New tomatoes and pepper!

The watcher-overers of the garden.

The herb garden. Dill, cilantro, and basil growing nicely.

Updated garden pic with new peppers and sweet potatoes. I have banana, red, yellow, green, and jalapeno peppers.

I had to add a fence and some color to hide the buckets and keep the neighbors happy.

I prefer to do things the hard way. I add all the peat first and had to stir in the rest. Not fun.

Finally the mix started to look right.

70% peat, 20% vermiculite, and 10% perlite makes a good wicking soil.

The Magnifying Glass (I Was Attacked by a Solar Flare)

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing all those new HD pictures of the sun that NASA has taken. The link to see them is http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Gallery/SDOFirstLight.html. Everyone should take a look because they are absolutely incredible. This universe we live in never ceases to amaze me. I am currently most that out of the billions of people on this planet that the large flaming ball in the sky wants to do ME in. It was a beautiful today with a temp in the mid 80’s and a nice breeze coming off the ocean. I woke up this morning with no plans and an enormous desire to “Farm”. I was out in the garden mixing soil for my buckets and constructing new ones for the new plants that have been waiting so patiently for their new homes. I was so focused and on task that I didn’t even notice the solar flare that entered our atmosphere and struck me on my back and shoulders. Now I’m stuck here on my couch too much in pain to move all because I was attacked by a solar flare.

This is me finishing up one of my first four global buckets.

An inside view of a finished bucket. The plastic cup in the bottom has slits in it which will be filled with the wet soil and will wick the water up to the rest of the soil. Below it are some other views.

These are my first four plants that I planted in the buckets. I am excited to see if they do well.

Where are the first two plants I did that day. I only got two planted and then had to finish the rest the next day.

My PH Tester Hates Me

Most of us know that lime goes great with tequila, but most people don’t know that lime, otherwise known as dolomite, doesn’t go with my soil. At least it doesn’t when I use a properly functioning PH tester. I started out my day of gardening by testing the PH of my soil. I was planting tomatoes so I was looking for a PH level between 6.0 and 6.5. After testing the soil I determined that I would need to add about two cups of lime to the soil that I had shoveled into my buckets. I added the lime, mixed the soil well, and retested it. My PH meter read the same as before I added the lime! This sparked a streak of curiosity. I decided to try some other soil that contained rotting mulch, leaves, and some other compost that might make it a little more acidic. The needle on the meter, in an attempt to spite me, stood its ground didn’t budge. Only I would put so much faith in a five dollar PH tester. I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and test it one last time. I inserted it directly into the bag of lime. I was very disappointed to see the needle stay stationary while holding in its laughter. It didn’t even give me a little flicker. I refused to accept defeat at the hands of a contemptible piece of junk. It was time to go and pick up a new, functional, and kind hearted PH tester along with big bag of sulfur. Everything would be alright, but I don’t want to end this by leaving you with the wrong impression; I hate lime in my tequila.

These are photos of the irrigation system that I have set up to excuse me from my daily watering duties. The PVC pipe connects to my well water. It is expandable to as many buckets as I need to water.

If you visited www.globalbuckets.org you will understand this photo. These are the bottom buckets that hold the water.

I have drilled two over flow holes in the bottom buckets so the water will never fill past that level and will prevent root rot.

This is another view of the 1/4 inch tubing entering the bucket.

This is what will be the first line when I complete the top buckets. By using T connectors just after the hose adapter I will expand the system for addition lines. I will have eight buckets per line and hopefully four lines.

Re-post A Garden in the Shade (that damn tree in my backyard!)

Saturday, November 8, 2008

A Garden in the Shade (that damn tree in my backyard!)

I once again have an itch to plant one of those amazing gardens that produce the kinds of rewards worthy of feeding kings. The problem with that is my most recent garden didn't seem to produce much at all. Some people, in last ditch attemps to make me feel better, swore up and down that it was most likely due to the use of bad seeds. I, on the other hand, know exactly what the problem was. The problem began years ago in two places about an hour from each other. One was at house in Robinsdale, Minnesota and the other was at a cabin next to Bass Lake in Webster, Wisconsin. Both places just so happen to be owned by my grandparents.

My grandfather was quite an avid gardener according to the way I recollect things. I can recall helping him dig potatoes, load squash into the wheel borrow, pick beans off the vines, and praying to God that my scorched mouth would cease to burn after I so foolishly came to the belief that jalapeno peppers weren't really all that hot. I can also remember that in the back of the laundry room, which was located in the basement of the their house in Robinsdale, were shelves lined with jars of canned tomatoes, pickle relish, sweet pickles, dill pickles, and hot pickles that gave people a similar sensation to the one I described a moment ago. It was the time I spent in the gardens with my grandfather that gave me the basic knowledge that I needed to one day grow up, turn the soil, fertilize it, sow seed, and harvest the bounty of my labors. You may be asking what was it about all of those experiences that would eventually cause my own garden to be a complete and utter failure. The answer is it all took place in the mild climates of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

My garden lived very briefly and perished in a very self-effacing fashion in the heat magnet of a state we call Florida. The wonderful Florida sun does things to vegetable plants not unlike toast in a toaster that was set at the number five setting. Is the number five setting on the toaster really necessary? It burns everything and leaves you a brick of carbon on which to spread some butter and Jam. There goes that A.D.D thing I was talking about in my first post. Where was I? Oh yes, the wonderful Florida sun. You see, when they collect and package these little seeds they print on the packages words like, "plant in direct sunlight." Nowhere on these packages does it say anything about the magnifying glass that sits just above Florida waiting to burn the plants these seeds are about to become till they are a dull brown colored crunchy substance that disintegrates in to dust when you touch them. There you have it, nearly thirty years of gardening experience thrown into the furnace and reduced to ash because I decided to plant my garden in Florida.

I was left with a number of deceased plants that resembled a cluster of dried up sticks. I decided that I would toss these sticks into the compost pile I had prepared in a very large planter I had built in the backyard. I had never used this planter because of the overgrown ogre of an oak tree that casts its shade over ninety-eight percent of everything that exists back there. It was because of this shade the conditions were perfect for rot making it a perfect place for composting the few blades of grass that grew enough for trimming, the leaves and acorns that hurled themselves down to become an eyesore on the ground, and my garden that was so maliciously killed. For months I stared at the empty trellises out front eventually giving up on the desire to encourage plant growth. Although I cannot recall the exact day I can recall the feeling of utter confusion when I, on a rare occasion, decided to clean up the back yard and seen a cucumber plant extending its self out of the planter that was serving as a containment field for my compost pile. Its bright yellow flowers bellowed out and shinning like stars draped over a green leafy background. I couldn't believe it. In the two percent of my back yard that escaped the clutches of the shade cast down from that monstrosity of an oak tree there grew a beautiful vegetable plant. There was no way I could remove the tree and even if I did I would end up with another dead garden. Then it dawned on me. I knew right then the solution to my gardening enigma; I should grow turnips and beets.