Being Pure Organic

I have to admit that I might have really overdone it a bit with being completely organic, such as the hybrid tomato seeds and such. But I just don't want my garden to be non organic at all.
One of the most controversial subjects about this topic was when we were told that it would be a good idea to put in some soil additives. They are those little round pill things that you sprinkle around your bed. Being the paranoid person I am, I wanted to see if these additives were truly organic. The first pill was phosphate, which my dad says comes from a rock so this was organic. The phosphate is used to put phosphorous, a fertilizer, in the ground. The second additive was sulfur. This too is a mineral so organic and is used to put helpful organisms in the soil since they eat the sulfur. Finally, there was cow urea. This was a problem. Reading The Omnivore's Dilemma I know that conventional cows are treated quite badly and are stuffed full of unhealthy antibiotics. So I was wondering does the urea come from organic cows or conventional cows. I asked one of the starters of the community garden who is a seasoned gardener, and she replied, "Unless the organic farmers followed the cow around the pasture until it gave it's urea I'd say this was conventional." This made me uneasy. My dad reasoned that the antibiotics probably don't come into the cow urea, but I wasn't too sure. We each did our research for quite a bit and we both came to the conclusion, we would pass on the urea. My reason was that cow urine actually does have traces of antibiotics in it. That would make my garden non organic. My dad's reason was partly that, being a vegetarian, he didn't feel comfortable using an animal product. His main reason however was that it seems that even though the urea has lots of nitrates (fertilizer) and balances the pH (acidity and alkalinity) of the dirt, it kills the small organisms that sulfur brings. So, we decided to skip it. I don't know if my garden was affected because of my lack of cooperation for the urea, but I do know that it's a little more organic, because of it.

My Plan

My plan for my garden was a very very hard thing to put together. I never really thought about how different each vegetable was. Vegetables grow at all different times. They like and dislike climates, and take different amounts of time to grow. Some keep producing, while some need to be planted in succession. While I juggled with all these aspects I had to consider how deep each seed should go. Also how high they had to grow. You couldn't have a plant block sunlight from another. Also how many plants for each square foot and some spread, so the book had an idea about vertical gardening. It's where you take a vine plant like a pumpkin or a cucumber and trail it to climb up something like a vertical net. That way it doesn't take up so much room. (We wanted to do this but we didn't really complete it for all the vegetables. We did get a cucumber to crawl up this catchers net we erected. Instead we let the other vine plants trail out into our plant walking aisle. This turned out fine except now it is barely possible to walk in some of our aisles at all.)
Anyway back to my plan. At this time you know I was in trouble. Every time I thought I understood this a new problem or exception would come up. How in the world would I graph this? My dad had an idea. He made a calender from March to October in weekly intervals. After that I caught on to the idea. I put my 16 vegetables vertically while my dad's calendar weeks were horizontally. I started with looking at my seed packets where they said how long it took and roughly divided by 7. Then I put how long it took to germinate. (I thought it was one week. Big mistake as I'm going to find out.) Then I put the indoor starting time. Of course some can't be indoors like radishes, so they were just put in the ground at the appropriate time. I followed this with putting all plants outside in the ground, and how long till harvest. Some had to be replanted while others kept creating vegetables. Then it was brought to my attention the fact that the vegetables liked and disliked certain seasons. So after finding the seasons I created dead seasons, when the plant wouldn't be growing. All of this was based off the idea that April 23rd was the end of frost and October 10th was the start of frost. I then color coded and made a key for the calender. I then made a separate spreadsheet about the seed depth, width from other seeds, and the height of the plant. I used this to help plan out my bed. When I first drew it up, I had just tried to make it symmetrical. Once again my dad said I had forgotten something; height. The small plants should be up front, and the big ones behind, so they would all get equal sunlight. Plus the vine plants should be near the edge. I then rewrote it. I realized how much space I had in the bed. (In real life with the plants growing everywhere the space gets cramped.) Anyhow I color coded, labeled, and keyed the bed. In the key there was the abbreviation of the vegetable I was using, how many plants per square feet, how many seeds I needed and how many I needed indoors.
This plan was made using confusing research, modern technology (is Spreadsheet modern), and, yes, a few arguments (how about discussions?), among other painstaking things. But at the end I think I have a clue what to do.
I don't have good pictures of the climbing cucumber plants, the clogged aisles, and my plan, but I will upload it shortly.

Coming Up

My school year is about to start so I might not be able to do posts for a couple days. But after that be ready to learn about my garden plan.
The Blomer signing out.