March 27, 2006

About Dirt

It finally warmed up enough to get a spade into my garden so I decided to send some of my soil away to be tested. For a mere $13 (plus postage) I will get results back that tell me my soil pH as well as the amount of organic matter, if I have lead and how I'm doing in terms of various nutrient levels. The best thing is that the results will include recommendations for what to add to make my soil better.

I mailed my envelope of dirt this morning and I am incredibly excited about it. Every time you read a seed packet, the planting instructions include what kind of soil conditions the plant thrives in. Other gardeners are often talking about what to add to the soil to make it better but, until you (I) know what my soil is actually like I think its hard to know what pieces of advice to take. This is especially important because "over-fertilization" is a problem that can cause all sorts of plant disorders, not to mention water pollution. Its kind of like eating too many carrots (which my dad did once and yes, he turned orange) causing something good for you to become something toxic and overwhelming. I plan to use compost mostly which has fewer risks but, it would be good to know if my soil could really use some extra goodies. "Amendments" is the word I've heard for stuff you add to your soil to improve it but, I'm not enough of a garden geek to start using words like that. First of all it might make me seem like I know more than I do and secondly, no one else would know what I was talking about.

Most people add lime to adjust the pH and just about any garden center sells bags of powdery stuff that add nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. All organic. I bought a bag last year but, I didn't really know what I was doing so I hardly used it. They come with numbers on them that tell you what amount of each of the nutrients they are adding but, I still haven't figured them out.

Another popular approach to improving your garden soil is to add worm poop. I am not kidding. There were several well attended workshops on this at the gardening event I went to a week ago and the people who practice "Vermiculture" -- as its called -- are dead serious. The pro-worm propaganda (which I basically buy) is that worms have this amazing ability to turn decomposing food and vegetable matter into really wonderful and nutrient-rich stuff that comes out in their poop. So, if you want some exceptional garden soil you should just adopt some worms, feed them and put all their poop in the garden. Does anyone else remember Oscar the Grouch's pet worm Slimey? Its kinda like that. I'm not ready to keep worms but, it is true that the best and most universally admired gardener at my community garden (everyone says so) is a friend of the worm.

Here is some more info on garden soil from PBS if you're interested.

March 20, 2006

Hanging with the Gardeners

Life has been a little hectic and I haven't made much progress on my garden plan. I decided to add carrots, turnips, lima beans and onions to my list of plants for the garden and I bought seeds for most of these to start growing them indoors. I even purchased a cheap plastic greenhouse and some little discs of 'growing medium" that grow into columns when you add water.

I spent all day Saturday volunteering at a small citywide gardener's convention (the mayor even came). I got some lettuce seeds out of that and I got to spend a lot of time with some very nice people from my gardening class who were the majority of the volunteers. Some of my fellow students received certificates of completion for the class but, I've got a bunch of classes to make up before I can get one of those. It was really interesting sitting around with a whole crew of people obsessed with gardening. A couple of them were headed straight to the flower show once they were done volunteering and they were sooo glad that it was open until 9PM.

March 8, 2006

That's Intense!

in·tense (n-tns)
adj. in·tens·er, in·tens·est
  1. Possessing or displaying a distinctive feature to an extreme degree: the intense sun of the tropics.
  2. Extreme in degree, strength, or size: intense heat.
  3. Involving or showing strain or extreme effort: intense concentration.
    1. Deeply felt; profound: intense emotion.
    2. Tending to feel deeply: an intense writer
in·ten·sive (n-tnsv)adj.
  1. Of, relating to, or characterized by intensity: intensive training. See Usage Note at intense.
  2. Relating to or being a method especially of land cultivation intended to increase the productivity of a fixed area by means of an increase in capital and labor.
Just when I think I am starting to know what I'm doing/talking about with this gardening thing something new presents itself and my brain aches with lack of understanding. Sometimes I feel like an alien on a new planet.

I wasn't able to attend Gardening School this past Saturday but, I knew they were going to talk about how to plan a vegetable garden so I tried to read the manual. The manual for the class is really designed to be a supplement to the classes so although its an enormous looseleaf binder that appears to be chock full of info, it doesn't tend to answer all my questions or explain things very thoroughly. While reading I came across the concept of intensive gardening. The basic gist is to get more out of a small space. All at once I realized that one of the things that really made my garden less impressive and less productive than some of my community garden neighbor's last summer is the fact that they were carefully employing these methods and I wasn't. The big eye opener for me was the fact that the space requirements listed on the backs of seed packages are designed for some kind of professional grower with lots of space and a need for neat rows of crops that you can water and fertilize and weed with machines! If you're like me and gardening in a little trapezoidal plot in a community garden you really should be squishing things as much as you possibly can and its not wrong to do that....its just intense!

This is actually very exciting news! The challenge now is that I have to re-do the garden planning I've done based on these new "intensive methods" which include things like companion planting, interplanting, vertical planting, succession planting and so forth (square foot gardening is one of these too). That means I need to know what these techniques are first and then how to use them. It probably won't be as hard as I am thinking because I've been dutifully ogling other people's garden plots for 2 years now but, I am a little intimidated.

Basically, I need to re-figure how much space everything really needs and then see if I have room for more stuff. The manual sort of implies that intensive gardening isn't really for everyone and it might be best to start slowly. Why would that be? Will I screw something up if I do it wrong? The manual also makes it sound like you need to either use one of these methods or not, as if halfway is not an option. Why is that? Is this extreme gardening, as in not for the weak willed or faint of heart? What's the big deal? Clearly, I am confused. I guess I'll just try to do some reading and see what I can figure out.