Gardening, Fitness, and Heath Series, part 2
A had a couple of questions after I did the first post on Getting Started with Your Back Yard Garden that I wanted to address.
How do you keep your dogs from getting into your garden?
Good question! In fact there will be a blog post dedicated to that subject on how to keep dogs, cats, and squirrels out of your garden. Know for now, all you need to do is create the boxes because you aren’t quite ready to use the boxes just yet.
My neighbor uses chemical fertilizers in their yard and I know it is getting into my yard. I would love to do this but I am afraid of the chemicals getting into the garden. What should I do?
This is indeed a problem and can hamper with the reason you’d want to grow a garden in the first place, to be organic! Remember, when creating a raised garden, what we are doing is taking out all of the guess work for the soil. You don’t need to know if your soil is low in nitrogen or is too acidic or whatever! You are creating a soil above your existing soil that is perfect for your vegetable garden. There is a simple solution to your problem. You need to do one more step and create a barrier between your ground and your raised bed soil. You can do this by getting a 4X8 piece of plywood sheet and cutting it in half. Drill this on the bottom of your box before applying the weed barrier cloth. Then, drill holes large enough into the plywood every 6 inches to allow the water to drain out when watering your plants. Then, apply the weed barrier under that and you are good to go! In fact, I did not mention in the first blog that I did indeed add plywood bottoms to my boxes because I was considering making them mobile and possibly moving them to different areas of the yard or even putting them on 2-3 foot legs! This is what you would do if you are a person who can’t bend down very easily who still want to enjoy gardening. I was just thinking lazy!
How to Start Seeds Indoors
There are several different ways to start seeds and Mel has his own version of using vermiculite in a bowl and then moving them over to soil in a cup or container. I am sure this is fine, but one of my main concerns was the fact that uprooting the plants creates a shock to them and the possibility of them dying increases due to this shock. As it is customary to do in this day and age I began Googling what to do for starting seeds. Lo and behold, I found a method that I really liked. It uses no potting containers at all, which is pretty cool!
The way I am starting my seeds is using Potting Blocks (http://www.pottingblocks.com/). A hippie farmer by the name of Jason Beam, who you can tell was the kid that was picked on at school but very passionate about what he does, is selling these and they are wonderful. On his site, he tells you exactly how to use the Potting Blocks with his soil. It is a little bit of a “if you get chips, you gotta get the salsa” kind of deal, meaning you pretty much have to get his soil too. But, I find the easy approach irresistible. The idea of making blocks without a container is right up my ally!
Now Jason is a salesman and he has several versions of his product. I am going to tell you what you exactly what you need if you go this route. You will see the Micro 20 at his online store. This is what you want to use to start your seeds. It gives you 20 starting blocks with one lift of the lever. As he explains, the plants will perform better if there is only a small space of them to grow. The air with naturally prune the plant before transplanting to the next block size.
The final block you need to get is the Mini 4 Soil Blocker. It does NOT come with the Micro 20 pin attachments so you need to get those. You need them because it will create a mold that will be a larger block that you can put your Micro 20 block right into without any trouble at all.
Finally, you will need the potting soil. I got the Micro 20 Potting Mix and it was only $10. He claims it’ll make over 260 blocks, which is plenty for me! I went ahead and got it because the mixture is just right so that your blocks don’t fall apart very easily. His videos on his site make it easy to follow and create your own blocks. Just try to not smell the cheese he puts out! 
Picking Out Seeds
This is the easy part! Go to Home Depot, Dan West, or your favorite store and begin picking out things you want to grow! Remember you have 16 square foot spaces and different vegetables require different spacings. We will have a blog talking about this specifically, but for example, your can plant 16 radishes in one square foot. For lettuce, you can plant 4 in one square foot. I strongly suggest you buy only what you will eat. You won’t see brussel sprouts growing in my garden any time soon! Seeds should be in the price range of $1-$3 bucks. I wouldn’t spend any more than that.
For marketing tactics, companies are saying they have “organic seeds” and such. Unless you are getting corn or beans, I wouldn’t worry too much about being certified organic right now. The seeds aren’t being sprayed with pesticides; it’s the plants themselves that are. They are just trying to do as nature intended: reproduce by bolting and releasing their seeds. I may change my mind on this later, but remember you are the one who controls the upbringing on your veggies.
Once you have your stuff, practice making the blocks and begin to make some seedlings! Put them in a container that is water holding and make sure they get plenty of sun and a keep a constant temperature of 65-70 degrees in your house. Even warmer temperatures can produce faster seedlings! The first ones you want to make are broccoli and cauliflower! Broccoli’s time to start seedlings can be as early as January 14 in Memphis using the average frost date of April 7. Enjoy!
See also:
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