beet-Early Wonder Tall Top	2012	Cornucopia
Beet-Ruby Queen	2012	Cornucopia
Beet-Early Wonder	2013	Botanical Interests
Beet-Gourmet Blend	2013	Botanical Interests	Variety of colors
Borage	2013	Botanical Interests	An edible flower that helps attact lots of bees
Buckwheat	2013	Botanical Interests	A type of green manure to grow and turn back into the soil
Carrot-Calliope Blend	2013	Botanical Interests	Multi Colored Carrots
Carrot-Little Finger	2012	Cornucopia
Carrot-Tendersweet	2012	Cornucopia
Chive	2013	Botanical Interests
Cilantro	2012	Botanical Interests
Cucumber-Lemon	2013	Botanical Interests
Cucumber-Orient Express II	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Dill	2013	Botanical Interests
Eggplant-Hansel Hybrid	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Kale-Italian Lacinato	2013	Botanical Interests
Kohlrabi-Purple White	2013	Botanical Interests
Leek-American Flag	2013	Botanical Interests
Lettuce-Buttercrunch	2012	Cornucopia
Lettuce-Mesclun Farmers Market Blend	2013	Botanical Interests
Onion-Flat of Italy	2013	Botanical Interests
Oregano	2013	Botanical Interests
Parsley	2012	Botanical Interests
Pea-Super Sugar Snap	2013	Botanical Interests
Pepper-Big Chile	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Pepper-Cayenne Purple	2013	Totally Tomatoes	A free packet that came with our order
Pepper-La Bomba Hybrid	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Pepper-Rainbow Blend Bell	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Radish-Cherry Belle	2013	Botanical Interests
Radish-Easter Egg Blend	2013	Botanical Interests
Rutabaga	2013	Botanical Interests
Sage	2013	Botanical Interests
Spinach-Correnta Hybrid	2012	Cornucopia
Squash-Easypick Zucchini	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Squash-Sunny Delight Scallop	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Swiss Chard-Bright Lights	2013	Botanical Interests
Swiss Chard-Fordhook	2012	Cornucopia
Thyme	2013	Botanical Interests
Tomato-Big Zac	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Tomato-Brandywine Red/Yellow	2012	Botanical Interests	These did not produce well in 2012, but they were SO tasty.  It's worth another go.
Tomato-Goliath	2013	Totally Tomatoes
Tomato-Heirloom Cherry Blend	2013	Totally Tomatoes	A free packet that came with our order
Tomato-Supersweet 100	2012	Botanical Interests	Bite size goodness in plentiful amounts.  Perferct for the smalls to eat off the plant.
Turnip	2013	Botanical Interests

Sowing the Seeds of Love

Forgive the painfully dated homage to the pop music of my youth...  wow did I love that song.

It's mid-January and we have started seeds for several of our selections indoors, namely tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and onions.  Most pepper, tomato, and eggplants recommend starting indoors 8-10 weeks before the last probable frost which is mid April for us.  We should have nice plants to transplant when  it is time.  There are a variety of ways to start seeds and we opted to get a grow lamp , a heat mat, and a thermostat to help get the little guys off to the best start possible.  Other than the seeds and these items we tried to re-purpose items before they hit the trash or recycling bin.

Egg cartons made a great way to start onions.  From what I've read, they can be a bit finicky to start from seed so I way over planted what we need.  It may seem silly to have the white table cloth as we did, but it helped to track down wayward seeds that otherwise would be lost against the backdrop of the table.

For the tomatoes and peppers we used berry containers and cut off bottle bottoms from sparkling water.  The berry containers had holes, but we had to punch holes in the water bottle bottoms for water drainage.

Watering new seedlings requires a more delicate touch so the seeds do not get displaced.  This water can was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest or the inter webs somewhere and it does a fine job.  It's another water bottle with small holes drilled into the top.  I leave it right next to the seeds and water as needed when I check on them throughout the day.

Until the seeds start to germinate, they don't require sunlight and can benefit from a cover to help keep the environment damp.  I used cake and pan lids we have on hand.

With all these seeds it's was imperative to keep track of what is what.  I pre-printed labels that we will use with seed information and days to harvest.  Then on planting day we wrote the date and the number of seeds that we planted.  This will help us gauge how readily our plant choices this year germinate.  This one is a pepper, a variety called La Bomba from Totally Tomatoes.  We planted 11 seeds on 1/24.

 

Germination, it typically takes place withing 7-10 days of planting, but as I learned today, don't give up too soon.  These seeds were planted two weeks ago and check out this little sprout that is popping up.  Look closely on the bottom between the two established seedlings.  He's there!

 

We are well on our way to a sizable edible garden for this spring and summer and these little sprouts are a welcome reminder that spring is just around the corner.  We have our seed nursery in our front room.  While we could have put it in a less visible place, this ensures they get attention throughout the day and that we get to see things right as they sprout.  The smalls get a big kick out seeing what grows each day and so far they have resisted the temptation to play in our indoor dirt.

Why this is important to me

I sometimes wonder what my 92 year old grandfather would think about this urban homesteading concept.  Now it's a movement that is outside the mainstream, but gaining momentum.  For much of his generation it was just a part of life.  What is taking me hours of reading and research was likely common knowledge.  Now many of us are craving that experience of growing our own food and of being part of the food cycle rather than just a consumer.

I know some people do it for hobby, some to rage against consumerism, some for fear of impending doom, and some just because they want to know more about where their food comes from.

I do it for my smalls.

I do it so we have something meaningful and productive to be a part of together.  They help and in doing so are valued and productive members of our little family.  We tinker around together in the front yard, find bugs, name birds, and even talk to our neighbors.

Over the last few days we have made tremendous progress in the front yard.  Robbie and Victoria helped to move much from the driveway up to the yard.

And before we finished up, Victoria stopped to check on and even sample the spinach. 

One of my biggest struggles as a parent is not knowing if I am making the right choices.  Am I helping my children build a foundation that will serve them well as adults?  Am I raising them in such a way that they'll want to visit when they grow up?  I think this little project is good for all of us and what we reap will extend far beyond what we've sown in the soil.

We grew this!

Just one month after planting seeds, we had enough to make this delicious little salad!

It was a combination of a first cut off our mixed greens and the leaves of the beets that needed to be thinned.  We even had a few end of the season tomatoes to complete it.  Even the smalls enthusiastically tried our salad.  I don't think they actually ate any lettuce, but the didn't scoff at it either so I'll call it a good day.

A winter garden

We are fortunate to live in an area that has remarkably mild weather and this fall provided ample warmth and sunshine to start a winter garden even in late September.  With the one of the beds finally built and filled with dirt, I headed out to see what we could find in terms of seeds.

I started to head down that route of obsession and over researching, but having the kids in tow while shopping and running out of time to get things in the ground pushed me to be decisive.  I settled on two types of beets, two varieties of carrots, mixed greens, arugula, parsley, cilantro, lettuce, chard, green onions, and spinach.  I planted, watered, and watched. and watched and watched and watched.  Here is how things looked just about a month after planting.

It was too late in the season for winter crops like broccoli, but we happened upon O'Donnells Fairfax Nursery. The guy who helped was a super enthusiastic about gardening and the nursery ground were full of plants in all sorts of arrangements and containers.  It was inspiring.  He still had a handful of starts so we picked up some broccoli, romanesco, and kale.  It meant getting a second box together quicker than we planned, but we did it.