Gardening in Missouri

2015 garden plan with nice pictures

2015-02-02T09:40:00.001-08:00

This year i'm trying out a new gardening method called the Mittleider method. It's a method of using synthetic fertilizers with natural minerals to get maximum yield. At first I was a bit hesitant to use synthetic fertilizers but since i've gotten into hydroponics i've changed my mindset a little. For me, the main focus is to stay away from herbicides and pesticides. So we'll see how it works out.

As a note, i'm not following it perfectly, because the method wants me to move my beds farther apart (which I will do if we ever move to another house, and if it does awesome I might do it here too). So instead of following it perfectly I'm planning on doing companion planting to help keep down on bugs (one of the benefits in the Mittleider method's spacing between beds is to cut down on bugs). So it's not a perfect example, honestly the Mittleider method is a lot easier since u generally plant one plant per area of your garden.

I used a crazy tool that I wrote myself (with the help of some starter js) which you're welcome to use, but I warn you that if you don't know javascript really well it'll only be soo useful. http://jsfiddle.net/BmLLh/77/

To use, you just click the 2" or 4" or 36" etc to get a circle that is the size of the plant you want to plant, and then you can drag it around. It's setup to be 4' by 5' (1/2 of my 4x10 beds) which was perfect for my needs. If you know css you can change the size, if you know javascript you can add more spacing circles.

Here's a few pictures of my grow beds for this year.

Bed 1 - Contains my tomato guild (which I'm having twice in 1 bed). Tomato, Lettuce, Potato onion, carrot, radish, kale, beet, nasturtium, spinach, thyme, and basil. All work nicely together for keeping down on bugs and helping one another.

Bed 2 - Cucumber and celery guild and my pea (mostly potatoes though) guild. Cucumber guild: cucumber, beans, celery, kale, chinese kale, spinach, nasturtium, rosemary. Pea guild: onions, peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, marigolds

Bed 3 - Contains my Corn and Winter Squash guild and my Zucchini and bean guild. Corn Guild: sunflower, butternut squash, corn, lettuce, and spinach. Squash Guild: squash, zucchini, fenugreek, beans, radishes, marigolds, rutabaga, spinach.

These are beds 4-6, note, 1/2 of each of these beds currently has garlic in them, so i'm just showing the other half of each. Really each of these are just a continuation of the bed before it

Bed 4 - Another Tomato guild

Bed 5 - Another Pea guild

Bed 6 - Another squash guild

The hardest part of this will be planting :), but it should cut down on weeds and bugs. We'll see how it works out, and hopefully next year be doing the full mittleider method to see how it compares.

Also this year I plan on making some videos of the garden to show how it progresses, so stay tuned.

Total Plant count:

Lettuce - 33 plants
Onions - 70
Peas - 24
Chinese Kale - 16
Kale - 13
Potato - 60
Spinach (and Arugula for some of them) - 109 (probably overkill)
Rosemary - 2
Marigold - 22
Beets - 24
Carrot - 27
Potato Onion - 24
Radish (some will be random carrots) - 226
Tomato - 15
Beans - 17
Thyme - 6
Turnips - 40 (these will become 40 Rutabaga in fall)
Basil - 3
Celery - 19
Nasturtium - 5
Sunflower - 3
Corn - 16
Cucumber - 4
Fenugreek - 10
Butternut Squash - 2
Squash - 3
Zucchini - 3

Yardlong Beans from Seed to plate

2014-07-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

Growing the Beans

This year (and last year) I planted Yardlong Beans. These are basically your normal green beans, but they grow to be 18-24 inches long (or so). Last year I planted them with the express purpose of saving seeds. I only had a few seeds, and it worked out great. We had hundreds of seeds left over and this year planted those seeds.

In the planting I planted 1 row about 7 feet long, and I just put several beans in the small canal in the dirt and covered them up. I then put up some $10 metal posts from lowes on either side, and used some twine to make a little fence for them to grow up. It works pretty well, except they like to climb up poles rather than working up the fence, so they spin around things instead of moving up the fence. But it's ok, a little training and they've done really well.

That's about 7' wide, notice they like to climb up the hoophouse
posts rather than growing up the fence. Next year i'll use all posts

I also noticed that in my other garden plot a few seeds must have gotten dropped in because about 10 or 15 plants started growing, about 3ft across or so. I had a few eletrical conduit posts (I used in my greenhouse post earlier to hold down the plastic), so I just stuck them in the ground about 2 feet apart in the middle of the beans, and the beans have done extremely well climbing up the 2 posts as a group. The posts are 10 feet tall, and today a few of the plants have almost reached the top.

Notice they're within a foot or 2 from the top,
that's at least 8 feet up (1 or 2 feet in the ground).
These seem like the easiest way to grow these,
and 5 or 10 on a poll doesn't seem hurt them.

About 1 or 2 weeks ago they started growing flowers. They grow flowers in groups of 2 pointing away from eachother making a little V. These flowers then turn into small green sticks that continue to grow for a few days until they're 20 inches long or so. They turn lighter green when they're ready, and turn brown and dried out when they're ready to have their seeds saved.

These are the flowers, the beans just start
growing out of these after a few days.

Today's Harvest 7/19/2014

Today we didn't have a vegetable for dinner (the kids were so disappointed) so I decided to go pick whatever beans were ready. I got out there and was pretty surprised to find 41 beans ready to pick. Now if these were normal green beans then 41 beans wouldn't be any big deal, but these are yardlong beans. I weighed them (after removing the top and bottom) and they came out to 15.84 ounces. So basically 1 pound of beans for dinner. Not too shabby :)

While picking I only picked the larger beans, so we'll see how many i get and how often, but for only 11 ft x 1ft (1 row) these things make for a great harvest. If anyone in the St Louis area is interested in any seeds for next year I should have plenty :).

Ignore the socks :), but these are the beans.
That's a yardstick next to them to show how long they get.

Here's the end so it's easier to see the numbers, notice
they're all about the 20 - 24 inch mark
(though the tops aren't perfectly lined up).

Update - Today's Harvest 7/22/2014

Today we did another harvest. 18.02oz (1lb 2.02oz). There are a few that are a little over age wize, they're yellow, must have missed them last time. And there are plenty of small ones still out there. But this is today's harvest. Not bad, last harvest was 3 days ago so it seems like so far there is 1 lb every 3rd day. I'll keep updating as we go.

Update - Today's Harvest 7/24/2014

Today we did another harvest. 9.5 oz

Garlic Update - 2nd year for Martin Heirlooms, 1st year for Music

2014-07-12T18:36:00.000-07:00

This year I got Music Garlic planted, and Martin Heirlooms. This is the 2nd year for the martin heirlooms. These cloves are about 2/3rds the size of normal cloves on the larger blub sizes. The music garlic on the other hand is looking really nice.

These are the martin heirloom bulbs. Note i have tons of cloves, and
am only keeping 10 of the biggest cloves so if anyone else is
interested let me know :) (before next year)

I'm going to run a test to see if i can pull the cloves out of the garlic heads and they can still last til september/october for planting. So i'm pulling apart 2 heads.

Here's pics of the latest. I'll update this thread later this year or next when i know how they grow.

I'm also hoping to plant these ones close together so i can see if they're smaller on average. If they're the same basic size this means that i can pull the largest cloves each year and they don't have to hang there for months.

The cloves were about the same size, which
is good, but the heirlooms hopefully will get
bigger this next year. They also hold more
cloves, 5 for music, 7 for MH

Notice how much larger the music cloves are on the left, vs the younger heirlooms on the right. Hopefully next year they'll both be the same size :)

How to build a grapevine trellis

2014-05-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

It's supposed to be a really windy weekend, and I looked outside and sure enough the small 6ft steaks i've been using to "trellis" my grapevines are blowing all over the place in the wind. It's been this way for a few days, but what can I say i'm lazy :).

Well today I finally decided to not be lazy, and I finally put together my grapevine trellis, and I must say it's working great.

Steps:

Step 1 - is to go to your local "buy all your home goods" store (lowes), and buy

4x4 outdoor post 6ft tall - you need 2 of these, one for each side.
4 eye screws (they're basically just screws with loops on the end)
200 feet of bailing wire (or multi-purpose wire), I got 16 gauge stuff, and 200 feet isn't important, just so long as you have "enough"
2 of These bad boys (these were where I was being lazy, and i'm really really happy it did) - If you don't get these, then get 9ft or 10ft tall posts above, and a shovel, and a strong back :).
2 Turnbuckles - I found these at lowes and just bought the biggest ones they had. These help tighten up the wires

Step 2 - hammer in "those bad boys". Give your plant at least 3 or 4 feet and hammer the posts in, try and get it straight up and down. I would recommend getting a 6 inch piece of 4x4 wood so that you can sledge hammer it in easier.

Step 3 - Put the posts in, and screw them in.

Step 4 - Now it's time to use the eye screws, I used 4 so I could make 2 lines of wire, but you could easily do 3 lines, up to u (i might even add another one myself, it's pretty easy). If you do 3 lines, make sure to get 3 turnbuckles.

Step 5 - Add the wire, and the turnbuckles. I made the turnbuckles near one of the posts, but i'm sure it doesn't actually matter.

Step 6 - Tie the grapevines to the trellis, I used small pieces of bailing wire, and didn't make them very tight. The 16 gauge is thick enough that I'm not too worried about them digging into the vines, but I also made them pretty loose.

Step 7 - Enjoy :), though if you're like me the next step is to find a good way to add netting to protect against birds.

Best Pictures I could take:

Notice the loops if you can see them. Also see that I kept the
old posts I had and just tied them to the wire.

Update - Seeds, Garlic, and mint tea

2013-07-21T18:17:00.003-07:00

Well, it's been an eventful summer here on my little garden. The Zucchini I tried I put out too early and it got bitten, and hasn't done well at all. I'm ready to pull it out when the next flower just drops off.

I ate my first 12in long bean, which was probably a bit early even for it, these things are supposed to get really long.

I picked out all my garlic, let me see if I have a picture somewhere:

I can't stress how helpful these greenhouse posts have been. They're perfect for hanging the garlic to dry, and also nice for reaching the middle of my raised beds without stepping on the dirt. Very very awesome. Notice the garlic bulbs are a little sad, but still it's the first year i've ever tried it, and I put them in late. Hopefully this years will be better :).

I got out several multiplier onions, all ranging from about ping pong ball to a small baseball size. Looking forward to putting the ones that last the winter back in in the spring. A few that came from seed have grown, a couple that look pretty nice, i'll try and grow them all next year to see if any of them are promising.

The lettuce has finally gone to seed, and i've gotten about 200 black seeded simpson seeds so far from 1 plant, we'll see how many i get total, it's not slowing down. I also got about 100 romaine lettuce seeds, we'll see if they mix at all. I'm going to plant them pretty soon when I get the zucchini out.

I planted some new kale seeds in the front where there's a lot of shade, we'll see how they do in the summer. I was planning on planting another plant or so every week to see when the best time to plant kale is in my yard, I'm hoping to get as much kale as possible :). I'll keep this updated with pictures and all that in it's very own post as things progress

I got some more basil and cilantro planted out in the front yard. The mint in the front yard is growing well, and one of them isn't, it's odd. But today I picked some mint, about 5 or 6 sprigs, and boiled them in a few cups of water to have my first herbal tea from the mint. It's pretty good stuff, with just a little honey.

I'll keep everyone updated with images and all that, but it's been a while since my last post.

Garlic Scapes :) and Garlic flowers

2013-06-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

My Martin's Heirloom Garlic bulbils have been growing really well, and pretty much all of them have scapes (well, they did until I cut them all off and attempted to make garlic scape pesto).

I've been reading up how to get garlic to go to seed (not a normal process, normally they go to bulbils or whatever it's called). I decided to take a few pictures of the process.

One of the things that I've found is that scapes are smaller than i thought, they're a little bigger than a spagetti noodle, but not much. The heads at the end are about the size of an eraser when I pulled off the outer protecting and began pulling the bulbils out 1 by 1. It's a hard process, especially with the mosquitoes, and often ends up in a few of the flower heads falling off. But in the end the bulbils are plucked out and the flowers are left so that they can grow and become seeds. I'm hopeful that they'll get better and better about going to flower so that i won't have to pull the bulbils out as much.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Here you can see the scapes on all the garlic. Note that
because they're bulbils i've been able to place them very very close together.

This is what it looks like before I start pulling
off the bulbils. I have to cut through the outer
protective layer, and then pluck off the bulbils
one by one.

See how small those little flower buds are? it's difficult to remove the
bulbils without pinching out the flowers as well.

This is the finished product. There might be 1 or 2 bulbils deep in
there, hopefully some of the flowers still go to seed.

All in all it takes me about 5 minutes or so a garlic scape. I've done about 9 of these, and I left on 4 or 5 to grow to bulbils and the rest I cut off to make pesto out of. It's been a fun little project.

Pictures from the garden, early 2013 - radishes, onions,blueberries, and beets (going to seed)

2013-05-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, I just wanted to get together a bunch of the photos i've been taking here and there in the mornings as I wander round the garden.

Newly planted blueberry bush from lowes (it's now got some
blueberries on it, though i'm not sure if i should pick them off or not, i'll have to look)

My other new blueberry bush

This is a new method i'm trying (lots of work, but it's fun). The cardboard holds the cups steady, and they're inside a normal black planter box. These cups have been growing really really well for me. At some point i'll show you the tomato plants downstairs. These are green peppers, sage, and daisies.

Radishes always do great :). You can see some of the red bulbs
if you zoom into the picture. I'm going to leave as many as I can,
6 or 8, to go to seed so i can get radish sprouts. Sorry about the shadow :) it's early morning

The spinach is starting to come up. Will have to
thin them a little when I find out which ones are the strongest

I'm happy with the shallots, they're doing well.

This shallot only has 1 onion, but it's the largest stalk by far.
It's even got a little scape growing on it (that's what it's called
for garlic :) not sure what it's called for onions)

these 3 beets are getting ready to start the year

Notice this picture a week or so after the one before,
it's growing well. These are beets in their 2nd year going to seed.

This is what the early stages of a beet flower looks like. The beets
are full of these little flower heads getting ready to burst. Should
get plenty of seeds out of these 3 beets.

How to grow sunflower sprouts

2013-02-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

I like to watch youtube videos on how to grow stuff, and about a week or so ago i was watching a particular video about how to sprout sunflower seeds, and so I decided to try it out. I tried last year only to grow a bunch of mold and so I had given up, but this particular video gave me a new idea, and so I tried it out :) i'm glad I did.

I only currently have photos of my sprouts that are basically to the eating point (though they're a bit of work right now to pull of the shells I still am to impatient to wait). I'll try and get photos of every step so you know what to expect day after day.

I used normal bird seed here, they're ridiculously cheap. Since these are so good, i'm going with Raw Shelled Sunflower seeds from amazon so that I can start cutting them as soon as they start to get tall enough.

Note, I've hand picked this ad thing below it's the sprouter I use, and the one they mention on here. I've heard for several people that this is the best, and it's proven to be very very nice. So i'd recommend getting it. Amazon might be cheaper, but I highly recommend getting it.

Note on this video, skip to 24 minutes or 25 minutes in. The growing your greens guy likes to ramble on. I enjoyed the whole video, but the sunflower stuff starts at 24 minutes.

Stuff from the video that is extremely important:

Soak the sunflower seeds overnight, 8 to 12 hours
Use good garden soil, i got mine from lowes, $3 for 2 cubic feet which is probably 10+ trays worth
Use a tray underneath, and a tray with dirt that has holes. This was my main failing, the water absolutely must not sit in the dirt or you will get mold!!!
at 29:00 on the video he mentions that Sunflowers like pressure, this was a big one for me, put another tray on top to push down on the seeds, I put a book inside. So this is 3 trays total, 1 to catch water, 1 to have the dirt and seeds, and 1 for pressure.
Water it every day, and then just empty out the container below when the water has gone through.

So, it should take about 1 week for a complete set of sprouts. at 33:00 minutes he talks about knowing when they're 100% done. You can eat them before they're 100% done, but they shouldn't be allowed to go after the point he mentions at minute 33.

At 36 minutes he talks about how much light you need. These aren't under grow lights or anything. I've left mine just right in the kitchen and they've grown perfectly.

Here's my photos so far, i'll switch these out with daily photos.

These are pictures are about 6 (turns out it must have been more) days I think :) I don't remember exactly when i started them. This next set is starting today.

Update - Just harvested the last 1/2 pound today. A few started to get their second set of leaves so it was time to cut them down. These things are awesome.

Daily Photos:

Day 1 - Starting Soaking, at 2pm

Day 2 - Put the seeds on the dirt

Day 2 (3 minutes later than the other picture) - Put
pressure on the seeds (the bottom 2 trays are this new set)

Day 3 - Look at all those little tails growing

Day 4 - Looks like the other one wasn't 6
days. But these are growing pretty well. I'm
also starting some seeds not in the seeds.

Day 5 - Starting to become something

Day 6 - :( sucky lighting, sorry

Day 7 - Almost time to cover these the other way

Day 8 - Covered the other way, and these
things are growing very quickly

Day 9 - Uncovered, and starting to turn green.
Moved to the dinner table, tomorrow I should
be eating these for lunch

Day 10 - Ate my first bowl full. Everything
is green now, still lots of husks

Day 11 - Most of the husks are off, but the
ones underneath still have a lot

Day 12 - It's now a pretty easy job to
eat a bowl full (which i do right after this picture)
There are still a few husks on the plants that are
under, but it's not as often.

Day 13 - Final Day, look at how big they got.
Note, there are still husks on the ones below
most are gone, but not all. This is why I
attempted the ones with the husks removed

Day 13 - same day as above, nice the 2nd leaves
starting inside. Now it's time to be sure to eat them all.

Day 13 - THE END. Notice how big of a salad you get. I had
cut about 1/3 before I did this bowl. This, with other veges,
what a major portion of my wife and I's dinner (the kids don't like it :))

UPDATE:
These lasted until Day 13, when they started to grow their second set of leaves, and I had a big salad :). Note, On my next batch I waited a few days and the second leaves got a bit bigger (not full sized) and they were still fine to eat.

I've also since grown another set out of deshelled raw seeds which I figured would make it much better because I wouldn't have to remove the black seeds all the time. I WAS WRONG. It's not better if you're using dirt like I do, and probably isn't either way. The raw seeds have many broken ones, which won't sprout but will start to stink. They also have dirt on the leaves as they grow making them harder to clean. Also, for some reason they didn't grow as thickly meaning I ate through them faster. All in all, i'll be eating my raw sunflower seeds, and growing ones with the shells still on.

I'm convinced enough at the quality of my salads with these that I will be starting a new batch of sunflower seeds every other day. I throw in some cheese (usually feta or crumbled goat cheese), diced up onions (green onions would be good too), tomatoes, carrots, and whatever else sounds good at the time. I've been using italian dressing, but some olive oil, basalmic vinager, and raw pressed garlic would make an awesome alternative (i'll update if this isn't the case :)), we just got our garlic press last night so hopefully I'll get to try this out when my next batch of sprouts are ready.

UPDATE (and probably final post):
Ok, the basalmic vinager with oil and raw garlic is AWESOME :). If you're like me and enjoy all 3 of those ingredients, then you really need to try them together. We've got 3 sets of sunflower sprouts, and 1 batch of wheat grass going on right now and have really started to integrate it into our normal meals. It's cheap and healthy. Wonderful stuff.

Help, i'm a noob where do I start?

2013-01-04T20:08:00.004-08:00

I was talking to a friend yesterday about some of the more basic parts of gardening, and although many people have written on where to start, it's not always easy to find. So the goal of this post is to go over some of the basic details if you're just looking to start already.

This is the kind of cool stuff you get to see with gardening.

Where do I start?
Step 1 - What kinds of plants do you want to grow? Most people start with tomatoes, peas, squash, and beans. These are all great, they're easy to find, and there's a lot of info about them. But are there other things you want to grow? Asparagus, onions, :) garlic :), that's fine too, i'll show you how to look up the needed info. START SMALL - pick 2 maybe 3 things. For sure pick tomatoes :), and if it's fall pick garlic :).

Step 1a - If you know you're going to want strawberries, blueberries, grapes, asparagus, any fruit trees, or most other kinds of fruits, you'll need to get these in this year too, because they take years to get fruit from.

Step 2 - Now that you have your 3 things go to Gardenate.com's Zone finder. Find your zone. Your zone helps you know when you should plant things. So you need to find your zone. In gardenate, click the zone that works for you. Missouri is 5b.

Step 3 - Click on your zone on gardenate.com, and then click on the veges and herbs tab at the top. Find your 3 plants 1 at a time. In zone 5b, peas should be planted in march, april, and/or may. So now you know right when to plant your plant. I would also recommend that you read through the info on the page, it's pretty nice.

Step 4 - Deside if you want to do a raised bed garden, or just til up some land and plant. Either is fine just depends on how you want things to look (there are other reasons to do each, but this isn't the post for it).

Step 5 - Get as much compost as you can get your hands on :). There are often places on craigslist that sell compost by the yard. If you have a truck get a truck load or 5 :). You can't put too much compost (depending on if it's manure or not, you don't want too much manure) into the ground, plants love love love compost.

Step 6 - Plant, and make sure you keep it watered. You should water, in general, at least 2 or 3 times a week unless it rains. Don't let things get dry.

Step 7 - Pick food :). No really, pick the food. With things like tomatoes and peas, you need to pick the food as soon as it's ready. The plants whole point in life is making seeds, they make seeds and then die. The pea pods are the seeds, the tomatoes are the seeds, if the parent plants think they got the job done, then they feel free to die to allow their kids to take the place. We don't want that. So as the tomatoes get red and juicy pick them, if they get beyond juicy the plant may stop fighting to make more tomatoes. So pick your food. With peas, make sure to check them every day when the pods start coming. And don't feel bad getting early pea pods for your stir fries.

Other things to consider:
Write down what you do, when things happen, and what days plants die. Write down when they first let fruit, when the lettuce leaves first become big enough to enjoy, etc. You'll want to know in the future how long things take in your garden, and a journal helps you year after year. And, during the winter :) on days like today :) read more and learn more for the next year.

Improving on the hoop house 2013

2013-01-02T19:16:00.002-08:00

Well, it's winter time and i have to work on something, but can't really plant so what do I do? I come up with new ways to work on the hoop house. I'm hoping this year to find out how different plants do in the hoop house. Some of which i'm planning on planting tonight to put outside early february. Just to see how they do. I'll plant a few every couple of weeks, and see which ones actually live :). But that's not really what this post is about, i'm sure i'll post on that later :).

This post is on an idea that i had last summer to make the hoop house plastic much less painful to work with :). And that is, i'm adding some weights to the sides of the plastic to hold it down. Last year I put cement blocks on the plastic to hold it down, and it worked great, except the 1 night I had to take them off because it got so hot last year (it was 90 degrees inside the plastic like in early march) I never wanted to put the plastic back on, it was simply too much work taking it on and off. As a result the plastic never got put away properly, and got cut up to be used as a super awesome slip and slide which the kids absolutely loved (our property is a big hill).

Stuff I had to buy (per 10ft raised bed)

1 package of grommets - like Brass Grommet Kit Size 4 (1/2 in.) (Google Affiliate Ad) (though lowes had it a bit cheaper, just make sure to get 24 grommets and a kit)
6 mil plastic (though I already had plenty :))
2x 3/4 inch electrical conduit pipes. The metal ones, slightly larger than the ones i bought to build the hoophouse supports.

Other items to get

1 sheet of cardstock paper (normal sized sheet)
some other large square measuring device (i used a cardboard box from christmas that was flattened, you could use anything that's got straight edges and is 2 ft or so tall.)
a hammer to work with the grommets
a piece of wood to go under the plastic so that you can cut out the holes

How to build half #1

This is "the finished product" of half 1

Cut off a piece of plastic roughly 16-18ft long, by 10ft wide. That gives an extra 3-4 feet on each side of the raised bed.
Take your sheet of cardstock paper, and put 2 marks on the edge, at 1inch and 5.5inches. This paper becomes your guide as to where to punch the holes, and it made things super nice.
Every 1.5 feet or so use the cardstock to mark the plastic. So that there is a mark 1inch away from the edge, and then one at 5.5 inches. Use the side of the sheet of paper on the side of the plastic so that you know your cuts are "square". This helps make it so the plastic doesn't twist and pull funny, and it's why we used a piece of cardstock. Use a perminent marker to mark the spots.
Use the hole punch that comes with the grommet set and punch out a hole where you have your marks, cut out every mark.
Use the grommet tool to put in the grommets by folding the holes and matching them up. This will make a pocket for the conduit pipe to fit into. This is why the holes needed to line up, so you fold the plastic over, and put a grommet through both pieces at once.
fold the plastic in half length wise, and put a mark on each side 5ft from the middle. This gives you the marks for where the pipe should go.
Slide your first conduit pipe into place
Done

How to build half #2 (requires you to have the hoops setup on the hoop house for steps 1-3)

The most annoying step :), go outside (for me it was tonight, which is about 20 degrees outside and snowy).
Put the plastic over the raised bed, put the side with the conduit on the ground, and pull the other side over the hoop house. Make it nice and straight, and make sure again that the conduit is just barely on the ground, but that the plastic is nice and tight. I hope someday to get a video of this to make it make more sense :).
Make a mark on the side that doesn't have the conduit right at the ground, this is where the other pipe needs to go to so that each pipe rests on the ground and there isn't any slack.
Go back inside with your plastic, whew.
Take your box, and put a mark 3.75 inches below that mark, and another one 2.75 inches below that mark. Why 3.75 and 2.75? That mark is the center point where your pipe will rest, and so you want that to lie right in the middle of the 1 inch and 5.5 inch. If your box is long enough you should also make a mark at 2.75 inches above the mark, mine wasn't, and that's not too bad, i can always use my cardstock to make the other mark.
Use your box to make a bunch of marks on the plastic on the other end. you should make all 3 marks on the box (using the cardstock if u were only able to make 2).
Use a straight edge to make a line between the lower marks, you only need to do this if you're going to cut off the extra plastic like i'm going to. If you're not going to do that, then don't worry about it.
Punch out your holes and install the grommets just like on side #1
Add the pipe to side number 2
Done

How to use

Now, each winter you can just stretch the plastic over the raised beds, and use the weight of the conduit to hold down the sides. Ahh, much better. Now, this whole thing is all theory, i'll tell you in later posts how this turns out :).

The finished product:

Notice how the poles fit nicely on the edge and there's no extra plastic all over the place. Very nice :). Also, It's snowy outside so I had to go put the plastic on by myself and it only took a few minutes. So far i'm very happy with my upgraded hoop house.

Update 1/9/2013

I planted some of my extra garlic and onions out today (as a test to see how the hoop house works, and how much protection it adds, i'm planning on starting up some collards and lettuce as well to plant out next week, i'm hoping to get stuff in there early that dies, and plant more each week or so just to see which ones do the best).

I add an update here because the pipe also makes it really easy to pull back the plastic to work in, it was extremely nice.

Building a raised bed

2012-12-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

I've built 4 of these in the past, and so I decided these next 2 should be blogged about :). The raised beds that I create are 10ft x 4ft and they are 10 inches tall. I think that 6 inches would be plenty if you have decent soil, but if you're going to be composting a ton, or just adding new soil, then the 10 inches will be nice. This article is explaining how I build them, and things that i've learned in the process of making these, and i'll have nice photos of you of my latest 2 i'm preparing up to go outside.

Materials Needed

2* 10inch x 10 ft boards - i'm using treated in this latest set, i've used just normal pine but i'm sure that will break down in a couple years (which was a great idea for me because my first few weren't very good)
1* 10inch x 8 ft board
1 box of screws that are 3 or so inches long
1 drill with a drill bit roughly the size of the screws you got

Price per box

Not counting the drill and what not the boards ended up costing me $35 per raised bed. I always build them in sets of 2 because my garden is 20ft wide.

Things to consider

Most importantly get boards that are straight. Some of the ones i got were warped, and they still don't lay quite right, it's definitely worth the few minutes to go through and pick out the best boards you can find.
Lowes, and I believe any other hardware store, will cut the boards for you, make sure that the 2 10ft boards are exactly the same length, and have the 8ft board cut down to 2 4ft pieces. Just make sure that the 4ft pieces are exactly the same width. The people at the store are happy to make the cuts for you, and they like making sure their work is good, it's why they work there. Let them do it :)
you may need to level out your ground, there are several ways to do this, look into an A frame level, or there's another one that uses hoses and what not which is probably easier to build I just don't remember the name right now :) when i build one to level out my land i'll make a post about it.
Build the frame on a level surface, a living room works perfectly :).

How to build

This is harder to explain, and easier to come up with your own ways to do :). The thing to pay really good attention to though is to make sure that you use a square on the corners to try and get as close to 90 degrees as possible. I will often use one of the other boards because i don't have a square, but anything that you know is a perfect square (or close enough) can be used, just make sure that the edges line up nice and even.

Be sure to drill the holes in the side of the boards where you'll screw it to the other board. When I didn't do this it made it extremely difficult to screw in, and worse split the wood several times. Drilling the holes lets u line up things nicely and helps to keep everything even. Make sure to only tighten the screws when you know everything is lined up nicely.

My first time creating these I didn't follow any of these points, and my finished products were off by a few inches, which with boxes this large ends up meaning I can't get the boxes to be flat, and soil will often spil out the sides.

What does the finished product look like?

(insert photos here when i find my camera :))

Growing Green onions in a cup

2012-12-22T12:59:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago my wife bought some green onions from the store. We cut off the green tops and usually throw away the bottoms with the short roots. I read somewhere that you can simply put those in water and they'll grow another set of greens no problem. So I decided to try it out. That was about a month a go or less. We've since harvested another full set of green tops, and today we're getting ready to cut them off again because they're so high.

Here's a picture of how they look today, they're about 1 ft tall again, any one can do this, it's super easy. We just used the green onions we get from the store. I'll take another picture when we get ready to cut them once again so you can see the timing.

Could be easier. Here's harvest number 2. 12-22-2012

12-22-2012 right after the harvest, this is how much we cut back each time

Building a compost bin

2012-12-22T12:55:00.000-08:00

Last night I decided to build a compost bin. We have a large pile in the back yard that has tons of grass and leaves and all my dead plants from this years planting. He's been kind of composting, but I decided I wanted to build a bin that would help it compost a little quicker.

I'll eventually find the youtube video, but I saw a video that talked about which compost bin works the best. The one that won the whole thing ended up being a thick plastic hoop, and so I decided to build one just like it.

I started out with plastic garden fencing, this isn't the exact stuff i got but basically is :). I also got some bailing wire. Then I cut enough to make a 4 or 5 foot diameter cylender, and used the bailing wire to tie the ends together. So now, in the end I have a roughly 4ft x 4ft cylendar, a little over a cubic yard.

I had a really hard time getting it to stand up at first, next time i'd likely use either posts, or metal fencing to make it work out better, live and learn i guess :). However, I kept adding all the stuff in my composting pile and added it to the cylinder. And found that I have lots of nice compost at the bottom of the pile :), lots of worms, and 1 pretty nasty looking spider.

I'll try and take weekly pictures of the compost pile just to record how things shrink and decompose.

Picture Log:

12-22-2012 (day 1) The fork shows the height (the bin is 4ft tall)

Planting Egyptian Walking Onions

2012-12-14T19:41:00.001-08:00

I can here my friends saying, but Joe you don't live in Egypt, why would you want onions that walk there? :) Cause they're cool that's why.

What is an egyptian walking onion?
It's basically an onion that grows tall, and then grows bulbils (see my posts on garlic, bulbils are nearly seeds, but not :)) on it's scape (that's a garlic term, hopefully it's right for these too). These bulbils get pretty large, the size of small marbles is what the pictures make them look like. As these bulbils start to grow, right on the top of the other onion, they get so heavy that the onion falls over allowing the bulbils to get roots. So they travel by growing tall, falling over, and growing their own bulbils, and on and on.

What are they good for?
EWOs are extremely hardy, they'll often grow in the dead of winter, frozen ground, pushing up through the snow even. They make a slightly strong green onion basically. As they get big enough, you can pick the bulbs which sometimes become as big as a shallot. Also the bulbils can be used like pearl onions in soups and what not. So why have them? Because the provide lots of hardy onions that continue to grow without your attention, rain or shine, snow or heat.

This post will be where I keep my log. I started the small bulbils (i was surprised at how small they were, we'll how :)) indoors, and I'll keep a log here of their growth, with pictures.

I bought them on ebay, of course, and they arrived on 12-05-12 and were promptly planted :)

Log:
12-05-2012: Planted 54 walking onions
12-09-2012 (day 4): First tiny sprout
12-10-2012 (day 5): #2
12-11-2012 (day 6): #3
12-14-2012 (day 9): #4, 5 and 6

Pictures:

Taken 12-14-2012
This is #2 (and you can almost see #4 below it)

Planting Multiplier or Potato Onions INDOORS

2012-12-14T19:24:00.002-08:00

First, here's a link that people should read if they don't know what potato onions are. It's a bit long, but it explains how the particular breed i'm trying to make came from. This is Kelly Winterton's onions that he's been putting together.

Here's a google doc that Kelly is keeping up to date

On 12-03-2012 I planted 36 Multiplier Onion seeds, in a small seeding tray, and many of them are starting to show signs of life.

This is the post i'm using to keep track of the entire growth. I'll show all pictures here and a log from day to day of what has done what.

Pictures (i'll keep these up to date, hopefully at least weekly)

Right now they look like normal onions :) just wait a couple of years.

Log (i'll keep this up to date):

12-03-2012: Planted 36
12-09-2012 (6 days): First sprout (this one since isn't doing so hot, too bad), later that night, #2 and 3 came
12-11-2012 (8 days): #4, 5 and 6
12-12-2012 (9 days): #7
12-13-2012 (9 days): #8, 9, and 10
12-14-2012 (10 days): #11

Test Garlic Log - Planting

2012-12-01T20:56:00.001-08:00

I've gotten 6 different types garlic that came from the Soviet Union a decade or so back. Today i went through and planted them all indoors. I'll be blogging about my status of them, with lots of pictures :) fun. I hope to log everything about them down to the taste.

Here's a set of all the bulbils. I only had 4 of the PI 540319's which were by far the largest. Most of the other ones look the same, they're all roughly the size of a small grain of wheat. The 319's are more like apple seed size. Here's a picture of me planting them. I filled the containers with my soil blocking soil until it was about 3/4 of an inch from the top.

I finished planting them all and topped them up with soil, and wetted it al down. Hopefully they all grow :) and i'll have another log later next week sometime.

UPDATE 12-09-2012

First sign of life :)

A little blury, but 3 of the PI 540319 plants have tiny sprouts.

UPDATE 12-14-2012

Still only these 3, I wonder if the 4th will grow. None of the others have sprouted yet either. We're at 13 days.

3 getting decently tall, i need to setup the fan. The 2 in
the background are martin heirloom bulbils growing

UPDATE 1-31-2012 -- 2 months old now. This is the age that you usually put things outside. Oh well. I hopefully will get them outside in 2 to 4 weeks.

Here's all the photos for the last month and a half.
1-04-2013

1-12-2013

1-22-2013

Looks like it's time again to take more pictures. Should go down and take some tomorrow as well (may not get them up here as quickly, but i'm hoping to get another set of pictures.

Planting Martin's garlic bulbils

2012-11-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

I've gone slightly crazy since i first started learning about garlic. I've found a variety called Martin's Heirloom Garlic, and it seems pretty exciting. The bulbs are some of the largest ones, and the bulbils themselves are the largest i've seen.

How do bulbils work?
A bulbil is kind of like a seed for garlic. It's not true seed, I might talk about true seeds later as I try to get garlic to grow some, it's a cumbersome process but will allow me to "breed" my own personal garlic type. But bulbils are exact copies of the parent, so they will grow to be the same basic garlic bulb. The only difference between cloves and bulbils is that bulbils can take 3 years to grow properly. Well this is year one :). Martin's are said to only require 2 years to grow, so that's exciting.

Here's a picture of some of the bulbils I got in the mail today (planting tomorrow)

They're like large corn kernels. Very nice, i'm excited to see how they do, and I'll keep you guys up to date.

Why would you want to grow from bulbils?
If bulbils take 2 or 3 years to grow, and cloves only take 1 year, why would you want to do bulbils? From most hard neck garlic you get anywhere from 4 to sometimes as many as 12 cloves. On the other hand, if you let them go to "seed" and grow bulbils, you can get the same 4 to 12 cloves (though depending on the type they'll be smaller) and you also can get 15, 30, or sometimes as much as 100 bulbils. Honestly though, to me the main reason to do bulbils is because they're way way cheaper to start :), and that's a great way to start into something you're not yet sure you'll be good at.

I'll add another picture when I get them planted, and hopefully a few throughout the season as they grow, and definitely pictures at the end of the season to show what the harvest is like :).

UPDATE Saturday Dec 1, 2012

I got them planted, they took up almost 4ft x 4ft. I planted several bulbils inside under my grow lights, these will take the place of any that may die in the ground this year. If all of them make it :) then i guess i'll take room from somewhere else :).

Here's some pictures of the finished product.

This is where my peas were last year, we'll be planting them in the rows this year that my wife is planning on working in. Note the "tool" that i'm using here. It's a dowel that I have measured out nicely to help with planting plants that need 8in, 2in, or 16in spacing. It also happens to be the right size to fit martin's bulbils in. I found it much easier to poke all the holes at once rather than one at a time.

I'll take more pictures as the garlic grows.

New pictures :). These are the ones I planted in doors. Here's the data:

11-30-12: Planted 36 Martin's Garlic indoors

12-10-12 (10 days): First martin sprouted

12-12-12 (12 days): 2nd and 3rd sprouted

12-14-12 (14 days): 4th and 5th sprouted.

Here are pictures as of 12-14-12:

A little blurry, these are #2 on the
left, and #1 on the right.

About 2 or so inches tall

They're doing pretty good so far, we'll see how it goes.

Learning about / and Planting Garlic and Shallots

2012-11-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

Well this year hasn't really gone as planned. Turns out i'm about as lazy as I thought i'd be :). However, I've learned quite a bit about gardening. First and foremost saving seeds, if you're lazy, is actually very easy :). For the most part all I have to do is not do anything, until the seed pods turn all brown and die. It's very easy. I've saved Coriander (cilantro), Basil, and Peas, all of which were easy and fun to do (and my kids loved helping).

So the season is over right? Well, not exactly. It's time to plant your shallots and garlic. Garlic planting is one of those that you plant early in the winter, as close to the last frost as possible, though this date varies depending on where you look, next year I'll let you know if Nov. 10th was the right date next summer :). Garlic will get roots before it freezes too much, and the deeper freeze will tell the clove that it's time to multiply. This will make for a better head next year. Shallots, which are in the same basic family as onions and garlic, work very much the same way.

My Crop this Year
So i planted out about 50 or 60 garlic plants in a 4ft x 4ft area in my garden, which should be replaced by a fall crop next summer. I also ordered some hard neck garlic (doesn't store as well, but is supposed to taste better) from ebay, we'll see how it works out. Ideally with garlic, after your first year you shouldn't need to buy seed again unless you get a soil disease or something. So possibly I'll be able to give garlic seeds to anyone in the area next year if they're interested. I'll be planting the garlic, and the shallots I just bought on ebay, as soon as they arrive.

Seeding Garlic
Although for the most part garlic is planted by growing cloves, there's another way to do it which is very much like letting the plants go to seed. The garlic will create a large pod which will contain several small garlic cloves, called bulbils. These bulbils have the added benefit of not having soil born diseases, so saving some of these each year increases your chances of never losing your crop entirely. But what's the drawback? Bulbils take 2-3 years to grow :). The 1st year they'll grow into 1 or 2 cloves, then several small cloves, and then finally they'll be full grown.

So why grow bulbils at all? There's really not a reason not to. If you leave 1 in 5 of your garlic to go to seed, you can still eat the left over bulb, though some people say that they can be smaller than normal. You can also eat the bulbils as small garlic cloves if you really want to. They really are just small cloves, and will likely taste the same. So growing bulbils is a way to further your crop, so why not :).

Evidently Shallots aren't as nice, and unless you get the right variety they don't grow bulbils or seed at all. So for now, shallots will be from "cloves" each year. Though they multiply so they should keep for years to come. And since they're so expensive at the store :) it's worth the investment.

UPDATE 12-8-2012
Rather than adding a new post, i figured i'd just update this one throughout the year with how things are going, though I imagine when I get pictures that'll change :).

I just bought 3oz of Music Garlic cloves off ebay, got them today, and planted out. Turned out being 30 cloves, so i have 5 rows of 6, they're 8 inches apart. I'm really looking forward to these, i've read many posts that say this taste the best and are great for roasting and spreading on bread.

Gathering Basil Seeds

2012-11-10T15:06:00.003-08:00

I don't have a camera good enough to take pictures of this, but gathering basil seeds has been very very easy. I started out by watching the following video:

It's very informative about what to do, but I'll go over some of the details here. It's extremely easy to grow basil seeds (in fact, there are websites that show you how to stop the basil from going to seed :)).

Step 1 - Wait for the basil to go to seed
Step 2 - Wait for the seeds to dry up and become brown. Usually the whole row of seeds will go brown together, wait for it to turn brown
Step 3 - Cut off the whole stem of brown seed pods.
Step 4 - I've found, that rather than the video, I prefer to take 1 pod at a time and work to get the seeds out.

Things to keep in mind:

Basil seeds are a bit like coarse sand, they're very small, and black. So my first tip is to work on a piece of paper.
Have a trash can handy. There is lots of left over scraps, and it's best to keep your working station clean between stems

All in all from 2 plants, I took about 2 or 3 stems each and have more basil seeds than i'll ever be able to plant :). If anyone in missouri wants some basil seeds let me know.

Here's a picture of the stems i'm talking about. I've linked it to where I got it to help the person who took the picture.

Free Seeds for Life -- The Door Garden Blog

UPDATE - 01/01/2013

I found another set of basil seeds hanging in the garage, so I decided to see if i could take some pictures of the small flowers and seeds inside. We'll see how they turn out. You may have to click on the pictures to see them at full size to really see what's going on.

Here are the flowers ready to be seeded. Notice they are
relatively large, each flower holds up to 4 basil seeds

This is what the seeds look like inside the flower. Notice
all 4 are still in this pod ready to be planted next year :)

Growing Wheatgrass

2012-03-16T20:17:00.003-07:00

I'm making my 2nd attempt at growing wheat grass. I know the title says 1st attempt, but I tried once before, except that really what I did instead of grow wheat grass was to grow rotten wheat :). This time however things are going great, so I figured I'd blog about it. I'll talk a little bit about why i'm growing the wheatgrass, and then go over the step by step process i'm following. Hopefully by the time i juice my first shot of wheatgrass i'll have good pictures of the whole process for you.

Why in the world would you grow wheatgrass?
Not too long ago I watched the movie fat, sick, and nearly dead. It's a great movie, and I highly recommend it. I happen to be fat, and I get sick often enough, so I decided to follow the diet the guy does on the diet. Well, at least I plan on it, it's not the easiest thing to start on, possibly I'll post my experiences here, but I might start up a seperate blog so that this one doesn't get overrun with juicing.

So why wheatgrass, and have I crossed the line into the crazy health people? First off, I haven't really, however I've seen several posts about people having wheatgrass and loving it. I've had it a few times at jamba juice, and although it's some crazy tasting stuff it makes me feel better throughout the day, so why not grow it :). It is extremely cheap, especially if u already have the peat moss and wheat (if not just go buy a bag of wheat, it isn't that expensive).

Steps

Day 1: Tuesday march 14th 6pm
The first time I tried to grow wheatgrass I tried it in a jar. I must say it didn't work out well at all. Nothing grew, and after about 4 or 5 days it really started to stink. Not impressed. A friend of mine suggested I look into sunflower sprouts and showed me this sprouter:

You can find it on Amazon for $12. And let me tell you what :) it's great. I tried 1/2 cup or so of wheat for my first shot, and soaked it overnight for 12 hours in the dark (i'm not 100% sure this is why i was making fermented wheat, but I believe it was, mine wasn't in the dark).

Day 2: Wednesday march 15th ~7am
Strain the water, rinse with warm water. Leave it in the dark.

Day 3: Thursday in the morning
Little sprouts are formed, looking pretty good. After work, the sprouts are pretty long, time to plant.

I planted the 1/2 cup, which was now closer to at least 1cup. I put some peat moss down, and put the seeds all spread out on the moss. 1/2 cup is probably only 1/2 as much as i need at least :), but this is the first test.

Day 4: After work, friday
Looking at the little plants:

They're doing really well, the roots are doing awesome. Notice that i have the 1 black tray covered by the other black tray. This helps keep all the light out while the roots grow together and the grass covers them up. I added a little more peet moss on top of the roots, and watered it with some seaweed extract water (i happen to have it laying around, not sure it'll really help :) we'll see).

UPDATE:

This batch did terribly :). They got all moldy. The only real difference in my current batch (a good year later almost to the day) is that I have better trays.

You have to use 2 trays, one with tons of holes in it, and one without.

Here is my latest pictures, I think i'm on day 7 today and here are my pictures:

It's important to add water every day, notice how thick and
green this looks. I add water now from the bottom.

This tray has tons of holes on the bottom, so the roots can
easily go below. This allows the roots to pull up the water,
without having to have the dirt sit in the water which
caused mold last time.

These are the trays i use, with about 3/4 inch of dirt and
then the seeds. They let all the water through so it
never gets moldy.

We'll see how this set does :).

Building a hoop house

2012-03-08T20:08:00.002-08:00

Well, I broke down and bought the stuff needed to build a hoop house. There are several diy type things you can do to build yourself a hoop bender, and some of them are pretty cool. I however decided to buy an Offset Bending Guide which I found at lowes for about $30. I bought the 1/2" one, there is a 3/4" one that is $40 that you should use if you want a stronger hoop house.

I also bought about 10 1/2" electrical conduit pipes. They're about $2 a piece. I didn't need 10, you need about 1 every 3 feet.

And I bought 10' x 100' of clear 6 mil plastic for about $50. That's enough to do 5 4ft x 20ft growbeds. I only need 3, but this gives me 2 replacements.

So. Total price: $100. However if you live near me you can save $30 :). And that gives you enough to do several grow beds (though you'll need more than 10 pipes

To bend the pipes: (finding these measurements took me several pipes.

1) Measure 29" from the end, and 57" from the end (near the middle)

2) do the same measurements from the other end. so in the middle you should see 2 notches about 6" apart.
3) Bend by placing the bender right on the right spot :) see the picture.

Zoom in on the picture if needed.
4) Bend til it hits the 60 degree mark.

5) Bend all 3 spots. Remember though that you want to bend the same way on both sides, and then only once in the middle.

Bend all the pipes that you need.

I happen to have a few 3/4" electronic conduit around. Cutting this in 2' increments allows me to hammer these into the sides of the grow bed, and slide the 1/2" conduit into them so that I can add/remove them easily.

After doing that, putting the hoops into place is easy, my kids helped me and loved it. You then unrole the plastic the length of your hoophouse, giving an extra 4 to 6 ft on the ends so that the ends can be closed as well. And here's the final pictures:

When to use a hoop house
There are several reasons to use a hoop house, and several times. The main point though is that you offer your plants another month or so on each side of their growing window. This allows for earlier spring plantings, and later fall plants. Which could allow you to grow plants that may not otherwise be possible.

What does that mean? Well, if the 1 month thing is right (i'l be testing it over the next few years). Let's look at tomatoes (since that's what we all like anyway). This would allow tomatos to grow an extra 2 months. Rather than being planted on may 15th, you can plant on april 15th, and rather than it dying in october on first frost, it would die in november. Or, you could plant more spring/fall plants by having it on for february, but taking it off in march or april as it starts to warm up. So depending on what type of food you like, use your hoop house accordingly :). And, if nothing else you can add a radish planting for free on both ends :) if you like tons of radishes.

UPDATE
I've come up with a new way to work on the plastic, this way was annoying :).
Improving on the hoop house 2013.html

Composting with Worms - Vermicompost

2012-03-01T06:11:00.003-08:00

I'll admit, the first time I learned about using worms to compost old veges and fruits and what not I thought "That's neat, and something I'll never do". I didn't really understand what it was, why I'd want to do it, and let's be honest, worms are all the things that people think snakes are (slimy). So why, now after a few years have I decided to start up vermicomposting? Because it's way cool :).

Why would I want to vermicompost?
From my studies, composting with worms has a few benefits over normal composting, especially for a small garden. The main problem with composting in piles is that you need enough material to actually get a good cooking going on. Normal compost requires mass (amongst other things) to start an aerobic reaction so that the heat and microbes break down the materials. But this only works if you have sufficient amount of mass to really get it going well. Worm composting on the other hand is the opposite, you put the food in the "worm den" and they eat it. You don't want to put too much in or they won't be able to, but that's just perfect if you have a big enough bin for what you do eat. So why vermicompost? because it offers a great solution for a small garden where you don't really have the materials to get a good compost pile cooking.

Doesn't it stink?
No. Ok, so that's the short answer, and I don't really know that yet. What I do know is that if you're doing it right it's not supposed to stink, and the end result is supposed to be a very fine compost

My first build
My first build is made from a 55 gallon windshield washer container. Probably not the best starting point, but it's what I had, and they'll likely survive :). I'm building what's called a flow through bin, because it's the most perfect solution there is :). Ok that might be an exaggeration, who knows. What I do know is that to me it seems perfect. You set a good amount of wet (like a sponge) bedding, shredded newspaper or cardboard or coco coir etc, for the worms, and then you add some food, fruit or veges or horse manure etc, and then a little more shredded newspaper or bedding on top. Add the worms, and they'll travel on down and get themselves acclimated. After a few weeks, add more food as you see them really breaking down what's in there. Eventually you can just add, depending on the size of the bin, your scraps as they come. They break down while the worms travel through the whole system eating what they want, meaning the bottom stuff is always the most decomposted and the top stuff is less so. Meaning, as the system starts to fill up, the bottom is ready to harvest. In a flow through bin the bottom has a "false" bottom, which allows you to harvest from the bottom, and put scraps in the top. This makes it so that harvesting, isn't a messy process like it is in normal vermicomposting. You practically don't need to know that worms are in the bin (though it's best to know, because you're really taking care of them). You just put food in the top, adding moist bedding now and then, and get amazing compost out the bottom.

Pictures

The Lid

The bottom hole - where I harvest

The bottom grate - what holds up the compost

Can't get this picture to work, as my phone doesn't have a flash, it's made out of the weed wacker cord you see woven in above.

The Bedding (pre moisting)

The whole system

Conclusion

I'll keep you up to date on how the whole system works out. Many people have tried it, and say it's amazing, so we'll see. The worms get here tomorrow. Oh, the other main benefit - the vermicompost works awesome for soil blocks :) so that's a huge plus for my setup.

Saving Seeds - and why you might want to

2012-02-28T11:07:00.001-08:00

What is it?
Saving seeds is nothing more than saving seeds from your plants so that you don't have to buy more next year. It's easier than you might think, especially for some of the plants. In general all it requires is letting the plant go to seed (it's normal process), and then harvesting the seeds at the right time. Very simple, but of course there are a few caveats.

Why would I want to?
Well, if saving a few bucks doesn't seem like reason enough :), the reason i'm planning on it is to create a plant that is more tuned to my personal garden. When you save seeds you pick the ones that did the best, or lasted the longest, or tasted the best, etc. Doing so, means that their children should have those improvements as well, and then saving their best children, and so on, means that you're fine tuning a plant that is perfect for you. It's basically small evolution, survival of the plant that you think is the fittest. For some plants, it's easy to do, so why not :).

How do I save seeds?
This section will have to be split up by plant, and i'll add pictures and videos as they're taken/found. I find that pictures and videos really tell the story. However, like other sites have done, I'm planning on splitting the plants into difficulty levels. There will likely be some copying from other sites, i'll try and link whenever I do, but a lot of what i'm coming up with comes from having learned from the sites and just writing down what i remember. The basic organization is taken from http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html. And I give them tons of credit, because they go over much everything that you'll need. So why do my own? 1 - to simplify what's on that site, and 2 - to add my own pictures and experience to the picture.

The plants are split up into 3 main groups. 1- Beginner, 2 - Experienced, and 3 - Expert

Beginner are basically those plants that you can harvest the seed without any real planning. You grow the plant, and either just harvest the seeds (in the case of tomatoes), or do a basic step (like leaving the fruit on the vine, in the case of peas, beans, and peppers). These seeds are simply easy to harvest.

Experienced is mostly just those plants where you have to worry about cross pollination. Meaning if you're growing 2 different types of cucumbers, you can't really save the seeds, because the children will be a "mut" of the 2 types, and will be unpredictable.

Expert is, for the most part, those seeds that are biennial, requiring 2 years to get the seeds, and sometimes special procedures to keep the plant alive over the winter. These also require you to be mindful of cross polination, so, for example, you wouldn't want to save cabbage seeds the same time you're saving brussels sprouts, because they are in the same species.

IN ALL CASES YOU SHOULD SAVE SEEDS FROM 6 OR MORE PLANTS IF YOU HOPE TO SAVE SEEDS "FOREVER"

How do I store seeds?
This section really should go after the saving seeds for each plant, but I figured I'd put it here as a reference for saving the seeds from below. Seeds germinate by being in a nice toasty place with good moisture (in general). Which means, that in order to store the seeds you need to do the opposite. You want a nice, cool, dark, dry place to store them. There are 2 perfect places in every household, though if you save a lot of seeds it may not be practicel. It is? The fridge and freezer. Storing them in the freezer will make them good for many years, the fridge as well (though technically not as many years). This is the optimal place, but not always doable. Just remember that the colder it is, the better chances it has of leaving good seeds when you go to plant it. So a basement would work better than a garage (unless it's winter, in which case maybe the garage is better).

Saving Seeds - The individual plants

Beginner:
Beans and Peas
Leave the beans and peas on the vine/bush until they grow brown and the outside is brittle. Then, simply pull the seeds out.

Lettuce
Most people don't like when their lettuce "bolts" meaning it gets really tall and flowers. However, this is basically the plant just going to seed. To save the seeds, wait til the plant flowers, and then the flowers close up and get a white cotton end looking. Then, either pull up the whole plant, and harvest the seeds, or cut off the groups of flowers that are ready and let the rest finish.

To get the seeds, take the little flower pods, and rub them in your fingers, and 6+ seeds will come out. Kinda messy :), and a little tedious, but you get tons of seeds.

Note - the trickiest part here is that you want the lettuce that bolts latest (at least usually that's what people want), or the one that is ready to eat the earliest, which is also usually the plants you want to still be eating :). Maybe you can grab the 2nd to last :).

Pepper
Leave them on the vine a little until they're fully ripe. Usually that means they turn red (even green peppers), once they are, open them up and save the seeds. The seeds have to fully dry out, just leave them on a plate with some dry paper towels or you can make a small screen which is better but more work. Let them dry out for a week or so somewhere out of the sun.

Tomato
There are several ways to do tomatoes, some easy, some with better results. In all cases you gather them when the tomato is at it's best. Which, to me makes tomato saving the easiest. When the plant is at it's juiciest, and best flavor, is when you want to pick it anyway. And that's when the seeds are ready. The cheater way :) that doesn't get as good of results (not sure the specifics here), is to simply wash them off as best you can, and dry them like pepper seeds.

The more advanced way, which has better results, is to put them in a jar, with all the pulp and everything (everything that's left over when you slice up the tomato for your sandwich) the pulp goo and the seeds, with plastic wrap on the top (with a hole or 2 in it so air can get in/out). Leave that for 3 or 4 days til it molds really well :) yum. then, wash them off. Put them all "under" water, and the ones that don't float are good to be dried. Then just dry them like normal, and they're ready to go. Just make sure they are completely dry. This method removes more of the goo, and makes the seed better at germinating in the following years when the seed is used.

Experienced:
Here's a group of links to seedsave.org for each of the experienced plants: Or view my shortened version below. These links are useful for experienced, because they go into what plants are the same species as what. Very useful with squash and muskmelons.
Corn, Cucumber, Muskmelon, Radish, Spinach, Squash/Pumpkin.

Corn
Other than worrying about other corn plants around, which if you're worried about genetically modified plants is a real worry, corn is easy. Simply leave a cob on 6 or more plants, until they get completely dry. Then pull off the cobs, pull out the kernels, and save them. Corn is really really bad at cross pollinating. If you live within a few miles of GMO (genetically modified) plants, then chances are that you aren't going to be able to save them without getting those modifications in yours. Sorry.

Cucumber
This is a lot like peppers. You do need to be sure that there is only your 1 type of cucumber around, within a few hundred feet at least, but other than that you simply leave a cucumber on the wine per plant until it gets all yellow. Then save the seeds from that cucumber by cutting itup (using a knife all the way through the plant will likely cut up some of the seeds, which isn't ahuge problem, but it means you have to pick those out, which can be annoying), and then just wash the seeds and let them dry.

Muskmelon - I don't grow these :) you'll have to look it up. The link above splits these into all the species, which is really excellent.

Radish
These are basically the same as peas, if you can believe that. But that's actually something really awesome about radishes, that I just learned. Radishes when they "bolt", kinda like lettuce, grow splindly little vine things that have tons of seed pods on them. These pods, when they are green, are actually supposed to be very tasty, basically a pea pod with a slight radish flavor to it. When the pods are allowed to grow brown, then you can simply harvest the seeds like peas. Though the seeds are tiny.

note - because we're supposed to save seeds from 6 or more plants, this makes a perfect compromise. Because that means you save like 10 or 20 pods per plant, and eat the rest as green pods. Meaning very little waste. I'm actually tempted to grow a few radishes this year specifically for pods, simply to see what the yield is like, and how good they really are.

Another note - radish, as well as most other plants that bolt, get really tall, and take up much more room when you let them go to seed. You should give them a good sq ft per plant, which will require a little planning depending on how/where you plant them. I'm only planning on 2 sq ft, so this might prove to be a little of a challenge. I'll see how it works to let 4 go to seed in the same sq ft :). And let you know.

Spinach
Spinach works just like lettuce, the only thing to worry about here is that there is only 1 type of spinach because they cross pollinate. I'm not sure what the site means per sey, but it also says that you should have 1 male plant per ever 2 female plants. Not sure how to tell the difference if there is one. I'm assuming that just means leave groups of 3, and give them at least 8" of space.

Squash/Pumpkin
View the link above to find out which plants mix with which. Evidently acorn squash and zucchini mix :( so I won't be able to save seeds from them this year. Other than that these are saved a lot like cucumbers. They need to be allowed to fully ripen, depends on the plant, and then cut open and washed and allowed to dry.

Expert:
I left the links here too to determine species that cross-pollinate.

Beet/Swiss Chard, Cabbage Family, Carrot, Escarole/Frissee, Onion,Radicchio/Endive, Turnip/Chinese Cabbage

I'm not going to list each of these out til i've actually tried them. There are youtube videos for most, and some, like carrots, are actually quite easy to do. However they grow to be extremely tall, which can make them difficult (being that usually they're not placed in the garden with height in mind). However they can be moved.

For the most part these are simply bienniels which means that they need to be left in the ground. However, some, like cabbage, are better to dig up, and store in a root celler or garage over the winter so they don't freeze. The next year the plant will go to seed, and you can collect them like any other.

One thing to note is the cabbage family. It includes broccoli, brussels sprout, cauliflower, cabbage and kale. So you may have to worry about what to grow what year.

Most all of these you save your fall plantings, since it needs to go through a given number of hours below 40 degrees.

Basic Succession Planting - Attempt 1

2012-02-23T12:44:00.001-08:00

For those interested, here is my Crazy Spreadsheet :) where you can see how I got to the numbers below.

If you're interested I think you can download a copy from there, and just put in your own seeds, and own data.

How to get a basic set of "free" plantings

Step 1 - Find out when things need to be planted
I've been collecting data and building a cool spreadsheet specifically for my neighborhood (well, specifically for my zone). While doing so I found specific dates where things are supposed to be planted. You can also do this based off the first frost date, but Missouri's extension of the Department of Agriculture did that for me :).

Step 2 - Find out when things can be harvested
On the back of the packet, gives me days til harvest. Using this and the planting date gives me the "harvest" day, or the date where I can pull it out of the ground (give or take). Note - This isn't a guaranteed date or anything, you may have to leave them in and plant later or just harvest young plants to plant. Only thing lost though would be the seeds (assuming you compost the plants :)) if you pick them too early to eat.

Step 3 - Put them together
Find the latest date that things get planted. For example, for me tomatoes are planted 5/10 (tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers and squash). That's the last thing that I plant (other than my fall crops), and so 5/10 is the date I'm looking for. I use this date to find anything that will be harvested before that date. Which included things like radishes, spinach, and lettuce. So i can get a free crop of any of those plants, by using the space that will be used by the other. If you look in my lists below I'll give you an example. I then look for the first thing to be harvested, which is of course radishes, and get all the plants that need to be planted after that day (see the list below if this is confusing). I have 2 groups, one things that are harvested early, and one list where things are planted late.

Example: Corn is planted on 4/25, and radishes and mustard greens are harvested on or before 4/24. So i can fill that 4ft x 4ft section with radishes and mustard greens. Rather than just leave the space to waste. I would probably also plant some blacked seeded simpson and just either way a little to plant the corn, or harvest it a little early. Or just plant the corn with the lettuce still growing, since lettuce like shade anyway. Tomatos are planted on 5/10, so I can plant anything in my top list (i'll probably do the bok choy) and they'll be out of the ground in time for the tomatoes to go in.

Here are my lists:

Plant Type Date to Harvest

radish cherry belle 4/6
radish icicle, short top 4/12
spinach mustard tendergreen 4/24
lettuce black seeded simpson 4/29
extra dwarf bok choy bok choy 5/4
spinach bloomsdale 5/7
beet detroit dark red 5/13 (included just because hopefuly i can get a crop in, and i like beets more than most of the others :), they're easy to can if I get too many all at once)

Plant Type Date to Plant

garden bean top crop 4/15
peppermint/spearmint 4/15
corn golden bantam 4/25
bean - string blue lake (bush) 5/1
cucumber ashley 5/5
zucchini black black beauty 5/10
eggplant black beauty 5/10
tomato rutgers 5/10
green pepper california wonder 5/10
tomato super boy hybrid 785 5/10
squash waltham butternut 5/10
squash table queen 5/10
tomato beefsteak? 5/10

So my plans are to get a few extra things of spinach, and bok choy, and mustard greens, and probably learn how to freeze the greens. But most of the space, for the tomatoes, squash, green peppers etc, will go to beets. So may will hopefully prove to be a large canning month :).

This is my first year, and hopefully i'll get this more fine tuned. Things for me to look into. I keep most plants in my soil blocks before I plant them, and this time probably bumps back their harvest date. This means that in theory several other plants can be planted and harvested in time. So hopefully next year I'll get a better variety of extra plants.

Where to go to get local information

2012-02-22T13:03:00.000-08:00

Someday I hope to write a gardening website that gives awesome local information. One that helps you plan your garden, ask and answer Q&A, swap seeds, etc. Someday :). Until that point, where do you find local information?

http://extension.missouri.edu/main/DisplayCategory.aspx?C=67

That's where :). There are several forums, some good and some spammy, but the local extension of the department of agriculture, at least for missouri, is an awesome resource. That link above is for Vegetable gardening, and right at the beginning there is a link for a vegetable calendar.

Here's the pdf

This pdf is 8 pages, and extremely awesome :). If you don't look at anything else, this is where to start. It basically just goes through every vegetable that people normally plant, it shows which varieties do best in missouri, and what the average plant dates should be. Very very excellent way to "just plant a garden".

If you don't live in missouri, sorry I have no links for you. But look up your local extension and it should have plenty of information for you. Also there is always a place you can call to get more info.