Pictures For My Plan

Here were the pictures I said I'd upload.

This is the pea vine climbing up our string structure. This is called Vertical Gardening.

As you can see, the plants grew much bigger than I had expected. The middle of this picture is the aisle of our plot. It is covered by the pumpkin plant. (Sorry it's sideways).

This is the left side of my plan for the garden. The dates are horizontal, while the vegetables are vertical. You will see what the letters and colors mean.

This is the middle of my plan.

This is the end portion and the key for my plan

The first plan is what I wanted it to be, before my dad told me to consider size, and such. The bottom one is what I finally decided on. You will see what the colors and signs mean.

This is the left side of the key for my garden bed layout.

This is the other side of the key for the garden bed layout

This is the left side of my garden cost sheet

This is the middle of my garden cost sheet. I did not fill it out completely so it is not up to date

This is the last side of my garden cost sheet. Again it is not up to date.

This is a more simplified version. It does not have costs or savings. It just has the savings I made off the vegetables alone without any subtraction. Once again it is not up to date.

I am sorry if these pictures are late, and not perfectly clear but this should give you an idea of what I did. You will have to refer to my previous post: My Plan for what is what. I hope this helps you when planning your garden. If you have any questions, join this site so you can post a comment/question. I'll try to help out. It would help if you post it under the latest post, no matter what the post is about. 

            The Blomer signing out.

Garlic and Arugula... Or Is It?

          The first few vegetables that we grew in our garden was not, in fact a seed. We were handed these by a fellow gardener, one of the head ones I believe. One was a couple of garlic plants which were doing well. The other, however, was a few dying sprigs of a leafy green. They were no bigger than a tiny basil leaf. We were told that it was arugula, and planted it, thinking of it's pitiful state. To the right you can see the green plant and to the left is the garlic.

          Surprisingly, this John Doe vegetable seemed to do better than the garlic. It grew and became huge leaves stretching towards the sky. The garlic stems became green and lush, and we were very pleased that our start at gardening had worked out so well.

          Now let me tell you something about garlic. There are two ways to harvest it. The first way, is the one that is know by many, waiting until the bulb has grown. You will know that a bulb has grown because the stems will brown and wither. Be careful however, for your garlic could start rotting if you wait too long. If you want you can pull them out a little early the first year and from there you can decide for yourself. The second way you can harvest garlic is by cutting off the fronds like a leafy green and using that as a herb. This is a good idea while you are waiting for your bulb to grow or if you plant the garlic too close. Planting too close and not thinning would result in bulbs not being able to grow, so you would get more green but no root. When you cut a stalk off, leave some fronds so that photosynthesis can occur to regrow the garlic.
          Anyhow, back to the arugula. When I first ate this, I was shocked not to find the bitter taste, that arugula gives. My parents were also surprised, and speculated that this was due to the cooking of it. We also noticed though, that the leaves were not spiky like the arugula plant.
         We finally were enlightened a week or so later, when a gardener saw our plant and said that it was not arugula, but romaine lettuce. That explained it. Sadly, as I will tell later, the slugs and pests ate at it, but this romaine lasted until the end of spring, and is one of the hardiest plants I've ever seen to make such an amazing comeback.

Costs

       Now that I had my garden bed and seeds, I am going to give my first cost. I set up my cost in a spreadsheet (the picture will also be included with the other photos, I am uploading to this blog).
       In the first section I had the expense. The second section had the cost. After this I added the vegetable savings. I first had the vegetable name, then the total weight and amount, and finally the total cost of each vegetable that I grew. I also added the savings that were left over after each vegetable paid it's amount of the garden cost. With that I added the amount needed per type of vegetable to get a saving. I know this all seems very complicated, but the picture will clear things up.
      Anyhow, I had a few things to add to the expense side. First was the participation fee and the space fee. The full cost of these two things are for the area of 3 raised beds. Considering that I am only keeping track of my bed, I divided the cost by 3. The final cost for these fees was $47. $17 for participation, and 30 for space. Also, though the compost was free, the Spagnum peat moss had to be bought.  The Spagnum peat moss came to $14. When we were getting this peat moss, my parents did buy many more seed packets, however I didn't use any. The seeds that I did buy came to $15.84.
      Finally, the discussion of gas came into the factor. I couldn't walk or bike there, since the road leading to it, is very dangerous. I think I might have come up with a long detour, but I'm not sure. I decided that there would be a cost of gas, so I decided to keep track of how many trips I took. I made a chart. I gave the date, the number of times we went that day, (going there and back would be going 2 times), what we did there, and who went. Next to all of this, I would make a star. If I worked on my bed, then I would put a star counting the trip. If I was just looking and didn't touch anything, or if I worked on beds other than my own, then I wouldn't count it. I found the cost of a one way trip, by first finding the mileage. Our route is two miles long. Our car is a only 18 miles a gallon, which I know is non-environmental. A gallon gas is about $4, so you simplify 2 out of 18 miles to 1 out of 9. Then you find 1/9 of $4 and you find the gas cost. It was a stunning 44 cents there and 44 cents back.
         So, in total, not counting car trips, the expenses have come to $76.84.
        Already, a home garden would be winning, with no fees, or car trips. However, I still believe that more vegetables will grow in the community garden, so I haven't given up.

A Sorry Delay

I feel like I am saying this quite a lot on this blog, but I have never been great at keeping a journal, so this process is new to me. I will make a harder commitment, however. I am sorry for this delay, and after Hurricane Sydney lets out, and I can write without fear of no power, you'll hear more about the garden, and... BALD EAGLE SIGHTINGS!!!!!!!

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.