By Jacob Garson
Thanks to all the first-timers who stopped by the garden yesterday for our Week 2 Dig In! We did a lot of seed sowing yesterday in beds 1, 3, 3A (the small bed that used to house nasturtiums on the western side of the garden between the fence and bed #3), and 12 as well as planted our fig tree in the ground and covered a few of our other regular duties (mixing the compost, etc).
Seed Sowing: We really want to get the garden producing again after the desiccation that was this past summer, so we planted a lot including onions, cabbage, swiss chard, sweet mace herb and nasturtiums.
Bed 1: We planted four distinct rows length-wise in bed 1. Facing the numbered side of the bed (with your back to the picnic table), the rows from left to right are Onion Violet de Galmi, Rainbow Swiss Chard, another Rainbow Swiss Chard, and Onion Bronze D’Amposta.
*Note: When prepping the soil for bed 1, we added water and a huge swarm of ants erupted around the sides. We think there must be an ant nest underneath. Jonathan suggested a water/vinegar mixture, which we’ll look into.
Bed 3: We also planted all of bed 3. Facing the numbered side (back to the picnic table), there are three rows on the left of Tokyo Long White-Bunching Onion, two rows in the center of cabbage (Copenhagen Market brand), and three rows of Onion Yellow of Parma on the right.
Bed 3A: We planted a single row of Spitfire Nasturtiums, four separate seeds about 10 inches apart. This bed used to be filled with them, so we’re thinking they’ll do well there again. We also wanted to make sure the nasturtiums were contained because they can spread fast and far and we want these guys under control.
Bed 12: For the L-shaped bed, the lettuce we planted there a couple of weeks ago is sprouting nicely. This week we added three rows of Sweet Mace Herb to the farthest right hand side (again facing the numbered side, with back to the picnic table). The corner of the L is still empty.
For each set of planting we first mixed the soil, adding water and taking out grubs and roots/debris, then leveled the soil, added a thin layer of Wynbrandt compost, poked holes (depths accordingly), planted the seeds and finished off with a light watering. We’ll report back on their progress!
We also did some take-home plants. Mint, basil seed, and beans were planted (propagated for the mint) in small pots and dispersed amongst a handful of the attendees.
Fig Tree: We put it in the ground! The hole we dug earlier this quarter was all set; we added a bit of compost to the bottom, massaged the roots of the fig tree and placed it in, added two bags of potting soil around the roots, a layer of compost on top, watered, then scavenged for some mulch to cover the base and hopefully prevent against water evaporation from the soil.
Compost: We made a small dent in the big pile of organic matter drying out next to our compost heap yesterday, but when we first opened the compost bin we were surprised to find about two dozen small plants sprouting. The looked like they may have been bean sprouts, but we really weren’t sure. We decided against harvesting them and so we churned them into the compost with the rest of the material that we were processing. We’ll watch out for them again and hopefully get an ID!
Suggestions for next week:
Brainstorm pet names for the different beds.
We’ve established that one should be devoted to our patron saint, Alyssa Curran.
“Potatoes!” -Cloudy
More take-home plants!
A lot of the seed packages suggest starting the plants indoors, maybe we can get some more of those going in various dorms and apartments. Audrey pointed out that if we reserve the beds for transplants, we’ll have more uniform yields instead of sporadic sprouting.
Any other suggestions are welcome in the comments!
Also thanks to Ian for getting this site up and running!
Thanks to all the first-timers who stopped by the garden yesterday for our Week 2 Dig In! We did a lot of seed sowing yesterday in beds 1, 3, 3A (the small bed that used to house nasturtiums on the western side of the garden between the fence and bed #3), and 12 as well as planted our fig tree in the ground and covered a few of our other regular duties (mixing the compost, etc).
Seed Sowing: We really want to get the garden producing again after the desiccation that was this past summer, so we planted a lot including onions, cabbage, swiss chard, sweet mace herb and nasturtiums.
Bed 1: We planted four distinct rows length-wise in bed 1. Facing the numbered side of the bed (with your back to the picnic table), the rows from left to right are Onion Violet de Galmi, Rainbow Swiss Chard, another Rainbow Swiss Chard, and Onion Bronze D’Amposta.
*Note: When prepping the soil for bed 1, we added water and a huge swarm of ants erupted around the sides. We think there must be an ant nest underneath. Jonathan suggested a water/vinegar mixture, which we’ll look into.
Bed 3: We also planted all of bed 3. Facing the numbered side (back to the picnic table), there are three rows on the left of Tokyo Long White-Bunching Onion, two rows in the center of cabbage (Copenhagen Market brand), and three rows of Onion Yellow of Parma on the right.
Bed 3A: We planted a single row of Spitfire Nasturtiums, four separate seeds about 10 inches apart. This bed used to be filled with them, so we’re thinking they’ll do well there again. We also wanted to make sure the nasturtiums were contained because they can spread fast and far and we want these guys under control.
Bed 12: For the L-shaped bed, the lettuce we planted there a couple of weeks ago is sprouting nicely. This week we added three rows of Sweet Mace Herb to the farthest right hand side (again facing the numbered side, with back to the picnic table). The corner of the L is still empty.
For each set of planting we first mixed the soil, adding water and taking out grubs and roots/debris, then leveled the soil, added a thin layer of Wynbrandt compost, poked holes (depths accordingly), planted the seeds and finished off with a light watering. We’ll report back on their progress!
We also did some take-home plants. Mint, basil seed, and beans were planted (propagated for the mint) in small pots and dispersed amongst a handful of the attendees.
Fig Tree: We put it in the ground! The hole we dug earlier this quarter was all set; we added a bit of compost to the bottom, massaged the roots of the fig tree and placed it in, added two bags of potting soil around the roots, a layer of compost on top, watered, then scavenged for some mulch to cover the base and hopefully prevent against water evaporation from the soil.
Compost: We made a small dent in the big pile of organic matter drying out next to our compost heap yesterday, but when we first opened the compost bin we were surprised to find about two dozen small plants sprouting. The looked like they may have been bean sprouts, but we really weren’t sure. We decided against harvesting them and so we churned them into the compost with the rest of the material that we were processing. We’ll watch out for them again and hopefully get an ID!
Suggestions for next week:
Brainstorm pet names for the different beds.
We’ve established that one should be devoted to our patron saint, Alyssa Curran.
“Potatoes!” -Cloudy
More take-home plants!
A lot of the seed packages suggest starting the plants indoors, maybe we can get some more of those going in various dorms and apartments. Audrey pointed out that if we reserve the beds for transplants, we’ll have more uniform yields instead of sporadic sprouting.
Any other suggestions are welcome in the comments!
Also thanks to Ian for getting this site up and running!