Tuesday, July 27, 2010

An Update on the Garden

This being only my second attempt at gardening, I think that it's going quite well. In a previous post on gardening I listed what I was going to plant. Almost everything grew like weeds.

The photos were taken on May 25 and June 27.


I did have a couple of problems though. Bell pepper, corn and cucumber seeds never sprouted. And I bought bell pepper and basil plants, but the things aren't growing, though the pepper plants are creating vegetables.

I did see a few slugs when I first planted but stopped watering the plants after the sun went down. The little creatures then went elsewhere.

For fertilizer I've been using a liquid concentrate made from seaweed and rabbit poo (thanks to our backyard rabbit Bluebell, whom I gladly share vegetables with).

I had two surprises this year. The first is that if you let microgreens grow, they don't stay so micro. (Duh.) I found this out because I planted too much lettuce, microgreens and chard. We couldn't eat it, or use it in smoothies, fast enough. I've given bags of it to neighbors, Lorraine and Brandon at the gym and the folks at work.

The second surprise is that I bought a seed packet containing 'mixed microgreens'. This must mean 'left over seeds; we don't know what they are since we won't list them on the packet'. Since cutting microgreens was more difficult than grabbing some lettuce, I let the stuff grow. We were happily surprised with unplanned broccoli rabe, bok choy, beets and radishes.

The only plants that died were the mail order heirloom tomatoes. Those tomatoes run $6 to $8 lb in the store so I was excited about these. They arrived wilted, small and really quite sad looking. I did what the instructions suggested to revive them, but they didn't make it. I replaced them with regular local plants and next year will only buy locally.

What I've learned so far:

Plant less lettuce. It seems to grow from seed easily and very quickly.

Do more research on what to plant when. As I plant new things I'm paying more attention to the season it grows best in. My mache' lettuce wilts in the heat but the greenleaf and redleaf lettuce do fine.

10 comments:

  1. Good to see you back and that garden is seriously envy-inducing! I'm making due with a couple of containers on the side of the driveway until I know where I'm going to be living long term.

    I just got 3 heads of lettuce, a bunch of kale, and some radicchio today, the tomatoes should be ripe in a week or two and the peppers a couple of weeks after that...

    Keep us updated, I miss local blogs that I actually care about reading!

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  2. Thanks for such a great blog! I'm curious if you are able to use any of the human compost from your composting toilet. Which model toilet did you get and how much maintenance is needed for it? Just curious to hear your thoughts on it too now that you've lived with it for some time!

    Thanks again!

    Pat

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  3. I love the way you mulch your garden with liquid fertilizers from rabbit poop. I also to that way using animals poop especially with chickens in my garden. You should also have soil compost to make your plants healthier and grow enormously.

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  4. First of all, thank you so much for an excellent resource on tiny house building - you've clearly done your homework and will certainly be a great help to many a tiny home builder!

    I'm not sure if you are reading these comments anymore, but I'm currently trying to decide how to finish the Doug Fir floors we just installed in our house. It appears you never got around to posting part 2 of 2 for the no-VOC floor finishing question! (from May 2009)

    Sorry for the off-topic comment, but what did you end up using for a finish?

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  5. Howard's Citrus-Shield PasteWax is what we used. After a year, we have to do some clean up and rewax. We also used this on our cabinets, which is what gives them the shine.

    http://www.howardproducts.com/products.asp

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  6. Have you got any more recent pictures. I would love to see how the flowers have developed!!!

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  7. we need updates

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  8. I hope that you can post some updates again soon. I bet it had some improvement since this last post, and the readers would definitely love to see those improvements. Anyway, I'll be looking forward for your updates!

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  9. Hope all is well! Would love an update on how tiny house living is going for you a few years onward!

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  10. Would love to hear how you are doing . Are you still linving in the tiny house?

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