Where's my #@$%#$ Lettuce?

By now you've seen a few snaps of the current layout, and know my goal is trying to get as much out of my space as I can - while working within a 'pay for itself' budget. So seeing blank squares, or squares that aren't filled out at least 80% really starts to chap my ass after a while.

Sometimes it's where you don't expect them to pop up. Consider lettuce. Over the last 3 to 4 years I've grown probably 5 different varieties (mainly due to my seeing LETTUCE on the seed packet and grabbing it without reading it) in just about every way I can imagine growing it. In old cans, milk jugs, long window sized containers, in rows, in square foot squares.

I put it out the same times of the year, and it pops on up and grows - I can always count on it.

So where is it? It's supposed to be on that line right below the beans. Where there should be 16 nice little lettuce popped up, there's 5... maybe six.
This is on the new bed I just installed - and everything else has popped up just fine. I plant all my stuff from seed - although I do propagate in containers for some things - including lettuce - but usually this time of the year it's fine to plant right into the ground.

Worse still, the other 8 nestled between the turnip greens at the top, and the carrots and radishes below, haven't even put forward one peep of green.
I grew spinach here over the Autumn and Winter - but that was mulched with worm castings and afterwards dug over and amended with the same.
The same treatment the other squares (which held lettuce and and other things over the winter).

I'm now up to 3 replantings and nada.  Admittedly we've had some crazy weather swings between hot and cold, some very heavy rains - but it remains that by now I should be seeing something..
2 different places in the garden - 2 mixes of soils - same results. My guess is the weather and temps. 

Raised beds are able to get soil to warm temps faster than straight ground digging - but planter boxes do it even faster. 
Usually I plant a window container with them as both a backup, and also (due to limited bed space) to transplant as the garden squares are harvested.  Letting them get big and cutting my replant time.

This year though - everything is full up - once I put in the new 4 x 4 I expected that to go gangbusters and used my pots and containers to expand herbs and other things that require larger spaces in the beds.
I also keep 2 containers as 'overflow' - When I plant seeds I pop in 3-4 seeds per plant and thin back.  As I thin if I pull up a plant with intact roots, I'll pop it in an 'overflow' container. The plant will stay small because it can get rather cramped, and if I need to transplant to fill up a square - I can use it.  Also, as with lettuce, it can give a jump start on replanting.  I like to keep the garden beds as close to full and working as I can.

So what to do?  Putting in another 4x4 is out of the question  as the first hasn't paid for itself (this harvest will cover those costs) - besides, the next 4x4 is planned over Autumn and Winter - it's going to be an experiment in bringing the things I use closer together (self watering containers, square foot gardening, and vermicomposting into one unit).  It will be rather more expensive than a regular 4x4 as well.

More containers? Well they aren't THAT expensive - I've been phasing out my old weathered cheap pots for self watering pots as they wear out, but I'm running out of space to put them on - the hopes of expanding the garden wasn't to increase patio clutter but decrease it eventually.

Luckily I do have the old beds surrounding the house (my first beds were made by fixing those up). 
A rummage through the workshop and my list of 'to do' projects (there are so many I have to write them in a notebook or I forget them all) gave me a solution.  I've wanted a herb bed by the back doorstep - but this was going to be a Summer project, after the blueberry harvest.
The old bed that was there had been washed away down to some half broken down weed cloth - when I moved in I weeded them out quickly and covered them with pinestraw as mulch till I got around to them.

Peeling back the pinestraw and cutting the weed cloth showed some nice black soil - riddled with roots of bygone plants and other rubbish.
I blocked it out with some 2x4 scrap I had in the workshop and after some work with the shovel, hoe, and soil rake got rid of most of the crap and got to inspect the soil - it was a bit dense, so 3 blocks of coconut coir were hydrated (see the bucket off to one side) and mixed in.  I would have liked to use more, but my stash of coir is now running a bit low. I'm down to 3 bricks and I'll save that for my worm needs till I get more.

 Add 2 40lb bags of composted manure at 1.50 each, and some lattice from the workshop and we're good to go.
The lattice I use on the gardens to grid them off I get at Lowes for 7 bucks - you get 10 strips at around 8 foot per strip.

 

 The back strip is reserved for Garlic. People ask me 'where do you get your Garlic seeds from? ". Well I don't. I buy a bulb at the supermarket - break it up and put it into the ground (pointy end up) - and up shoots more garlic... it's that simple








The rest is planted out with Basil and Sage. I did a single plant per square at the back and 4 in a square one forward - I've planted them close in containers before - so this will give me a good test to see what works best in a square foot. One forward from those I've planted them again as seed.
To the side we have Parsley and Thyme. The front squares were planted with Dill, Cinantro, and Rosemary. If I were able to get Rosemary started earlier I'd have rearranged the order and called the bed 'Scarborough Fair' - ah well the the best laid plans, and all that.

So - herb garden sorted I now have a few pots and containers at the ready to plant out and try and get that @#$%!ing Lettuce sorted out!

Vermicomposting (Worm Farming) - The Care and Feeding of Worms.

   I wanted to write this on Sunday after I did my worm feeding for the week, but that turned over to Monday - where I found out my new neighbor was moving in and their help for the day had failed to show up, Tuesday - my Wife's birthday, Wednesday - ANZAC day (Australian veterans day of remembrance, which I observe being an Australian veteran myself). Thursday... I thought today was Thursday, but it's Friday, and I spent it fixing the bathroom that adjoins the master bedroom. We now have a working sink and toilet - but the shower still needs to be torn out and replaced.

So, Friday. A nice sunny day - and a couple of hours dealing with some garden stuff, and I can settle in to finally pen this article.  This is gonna be a LONG one - so strap in and get a coffee.

So, you want to start a Worm Bin?

We covered some things you'll need and some things you'll want in the last post. Your outlay could be as little as 30 or so dollars just for worms - or up to around 100 dollars (my start point) for a cheap worm tub and some starter worms, upwards to who knows where. I've seen some people online pay ludicrous amounts of money to buy or build massive systems, or fall for some snake oil - internet BS and pay for things such as 'breeder stock worms'. There is no such animal. My worms are the same as your worms, are the same as the worms at the farm I bought them from.

Now after saying 'worms are worms' I'm going to contradict myself.  There are different varieties of composting worms - the European Red Worm (aka the Super Red Worm at Uncle Jim's Worm Farm) which IS a slightly different animal. They are bigger and apparently like to burrow a little deeper, and some sources have said they enjoy paper goods a little more - I bought 250 to put in my second bin to test this claim (as I take very little as 'gospel' on the internet unless there is overwhelming evidence or scientific proof to back it up).
They can co-exist with normal red wrigglers with no problems according to my dealer.  If you have questions about species and performance - ask your worm dealer directly. If they don't answer you, use another dealer. I've sent questions to Uncle Jim's Worm farm several times and always received a quick, courteous and informed answer - I can't recommend this guy enough.
99.9% of people are just going to go for 'the red wriggler' - tried, true, no nonsense, composting worm - and everything I just said can be safely ignored.

An obvious point: Make sure you buy, build, order your worm bin first and wait for it to arrive. THEN order your worms :)  Sounds obvious but in the heat of the moment I had to hold myself back from the 'well they'll all arrive around the same time' mistake.

When they arrive you'll want to get them settled.. set up some fresh bedding (most worm bins you buy come with a brick of coconut coir - hydrate it and lay down some of that). A couple of inches will be fine. If you didn't read my spiel on the benefits of coir - or just plain ignored it - some shredded moist paper will do fine.
Empty the worms on top and leave the lid off your bin. Worms don't like sunlight and they'll burrow down into the bedding over the space of 1/2 hour (they're probably going to be lethargic after being packed up and shipped).
What I do at this point is check the moisture and sprinkle some corn meal over the top for them to eat.  I let them settle for a few days before feeding them proper.

During this time your worms may come to the surface or try and escape out the top. All these things I'll cover in 'problems' again - but for now there are more than likely only 2 things you need to do to control this till they settle:
1. take the top off the bin till they burrow down away from the light.
2. check the spigot for runoff of excess moisture. Worms like damp, but aren't fond of swimming.

I've observed this 'new worm escape' even in an established bin, and I think part of it is the worms adjusting to a new environment.  Once settled, and you find your groove with maintaining the environment for them - they'll happily live in there and not want to leave.

 What to Feed Worms.

I touched on this on my introduction post - and it it's worth remembering: Worms don't eat the trash per se , rather they live on the microorganisms that occur as the trash breaks down.  This is why if done right there is no funky smells.  So keeping this in mind - it's important not to overfeed the worms to maintain this.  Now this isn't terribly hard, but sometimes when you start out you can get a little overzealous.

There are lots of foods worms like:

• fruit vegetable scraps, stems, peels
• egg shells
• grains, cereals, bread, corn meal
• beans, rice, pasta
• coffee grounds & filter
• tea bags (remove staple first)
• dead or wilted flowers
• dry grass clippings & leaves
• newspaper & junk mail
• cardboard & paper egg cartons

There are some things they especially like.

• watermelon
• cantelope rind
• mango skin
• banana peel
• avocado skin
• corn on the cob
• pumpkin

And finally some things you shouldn't put in at all:

• meat, poultry, seafood, bones
• dairy products (butter, sour cream, whole eggs, cheese)
• oily or salty foods (peanut butter)
• acidic foods (pineapple)
• sauces or processed foods
• citrus (lemon, lime, orange)
• onions & garlic
• spicy foods & chili peppers (jalapeños)
• plants or grass that has been sprayed with pesticides
• poisonous plants
• soap
• glass, plastic, tin foil, metal

I use a general rule of thumb:  No dairy, no meat, no overly processed and nothing absolutely stupid - but some people have a strange definition of stupid so we add things like 'pesticide' to the list. Whoever even asks if it's ok to put pesticide into a living environment we're trying to create is a bonafide dumbass.

Now - some clarifications, and some tidbits you may find interesting:

Eggshells .  I put them crushed in my bin - they pass through to the bottom and I put the in the top again. They eventually go away but very slowly. Some say 'they get eaten really slowly' but I'll put forward another idea:  Worms like a fairly PH neutral, coolish environment, but the process of organic breakdown creates heat and of course acidity in soil - lowering the PH.  Eggshells contain calcium carbonate - the same thing you find in seashells and is used in common aquariums to buffer the PH of the water.  Calcium carbonate dissolves in an acidic environment, bringing the PH back towards neutral.  Thus this 'slow eating' is probably due more to them maintaining the PH level of the environment.
I put them in whenever I feed mine scraps.  I give them a rinse (because they technically follow the 'dairy' rule - and I want the shell - not stuff inside) - then I put them in a ziploc bag into the freezer.  Frozen eggshells break up VERY easily.  Another trick is to put them in a stackable plastic cup (out of the freezer) and put another empty cup inside to help crush them.

Citrus skins and onions - I actually put them in mine, but in LOW quantities and always with eggshells - I've had no side effects doing this as I think the eggshells help neutralize the citric acid content.

Corn on the cob.  I pop one or two halves when I get them in every level of my bin. I find it's one of the things I sort out at the bottom and put back in the top - I've had one in there for 12 months now gradually getting smaller and smaller. The first time I found one had traveled from top to bottom I was tempted to throw it out - I found under the castings lots and lots of worm cocoons.  As much as they liked the corn, they provided an excellent place for them to lay eggs.  So now I make sure every level has one or two.  Anything that maximizes the amount of cocoons that return to the tub is a good thing.

When feeding it's a good idea to try and keep a nice balance of 'green' scraps and 'brown' scraps - oversimplified we can say that scraps and other food that breaks down is 'green' and paper, cardboard goods are 'brown'.  Yet another mention for coir - technically green though we use it in the same way we use brown goods.  This is not an absolute - this is a guideline to keep a nice balanced environment for them.

How To Feed Worms.

When you're starting out you'll want to follow these guidelines until your worm bin matures.  It's really really simple.  Look at they surface area as quadrants.  Pull back the bedding on a corner, put in your food scraps, put the bedding back over - add a little more on top (coir, moist paper), and that's that.  If you find yourself a bit forgetful, put a sticker on the corner you just put food in.
Next time you have scraps, check the progress of the first corner - if it looks like it's doing well and getting eaten, add to the next corner. Add a little more bedding on top when you're done.
Work your way around the bin from corner to corner - ideally when you reach the first corner the food will be mostly gone, and you continue along, slowly building up your bin.

When you reach about an inch or so from the top, pop another level on, put down a layer of bedding as if you had just started that bin, and continue.  The worms will travel up to the next level in search for more food.

You'll eventually get to a point where the population multiplies to keep up with your food scraps.

Doing this also helps us keep up with our 'green/brown' ratio without even paying attention.


Now that I've said this - I'll totally break all those guidelines and tell you how I feed my worms.  Remembering that I have a family of 5 and that getting rid of my trash is every bit as important as the castings.

I put all my veg scraps and food for the critters into a bowl that's kept in the freezer - I do this as soon as I'm done with my veg (cut off some tops, peel some carrots, straight in the bowl in the freezer - likewise eggshells).  On Sunday I get the bowl, get out the frozen puck of worm food and break it up into the top of the bin, cover it with paper goods and water it down with a watering can. Not much - just enough to moisten the new bedding.

The frozen food thaws, cooling down the bin a little, the worms eat it.  Several times on Sunday I'll check the spigot and drain off the fertilizer I'll use that afternoon for the garden.

Wednesday I do a light cover of bedding and another water down, drain off for my mid week fertilizing.

Now - I wouldn't recommend doing that method unless your prepared to check on your worms a fair bit, or have had your bin running for at least 12 months. That's strictly a 'power use'. My primary (first bin) has run this way for nearly 7 months with no visible downside and a monthly harvest of castings.

This article is getting longer than I intended, and I still have much more I want to discuss on the subject - so upcoming articles will be about procuring food for worms and of course worm bin problems.

Vermicomposting (Worm Farming) - an introduction

If I was limited to only promoting one single idea on gardening, it would be vermicomposting aka worm farming.  There are so many benefits to this that I nearly get writers block trying to sort the information into a good starting point.

I'd read about it several years ago and dabbled ignorantly with it in garden #1 - I saw first hand some of the effects of it while composting with garden #2 - then researched and experimented with it properly before starting this garden. It is currently THE anchor point - the part of my garden experiments that not only makes a lot of what I want to do possible, but also has the biggest impact on running costs, as well as providing a benefit to the rest of the household.

An extreme simplification:  I put garbage in one end, I get fertilizer, pesticide, mulch, and soil amendments out of the other.

It reduces my cost of these things so close to zero, we may as well call it zero.

I'm going to be breaking this down into several posts - this one will deal with basic info and setup, a future post will deal with maintaining, care, and feeding.

It's a process that revolves around 'Eisenia fedida' commonly known as the 'red wriggler' worm in the US.  It's important to point out that this is different from what we commonly call earthworms. These are composting worms. They live in the top few inches of earth, usually in moist debris (whereas the earthworm burrows down into the earth - these are also useful, and should be promoted in the garden, but they are a separate thing).


In optimal conditions the red wriggler can consume up to it's body weight in material per day (although one half is a more realistic expectation).  Although  we generally say 'they eat the trash' what they actually consume are the microorganisms in the material as it breaks down - it's splitting hairs and I only bring it up so people can understand why this composting method doesn't smell, and to bring up one of the strange mysteries of the process: Although the decomposition of organic material produces microorganisms beneficial to plant growth - the castings left behind by the worms will contain 8 times more than their feed.  The physics nut in me though will point out that there seems to be a ratio of around 2 to 1 of feed weight to final castings, so we can apply the law of conservation of energy to explain this.
These castings contain approximately 5 times more nitrogen, 7 times more phosphorous, and 11 times more potassium, 3 times exchangable magnesium, and 1.5 times the calcium  than normal soil. The castings have a balanced PH, and the process by which they're created removes pathogenic bacteria (my son, who shoves EVERYTHING in him mouth could do a handful of it and it would be less harmful than the sand he regularly tries to eat out of the sandbox). In terms of plant growth factors, they've been likened to seaweed.

It outperforms chemical commercial fertilizers, and you can use as much as often as you like because you can't overdose the plants on it - you can't burn their root systems like you can with commercial fertilzers and plant food.  Which makes it not only effective, but idiotproof.

I put it in the soil when I dig it over as an amendment. When all the seedlings in a square are sprouted and at their second leaves I'll mulch with it as it holds moisture very very well while also helping prevent weeds breaking through - while at the same time fertilizing the plants.  It can be combined with water (or slightly more elaborate recipes) to make a compost tea that can be sprayed as a fertilizer for foliage, and at the same time work as a pesticide against a variety of pests (the 'runoff' - excess moisture drained from the farm also bestows these benefits as it's usually water that's steeped in the accumulated castings).

And this is only the benefits to the garden, there are other benefits for the household.

I started looking into this in earnest originally NOT for the garden - or at least the garden was a secondary benefit.  With twins you get two times everything (especially if they're boy/girl) and that means 2 times the 'baby by-products'. Long story short - when you find yourself prioritizing your trash because your bin is filling up too fast - you have the make changes.  I tried flattening out paper goods, which helped but didn't solve the problem. I started adding paper goods to the compost pile of garden #2, which went a little further (as compost should have both nitrogen and carbon inputs - paper goods are a good way of adding the second) - but the process was taking too long.  With a single matured worm bin I was able to dispose of up to a pound of paper goods per day, that's 30lbs per month (yielding some 15lbs of castings per month).

So - how is it done?  How much does it cost? There's a plethora of sites on the web with plans for building your own from rubbermaid containers, wood, just about anything. For use inside or outside.  When I was dabbling I built a small one out of a old bucket that came full of kitty litter. Your level of cost depends on you. Personally this is one area that in hindsight I feel that putting a bit of money out there is a good investment.  You'll save yourself a lot of time, and if you're just starting you can minimize 'newbie error' by using a tried system.

Worm Bin

This is the actual one that I use - it's made by Vermihut and costs around 50 - 75 dollars depending on how many trays you want (mine came with 5). There are others on the market of varying costs - I went for a budget solution and so far it's performed very well.  I recently expanded by bying a second one that is currently being brought up to speed.
You put your scraps and paper bedding in a tray with your worms until it fills, then place a new one on the top. As food is consumed, the worms travel up to the next layer - leaving behind castings.
The excess moisture from watering the system is drained out the spigot and used on the garden.
The method I use for harvesting is to take the bottom tray out, put it on the top, and take the castings from the top and put them in a bucket - any worms left in that top tray will burrow down to avoid the light - if you do this patiently - the worms naturally sort themselves into a lower tray - to which I put back anything unprocessed. I leave the now empty tray on the top, and the process begins anew.

Before I transplanted a tray to my new tower, I had a healthy population that would have me harvesting out the bottom tray once per month for approx. 15lbs of castings - mind you it takes a bit of time to get your bin to 'mature' to this level. Mine took 4 months before my first harvest, 2 months for the second, and I now harvest every month.
Looking at how the system works, we can say that with 5 trays - one tray harvested a month - I'm giving each tray 5 months to work to the bottom, which for me has given me very rich castings and very little unprocessed material.

Worms

It goes without saying you'll need worms.. a goodly amount of worms.  I get my worms from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm.  He has good service, a good price, and he's expanded into worm bins at a competitive price - he also sells the same bin I use at a cost very close to Vermihut's - making him a one - stop - shop.  As a side note his monthly mailing letter is usually pretty informative and funny. One of the few of these I don't flag as 'spam'.

Remember - a worm can eat up to it's body weight in material per day.  But a worm is really really small.  A rough estimate is around 1000 worms weigh a pound. Depending on how much waste you process and how fast you want your population to mature - I'd suggest getting between 500 and 1000 (I started with 500, in hindsight I would have chosen 1000).  Your 'farm' is just that - and your worms are a 'livestock' - they will breed in favorable conditions and the population will adjust to their surrounds.  Worms tend to congregate and breed in a biomass. so the better the mass, the better your breeding - this is why 500 is a good minimum start point. They are hermaphroditic and require 2 to mate.  The cocoons they lay will produce anywhere up to 20 worms, and in a couple of months these will in turn mature to breeding age.

A quick bit of fuzzy math will give you the population of my first bin. Given 15lbs of casting per month and the approximation of 2-1 feed to castings yields approx 30lbs of garbage input. A worm eats up to it's weight per day - so approx 1lb per day = 1lbs of worms - OPTIMALLY, given things are not optimal we can say anywhere from 1/2lb per day to 1lbs .. so 1000 worms to a lb = between 1000 - 2000 worms.  That's a bit more than the 500 I originally bought less than a year ago.

Besides worms and a bin for them to live in, there are few things that will help you along.  Although not 100% needed, they are worthy investments and you'll wonder how you ever got by without them.

Coconut Coir.

If you buy a worm farm, chances are you're going to be getting a brick included.  It's from the fibers between the flesh and hard shell of coconuts and is used in a variety of products. For our purposes it's a replacement for peat moss that has no bacteria or fungal spores associated with it, it also repels snails.
For our purposes it's an additive to the worm farm used to add more 'green' material when garden/kitchen scraps are unavailable, to remove excess moisture if the bin gets too wet, or as a bedding cover if overfeeding has attracted undesirables like fruit flies to the bin.
It expands in water to 7-8 times its volume - making it easy to store and easy to use. This trait also appears to pass on to the castings produced - and the castings I've made where coir has been present has absorbed and retained more moisture in the garden.  I buy it in 650gram blocks, which expands to about 'a bucket full' with a gallon and a half of water.  Shop around on the web for it and you can get some good deals - the last time I bought 10 blocks - 5 of them have lasted me nearly a year.  I purchased them for around 1.50c per block (plus nearly that in shipping) - shop around for a good deal.
Apart from use with the worm farm, coir is a good addition to your soil, adding a light fluffiness that you find usually from adding peat moss.  I'm using it as the main part of a mix for growing potatoes in.


Paper Shredder

Actually this is the exact model I bought - a 6 sheet cross cut shredder.  This was a recent addition, before that I cut my paper and cardboard by hand. I have only 2 regrets. The first is that I didn't buy one sooner and that I went with the 6 sheet over the 8 sheet.  At Walmart it cost around 45 dollars.
The benefits were 2 fold - firstly was time. as I shred 90% of all paper goods and packaging in the house, and a family of 5 - by hand I would sit at the desk in my office with a box cutter and a pair of scissors and start a movie on netflix.
Since then I get through my bi-weekly shredding in about 5 minutes.  That's a HUGE savings in time.
Secondly the cross cut cardboard and paper is a LOT fluffier and lighter, making it less prone to compaction in the bin, and smaller - providing more surface area (which means a faster break down time).  If you take this on as a regular part of your garden composting - you are going to want to buy one.  Mine is a Fellowes and I'd recommend it - it has an auto shutoff if it overheats,  and handles everything up to a packing box in thickness (thicker packing boxes it does grind and complain, but does the job - see AUTO SHUTOFF on overheating).


Lastly - I'd recommend a bag of corn mean - it makes a nice dietary suppliment for the worms. I got a bag for a buck and I'm still using the same bag a year later - every now and then I sprinkle the top of the tub for a special treat for the little critters.

That's about it for basic info and setup - In a couple of days I'll go over starting, care and feeding.

Square Foot Gardening.

Two of the cornerstones of my garden that so far have proven to work very well together are vermicomposting (worm composting) and square foot gardening. I'll cover the latter in this post.

Square Foot Gardening was pioneered by Mel Bartholomew, and his book on the subject can be picked up here.

It's not a bad read, though he is a little self indulgent and you could boil down most the information into a couple of blog posts (oh my...pot meet kettle!). For a beginner it's better than some books I've read - and he tells you all about his mistakes.

The basics of it are that you divide your garden into 1 foot squares, and maximize the growth in each square - you treat each square as a 'mini bed' growing what you like in each and using the spacing guide for that plant to regulate how many plants go in each square.

It's fairly obvious when you think about it, and in fact was something I did in garden #1 in containers without even realizing it.  It's part of the success of that first garden and something I had to re-learn.

The optimum sized bed is 4 x 4 - giving you access to plant, weed, water every square easily - but you can vary the length - the main idea is accessing your plants. We don't need rows and aisles - we're not farming - we don't need equipment to there to water/weed/pick/plant.
Another benefit is you can practice things like crop-rotation in each small square as things are harvested - companion planting can be included in your layout if you so desire (planting plants that give benefits to each other in close proximity).
You can amend the soil, dig over, replant in micro sections of your bed as you need or as you see fit.
Using the layout of 16,9,5,4,1 plants per square also makes it very easy to identify your sprouting plants - so you can keep weeding down.   Weeding itself is dead easy and it's hardly work to keep a garden bed clean.  New complete raised beds can be lined with burlap or weed cloth, leaving only one vector for weeds to enter your garden.

Where Mel and I have a parting of the ways (and indeed a bone of contention with some of his acolytes) is when it comes to soil.  Mel would have us make 'Mel's Mix' - his own special blend of potting soil, that although would be nice - comes down to 'cost prohibitive' for me.

His mix is 1/3 mixed composts 1/3 vermiculite 1/3 peat moss.  Although this will give a light and fluffy soil - a 4 x 4 x 6inch area ends up as 8 cubic feet of material - do your own math and go down to your nursery, lowes, home depot, walmart, whatever and start adding that up.

This being said you could substitute the peat moss with coconut coir and reduce that a bit, but in the end way too much money. For the cost of filling one bed this way I filled all mine using a mixture of existing soil, topsoil, cow compost, mushroom compost, a couple of bags of cheap potting mix and a bunch of worm compost, and a couple of handfulls of perlite per bed. What went in was dependent on what I could get for cheap.  Mel's philosophy of starting with a 100% great soil is a valid point of view - mine on the other hand is we are growing 2 things - plants, but also soil.  'Growing' good soil is something that must be learned and is just as important as the growing of the plants.

Neither of us are right or wrong in this - some people buy seedlings, I plant seeds. We get to the end eventually, one of us takes a little longer (and has a much lighter wallet).

One thing I will be doing in the future (and amending as I go) is adding coconut coir, as I recently made a 'potato mix' from equal parts cow compost, coconut coir, a couple of handfulls of worm castings and perlite - and the result was VERY nice (and the spuds love it).  The soil thus far has remained very fluffy and I imagine I'll do this to the next square I plant carrots and beets in.

There is very good info in his book about the importance of composting and some methods to go about it. Saving space by growing up and not out - One thing it suffers from is a little bit of the 'one answer for all things' when it comes to growing root crops or large leafed plants like squash.  Trying to cram them into his paradigm is a little strained - and probably easier to do by either digging or using containers.

 Speaking on containers; a lot of pots, square and round, measure out to a nice size to do this exact same thing without the raised beds at all. I've done it, I continue to do it.

All up - this system (for the most part) works - you'll have to adjust some of the plants per square foot, your watering methods to suit your climate, and make concessions for some larger plants - but as a base system it certainly works. I think every garden can benefit from something in this system.
 

Starting Point

Of course I'm years away from seeing my ideal system realized.  Aside from costs and time to put that together, there is also getting all the bits to integrate - or seeing even if they WILL integrate. But we have a start point.

I've been working since September on the backyard - I didn't have a snap of what I started with, but I have one of where I'm at right this moment. At this point we're working through square foot gardening techniques and planting and vermicomposting as a source of soil amendment and fertilizer.
Basically how much can I plant, what can I plant when, and how much can I keep fed and healthy. So far I manage to keep everything watered every second day and fertilized twice a week at zero cost.

I'm rather proud of how utterly unimpressive it is. I wish I had a picture of the beds close to the house before I started - they were more or less there when I moved in only they were filled with hard packed soil and mulched with building nails, broken glass, wood, and other debris. With kids using the backyard - this moved the garden to a high priority. I've pinestrawed over unusable parts of the area as there are no rain gutters and water drops some 40ft down off the top story roof onto those areas - carving channels through soil and tearing through plants.
What was left I cleaned, dug, turned, amended, and in Autumn I test drove. I planted out Fall veg that continued to grow all the way till the turn of spring - most of it I dug out at that point and prepared for spring. What's in there now (along with the newly added 4x4 raised bed) has been growing for about a month.  The beans and peas are starting to flower and I've already harvested some radishes and swiss chard.  Lettuce has been a slow uptake.

What takes a bit to sink in is that there's no wasted space on rows and aisles. and when you start adding it up - there is 55 square feet in garden there in beds alone - that's 55 different squares for containing plants.

Looking closer at the last added bed - each square contains as many plants as it's seed spacing allows - peas are 8 per square.  Bush beans are at 9, lettuce is at 4, and the kale in front is at 1.

That 4 x 4 square is holding 16 peas,54 bush beans, (eventually) 16 lettuce and 4 Kale.

that's a lot of stuff for 4 x 4.  and that's a little over 1/4 of the current available space.

Other things you can see there are squash, zucchini and butternut squash in containers - these plants take up a lot of space, but it's leaf space - giving them self watering pots means they can be moved around and given all the space they need without hogging valuable dirt space.

I have a compliment of containers and pots on the back step as well containing everything from broccoli to herbs and even potatoes.

An inventory of what's currently sprouted and growing:

• Cherry Tomatoes x 5
• Tomatoes x 3
• Thyme, parsley (lots), basil x 5, sage x 5, chives (lots)
• Broccoli x 3
• Mustard Greens x 27
• Lettuce x 24
• Beets x 38
• Carrots x32
• Radishes x 32
• Swiss Chard x 16
• Garlic x 12
• Corn x 10
• Onions x 12
• Green Peppers x 7
• Snow Peas x 16
• Green Beans x 54
• Kale x 4
• Butternut Squash, Zucchini, summer squash x 1
• Potatoes x8
• and one lone blueberry plant I brought back from the farm.

 Like I said - I'm rather happy with how underwhelming it is....until you start counting plants.

Marriage of Ideas.

Keeping in mind my own goals and restrictions - I've put a lot of thought into what I want to do and how to go about it.  I have an overreaching goal that would incorporate a lot of different ideas from a lot of different places.  What I have to work on is how these ideas slot together. Although information on the internet is easy to find - finding objective information is trickier, and trying to get info and advice on putting together 2 different methods and ideas is harder still, you'll run into a lot of people of the 'one true way' mindset - and of course the folks that follow them.

Every system and every method for everything is going to have a downside.  For example Hydroponics.  They popular opinion is that it saves water by using a reservoir that circulates water delivering nutrients sans the soil. We all know the basic principles, and on the surface it looks pretty good - but those nutrients run out... you add more... but not everything is taken out, only the good stuff. Eventually you get a buildup of salts and other things that facilitate that water being changed.

So you have a bunch of water you have to get rid of that's not much good for anything, and replacing that water - and you have to do this with some regularity.  It's the downside that isn't advertised.

Now some bright spark decided to marry another idea to it - in aquaculture, the raising of fish, you have the same problem of water toxicity.... so someone married it to hydroponics - the waste of the fish passes through the hydroponic mediums and bacteria cultures form that convert those ammonia products to nitrites then to nitrates which fertilizes the plants, the water - sans nitrates is cycled back to the fish as clean water.  It's the nitrogen cycle that occurs in nature and soils. Raising plants and fish at the same time.

Now the downside to this is that if a hose breaks, a syphon fails, water stops moving - too many fish overload the system - your plants die. Then your fish die.

The funny thing is - as much as aquaponics had to do the breakthrough with the hydroponics crowd, a year ago suggesting using a soil medium with aquaponics methods was met with so much vitriol you'd have thought someone suggested using kittens for fertilizer.

Anyways - at this point in time I have neither a hydroponic nor aquaponic system (YET) - but I'm trying to illustrate how people will tell you a 'one true way' without letting you know the pitfalls, and sometimes get really bent out of shape if you bring them up, or God forbid, try and solve them. In the realm of computers you can equate this to 'PC or Mac?' or any good Operating System or preferred web browser discussion - or on some forums I frequent 'What is a Virtual World?'... very little useful information comes out of this. It's like discussing religion or politics in a pub.

My ideal system - what I want to work towards - and fulfills all my criteria is as follows:

Wicking (self watering) 4x4 raised beds on a reservoir filled with sand and course medium covered by soil.
Each bed broken down for intensive planting using square-foot-gardening methods.
Each bed containing a one foot (making each bed 4x5) compost area for worms.
Water cycled through the wicking bed reservoirs and overflows pipes back to a tank for raising of tilapia.

An aquaponics system fed into self watering soil beds further fertilized by composting worms - providing the nutrients to sustain an high yield intensively planted garden.
Self watering, self fertilizing, nearly self weeding.

And the best part: composting worms live on veg and garden scraps and paper (in my current worm farms - kitchen leftovers and junk mail).  If fish weren't in the equation any source of ammonia could take it's place - and as it so happens we all have access to a near inexaustable supply of sterile ammonia.. yes... that.... 'humonia'.

You could theoretically run this system on piss and garbage.

And I think THAT has potential.

Goal Setting and Purpose

I was going to dig up my pissy little camera and put the Kindle HD in the pocket and see about taking a few photos today - but the morning sun is banging down into the downstairs solarium (how posh - not only do I have a solarium we use as an office - but a DOWNSTAIRS one... Yes there is an upstairs one over top :P ), and I still have some morning wrangling to do with the rugrats before my morning clears enough to spend some time outside. I thought in the meanwhile I'd touch on something simple I think everyone should do when setting up their garden projects: work out what you hope to get out of it.  It could be some far reaching goal (like me) or just get some enjoyment out of watching something grow.  Maybe you want your own fresh veg on the table, and are too far from a farmers market - or just to see if you can.  The point is our goals will probably be different, and what may be necessary for me, might not be for you.

So, what it's all about for me:

I not only want to eventually produce 100% of the family veg, but expand the range of what we eat on a regular basis. I was raised on 'Meat and 3 veg', and whenever I've returned to this touchstone my general health and well being has been much improved.

Improved quality of food.  I could wax nostalgic about everything from my youth and how it's all changed, but I'll leave that for another post - I'll leave it at: buy a tomato, take a bite - pick a tomato, take a bite.  If these things taste the same to you, nothing I say will make any difference on the subject - and I'll wager you also like your steak well done.

The food I produce must have a lower cost to produce than it's store counterparts. It must be cost effective for me to do this or what's the point? This includes things like dirt - fertilizer - seeds. I'll write off my time and sweat as $0.00 because I file that under 'enjoyment' - I have to keep things honest anyways. If I quantified the stress relief, the health benefits from being out in the sun, the fitness benefits from the odd workout - it would outweigh the per hour labor cost  I put in.

The garden must pay it's own way.  What money I put in, must come back out in value - not quite the same as the previous point. I have a lot of things I need to get done, a lot of family and home expenses. Every dollar I spend I need to account for - I need to justify why I spent it. If I can't - I won't.  How to measure this? My own method is to take what I harvest and apply the current dollar value to it if I bought it down the road at Kroger/Smiths/Walmart etc.  Luckily for me things like fresh herbs are priced insanely.  I'll throw out there that the simplest, most cost effective thing you can to start on something like this is to grow fresh herbs.  It's easy and extremely cost effective.

It must be easy to maintain. I'm busy, I don't have time every single day to spend an hour or two in the garden weeding, planting, digging, watering - sometimes it will have to fend for itself.

Keep a small footprint.  I have what I consider to be an average backyard space for where I live. It's fairly generous, but it's for the whole family - not just for me.  Apart from previously beds (which I'm reworking and repurposing) I have an amount of space probably smaller than 1/4 of the total usable area of the yard.

Sustainability and a low environmental impact: I have to be able to do this over and over and over in a manner that's safe and had has a low impact on the yard. This is a no brainer. I have kids that are going to grow up here - I can't have huge piles of crap, toxic chemicals or runoff - As it is now I have a daughter who is fascinated with digging and pulling leaves and a son that shoves everything in his mouth as his 'go to' method of working out his interest. It has to be safe.

Hopefully as I get around to the actual setup things will click as to why I go about things in certain ways - however where I am at the moment is only a baby step to where I eventually want to be - the current setup doesn't give the vision justice and it's going to be a very long journey.

Your goals are going to be different - so don't read anything I do and think 'oh I must do it this way' because that's the kind of BS I'm trying to get away from (and why I'm writing this in the first place) - if anything I'd be pleased if somewhere along the way you get some snippet you find useful, some idea you find cool and helpful, or some suggestion that helps me along the way to where I want to go.

There isn't any 'one best way' - only the way that gets you to where you want to be.

Garden number 2 - Nature strikes back.

There are no pictures of garden #2.  There was nothing worth taking pictures of. As much as garden #1 was successful in every way, this one was an abject failure.  And the thing I blame most - ignorance.

With the twins growing rapidly, the 2 bedroom apartment was becoming VERY small for us. We knew we had to move - but finding a new place was problematic.  We settled for a very affordable 3 bedroom house - and affordable was the only real benefit it had.  It had been a bit of a DIY nightmare in a past life - with a crazy layout (an underground kitchen and a 5 1/2 foot clearance doorway to a downstairs toilet - not good when you're 6ft 4 - at least once I knocked myself out going through that door - and gave myself a concussion on at least 2 occasions) - it had a backyard, of sorts. It was maintained by the shoddiest of lawn companies, who's leafblowing into the surrounding vinage and scalping of the lawn had resulted in soil erosion on a patchy lawn and the over a third of the yard reclaimed by nature. not an exaggeration - there were wisteria and kudzu vines I found that I mistook for trees - and a property fence no one had seen for 10 years.
When I mentioned a garden, the landlord laughed and said I could do what I wanted.

The only water spigot was tucked away at the top of a hill, which had a single nice flat area that I had to free from vines and overgrowth.  I found under a blanket of leaves a rich black soil..... for 1 inch.... then sand.

Not 'sandy soil' - sand.

Still the area looked ok in the Autumn sun, and so I bought tools and dug, turned, nailed, cut and screwed. All through the winter I toiled - building 4 raised beds 8ft by 4ft - I double dug the sand and dirt - hauled in dirt and bark from my father-in-law's farm where I'd been helping out.  A 55 gallon drum, with the help of a drill and some applied physics (to all who said I wasted my time with that in Uni - this Bud's for you!) became a frighteningly efficient burn barrel able to reduce a tree to ash in under an hour - vines would literally disintegrate in seconds as it the whole drum glowed an evil red.

Then spring! an explosion of green everywhere! except my beds - as they were totally shaded as every tree sprung new life and vines clawed back to reclaim the sky.  The topsoil and bark turned nearly to cement on the first rain, and the twisted and stunted plants that clawed from it either died or bolted to seed after failing to produce anything. Judicious use of a quarter bag of farm grade fertilizer ensured that what was left was thoroughly burned to death.

To fix the soil I educated myself on composting - this was not only for the garden, but also for the household. Twins go through a LOT of diapers, which in turn eat a LOT of bin space, and so you end up with a backlog of paper goods.  Those leaves that were blown into the vines (and creating wonderful soil for them to thrive while the lawn turned to dust) were raked out and put to use. By summer I had the start of some good soil - but nowhere near enough.

I busted out the containers down by the house and tried to rebuild the first garden that worked - but that soil that I saved was now spent (you have to replenish nutrients... who'da thunk it?) - some quick math showed two great revelations:  Farm fertilizer was used on farms for a reason - and the cost of miracle grow and other plant foods/soils are actually priced to make gardening more expensive than buying the food.  And thus I learned my first word in the hippy vernacular:  unsustainable.

 Revisiting the compost heap I discovered it wasn't heat that was working so rapidly on my pile (it was in the shade - like everything else in vine heaven) - but that hundreds of worms had taken up residence under it. So back to the internet for info on vermicomposting (worm farms).  This time I'd fork out a little money (my garden pocket money by this time was nearly expended, and I had NOTHING to show for it) and get a bit of proper - if cheap - kit. A low end 'tower' and 500 red wrigglers.

Back to Autumn with a plan - I'd rake up and beat the yardies to the leaves, compost all winter, get the worm farm into full swing, set up rainwater collection (this was the first stage of an aquaponic experiment that I didn't get a chance to complete), setup a small indoor growing station under lights,  and hit spring with a vengance.

I'd like to say the next spring was a wonderful success - but that would be a lie. It was better, and my long winter of studying paid off.  2 out of 4 beds were functional and started growing tomatoes and peppers, 2 beds still needed filling.  A potato tower was doing ok and starting to flower by the end of spring - and the container garden and rainwater (with worm farm fertilizer and castings) was starting to kick out greens again... and then we found 'The House'.

A 120yr old Victorian in need of much love. 3600 square feet with a sunny back yard and a park across the road. Ours to do with whatever we liked, and priced within our means.

And so failcakes garden #2, with many lessons learned was left behind, and again I was back to square one - Spring, Summer and the start of Autumn would pass before I had time and spare pocket money to start on another.... and that brings us to now.

Behind garden number 1.......

This isn't my first - or even my second garden since migrating to Georgia. It's my third. But it's important to touch on the first two and what was learned (or not learned) from them.
I tell people I'm the sum total of my mistakes - you learn very little from blind success, and I'm more than happy to talk about my failures and what was learned in the process.


So, garden number one.  A big bonus in moving to Georgia from Las Vegas was the thought of growing my own food. I'd been fondly recalling my Mother's gardens of my childhood and how fresh things tasted - I'd also been watching the BBC's 'River Cottage' series and although that lifestyle was out of reach, I liked some of the notions put forward in it.  So moving to Georgia, and into an apartment - albeit larger than my 1br Las Vegas upper story, and actually having a very small space that passed as 'a yard' (considering for 10 years 'a yard' either wasn't something that came with a rental property - or was a collection of rocks and called 'desert landscaping' - this thought it utterly beyond me as you don't tend to forget what the desert looks like WHEN YOU'RE SURROUNDED BY ONE).  And so my little 10x15 of green seemed to me jam packed with possibilities (that no one else seemed to see).

 I managed to dig up the only photos I could find.  Not the greatest quality and taken when the garden was young.  At this point we found out we had kids on the way - my son and daughter (twins) - so throwing money into a huge gardening project wasn't going to happen, and being a rental and a apartment to boot - containers were the word of the day. Whatever I could find on special at the dollar store - whatever I could find at a yard sale, or donated from friends - but the best ones (if you look closely) were gallon milk jugs - any container I could find and cut up. Anything that would hold a plant was used.

 It did expand beyond these photos. It ended up being fairly impressive and producing a fair amount of greens.  It seemed everything I put in the soil sprang forth green and I could do no wrong.  I bought whatever soil I could get at the dollar store at 2 bucks a bag.  Put in seeds, water, and away I went.

When things would start to turn down, I would totally fluke into things that would spring everything back to life, or yield benefits I wouldn't understand for years.

Things like companion planting, or getting just the right variety of spinach by dumb luck that let me harvest it constantly - 12 plants to a window box - and have it never bolt to seed.  I made a worm bin as an experiment out of a kitty litter bucket - caught worms from the backyard to put in it (50 or so I think - looking back it's laughable) but I couldn't get the castings out of the bottom (what little I got) and so I filled it with water then in frustration watered the plants with it over the next few months (worm tea....).  Success without the slightest bit of understanding.

I grew over half the families intake of veg and herbs out of a tiny area with very little cost.

I never achieved this level of success again.