my five favorite gardening links

i wanted to post this because i'm testing the new blogger features. it now has an auto-titling thing. and you don't have to type out the tags for links, boldface, or italics anymore.

anyway these are my five current favorite gardening links:

1. GardenWeb Forums
If you have a question about gardening and you can't find it on google or yahoo, chances are someone here knows it.

2. Composting at Cornell University
This link goes directly to how to build a family-scale compost bin for about $15. We use one at NKU (but we could use two!). The whole website has just about everything you might want to know about composting.

3. Seed Savers Exchange
This is the website for a non-profit seedbank that collects rare seeds from around the world. The actual exchange is accessible only through membership, but some of the most popular collections are available through general web-order. Truly esoteric seeds, things you may never see in a grocery store. I've purchased through them for a couple of years (though not exclusively).

4. Square Foot Gardening
This an excellent method of raised bed gardening that maximizes space and minimizes work-- especially weeding and ammending soil every year. Before you start to the method, definitely read the book (available at the site). Then, make sure you understand the changes in the last 20+ years that are updated through the website. The significant changes are bed spacing (now about 3 feet instead of one -- the aisles between were too narrow), soil mixture (1 part each: compost, vermiculite, canadian spaghnum peat), and bed size (no longer just 4x4).

Though, the book really should be updated with a revised second edition. There's details on plant spacing which would be really helpful, as well as trellis construction with better step-by-step instructions, and of course, the above info).

5. Epicurious
Actually this isn't a gardening site, but a gourmet recipe website. You spend all summer growing the food yourself, so you need to turn those veggies into something incredible to reflect all that hard work. And epicurious has but a mere 16,000 recipes, searchable by ingredient, course, ethnic cuisine, or season. Want a autumnal vietnamese entree? Or summery indian appetizer? Use your imagination.

more ideas

ok so here's the next idea: when we go to put down weed barrier, staple/glue/tape it to the bottoms of the 4' Square bed-frames so the barrier doesn't move around so much.

the trellis

PVC or electrical conduit?
. Both are options, but the original "Square Foot Gardening" text claims PVC doesn't do weel in sunlight or cold. I reasoned against that, figuring vinyl siding and vinyl blinds, both of which get lots of sun exposure and sometimes cold exposure. its possible that the whiteplumbing pipes aren't as UV tolerant with a different PVC formulation.

Anyhow, I've posted an inquiry on GardenWeb for advice, and the square foot gardeners (5 who replied) all seem to love the conduit. One advised against PVC. Thus, I'm leaning towards conduit again.

I finally had someone real give a detailed explanation on how to get it done, and she said:
use the conduit method and have strung them with the trellis netting I recommended to you in that particular post.

It takes 2 'sticks' of conduit to make a trellis frame. [i assume she means 10 ft pieces]

With a 1/2 inch EMT bending shoe that has 5 inches of takeup (if this is green speak to you get a friend that is an electrician. They'll know exactly what I'm talking about)

put your bending mark at 33 1/2, and bend a 90 degree stub. Make the other mark at 33 1/2 from the other end and bend a 90 degree stub. Make sure the shoe's 'hook' faces the ends of the conduit for both bends. This 33 1/2 inch mark assumes 5 inches of 'takeup' on the bending shoe. This will give you a 'U' shaped piece of conduit that has 4 feet between the legs.

Thread the trellis netting on this piece of conduit. Install two 1/2 inch conduit couplings to the ends of this 'U' shaped piece and tighten.

Next take the other 'stick' of conduit and cut it in half with a tubing cutter or hacksaw. This will give you two 5 foot pieces. Install into the couplings, and tighten. Move the netting down the sides of the trellis so that it's even on both sides. I cut the netting in 5 foot lenghts before threading on the conduit. Since it was 5 feet wide I now have a 5X5 foor piece on each trellis.

Then I used the bulb auger to drill the holes in the ground to insert the legs into. This will give you a trellis that is 4 feet wide and about 7 1/2 feet tall.

After you sink about 2 feet of the conduit in the ground, you're now about 5 1/2 feet tall. Adequate for most vertical applications. I have 5 trellis's that I use for tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, watermelons, and canteloupes.

it's been a long and lonely winter

blogger's easier to use since last year!

well, gardening got off to a late start this year. i had a very rough semester emotionally and so gardening became a low priority.

when i did have a chance, i thoroughly researched Square Foot Gardening. It's the gardening method i believe is the way to go for the backyard gardener. I've read about 20 books on gardening in the last five years and visted 250 garden websites, and this was really the first that had a fresh approach to gardening. its a larger gardening investment up front -- building the beds isn't cheap! -- but after a few years it becomes cheaper because you wont have to by amendments (and basically, we're only spending about 25% more on amendments to fill these beds than we would in a normal year in gardening. so add in the lumber and trellis costs and there's your investment. the biggest time saver is how much it cuts back on weeding. which honestly, is what you spend almost all your time doing.

So last week (i think wednesday, actually) Aaron and I constructed the frames to our square foot beds. We built to 4'x4' beds (i think we'll name them The Squares, and one zig-zagy 2'x 20' bed which deviates from traditional square foot beds. To be called the Zig Zag bed (thanks Aaron for the name!) I had been salling it "S shaped" but its not at all.

Because we prefer so many vining crops, i thought a narrow bed where you could trellis both sides of it would be best. We used 2"x6"x8' lumber for the frames and used dry wall screws to fix them together. The beds cover 72 square feet of gardening space and have a total 36 cubic foot capacity. The squares are each 8 cf, and the zig-zag is 20 cf.

today i built a 4'x8' Square Foot bed at my friends Geoff & Laura's house, from shopping for materials all the way to putting in the vegetables. took 7 hours with breaks for beer and lunch and the obligatory second trip to the hardware stores.

I learned a few things in constructing Geoff & Laura' bed to apply to ours:

1. vinyl blinds are not such a great idea for borders for the squares. we tried them, but decided to instead use clothes line held tight by fence nails. cost: $4.95.

2. when buying the vermiculite from Eastgate Pools, we discovered the bags were 4 cubic feet, not 3 as quoted over the phone. And it is coarse, which is what we wanted. so we get more for the money ($11.75 each) but we need less than originally planned.

3. Drier compost/manure mix would be easier to mix together with the other ingredients.

4. The vermiculite and Peat really expands, and I think maybe they could account for less volume over all -- maybe a 40% compost/manure, 30% Canadian sphagnum peat, 30% vermiculite is a little less expensive. Also the compost/manure doesn’t go as far as you’d expect at all, its very dense.

5. so I think we need 15 bags of compost/manure instead of 10, and 3 bags of vermiculite instead of 4.

6. in summary the revised ingredients going in the SF bed will be:
*bone meal (about 2/3 box)
*espoma plant tone (about 2/3 bag)
*several gallons of coffee grounds, if we remember
*Three 3.8 CuFt bags of Canadian sphagnum peat
*Three 4 CFt bages of coarse vermilute
*Fifteen 40-lb bags of compost/cow manure

And the Square Foot dividers will be made from clothesline.