work for the day

it was a beautiful day in cincinnati for gardening.
we borrowed geoff's lawnmower and mowed over the growing weeds near the garden, the strawberries, inside the butterfly garden, and a path to the old compost bin. Aaron found his sunglasses that he lost three weeks ago, and he also turned over a lot of soil in preparation for grass seed.

i was at Lowe's and i found the name to the purple flower-- Achillea millefolium 'Summerwine' Yarrow.

Aaron, that' a great tree, by the way.

It rained early this morning too.

Also, i turned the compost yesterday,

math for liberal arts

Well, I took Math for Liberal Arts majors, so instead of converting all these complex formulas to metric measures, I drew a tree:

honors garden math 101.

Q. How many gallons of water could our square foot beds hold?

A. In theory, they could hold about 269.3 gallons water.

Q. How much should I water the beds?

A. They should need (rounding up) 45 gallons per week, or .625 gallons per square foot per week -- [gasp] -- 10 cups [80 fl. oz.] of water, per square foot, per week... OR... 11.43 ounces water. per square foot. per DaY.

Do you want to know why this is the NKU Honors Garden? Its because we take the time to answer these sorts of questions. Even if its on a friday night, when normal people are out socializing. Yep, I spent my daytime in the garden, and then I go home and ask myself these sorts of questions.

[sigh] So here's how i figured it all out:

I don't know why I never thought of this until now, but i was reading along posts on the garden web forums and I saw that someone posting gave a precise gallon figure when he was mentioniong how much he watered his square foot beds. Hmm. Then i realized, well, cubic feet and gallons are both measures of volume, so it should be easy to convert.

So:

Basic Square bed:
Length: 4 ft. Width: 4 ft. Height: 0.5 ft.
Cubic Feet (L*W*H): 8 cubic Feet

Since I don't particulary care for math, I use tools like calculators :)
i converted Cu. Ft to gallons using this handy universal conversion tool. at convertit.com
and got 59.84 gallons.

our 3 main beds (never mind the herb bed) have a volume of 36 cubic feet (72 SF total space).

They can hold (theoretically) a total of 269.30 gallons of water (using the handy conversion tool).

How much should we --in theory-- water? Well, its often said a garden can use an inch of rain/water per week. I don't believe that rule of thumb has ever been scientifically validated. Then you'd have to consider how much water the soil mix can hold... but lets ignore all that. After all, It's friday (actually saturday morning now!)

since we'd only fill our beds one inch high with water (instead of to the maximum height - 6 inches high) -- we'd only need 1/6th the volume.
269.3 gallon x 1/6 = 44.88 gallons weekly.

So lets just round up to 45 gallons per week on our Square foot beds.
To figure out the amount of water needed Per square foot -- 45 gallons divided by 72 sf equals .625 gallons. That converts to 10 cups, or 80 fluid ounces. Per week, per square foot.... Per day: 1.43 cups or 11.43 ounces of water per square foot (maybe i shouldn't have rounded up... drat!)

Now, to figure out how many gallons the watering hose emits per minute... uh. my brain hurts.

...Ok, Aaron (if you'd like) you can convert these measurements to the metric system...

hot, part 2

yes, its still hot, but at least i have the chance to get outside and enjoy the garden.
aaron and i worked on the bed edges. This link show how to build your own (we use a shovel and an landscape edger). one bed edge finished, one started, and two to go.
i watered the garden well before i left. we weeded. new sprouts are up where we had the radish before. the plants have taken to the trellis netting with very little encouragement. i think the watermelon grew six inches in a day! well, we can assess growth fairly easily with the trellis netting. the canteloupe is lagging in growth compared to the others in the Cucurbitaceae family [i.e. the cucumbers, pumpkins, watermelon). The pumpkin is the champion.

hot

garndening was hot today, low 80 but felt like 90ish with humidity. we nearly finished the trellises. all thats left is to put the last one in place.

figured out where we are going to lay the bed edges -- 24 inches from the zig zag bed will be the line edge.

i trained as many plants as i could up the trellis. i cut the tomatoes back to the main stalks.

i'd like to borrow geoff's staple gun to staple the weed barrier to the beds-- im going to measure 2 inches from the bottom -- that's the line to staple to.

after that, all thats left is mulching (where the 2-inch line on the boxes will come in handy) and planting grass seed.

beatles garden

There is a thread in garden web forums about having a Beatles Theme-Garden. Includes a McCartney Rose, and a dahlia named "John Lennon".
I think that's great!

A few years ago I found a plant with a variety named "Wojo" at the Campbell County Extension garden for Aaron. I can't remember what plant it was though.

Andy's class also plants "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme".