30 Minutes

30 minutes per day in the garden – can I do it? Can I find and use enough time saving and labor saving “garden hacks” to be able to keep the garden tended, weed free, productive in only 30 minutes per day? We’ll find out!

Day 99 – Numbers skewed but the trends continue to favor the Lasagna garden bed

2011/08/08
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Day 99 – Numbers skewed but the trends continue to favor the Lasagna garden bed

Took a week away last week, and it seems technology took a holiday as well in many forms.  First I lost (then later found) my flash drive. Then my MP3 player decided it had enough (Sansa Clip that was working great – even after being run over several months ago, just couldn’t take the rain with it’s cracked case, having fallen from my pocket while relaxing in an Adirondack chair). If that wasn’t bad enough, I had a neighbor set up to track the progress of the beds, only to have the scale (analog scale – no batteries or electronics!) go haywire!  They did their best, and I’ve just picked up where I left off recording what I have picked.  As you can see for 2011-08-08, the lasagna garden bed continues to do great, with the hugelkultur bed starting to perk up quite a bit, the pattypan squash really spiking the numbers.  Got our first broccoli as well, and...

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Day 85 – Lasagna Bed Takes the Lead

2011/07/25
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Day 85 – Lasagna Bed Takes the Lead

After a weekend away, the lasagna bed pulled ahead in the race for the most produce, with the hugelkultur bed surpassing the box bed by a little less than an ounce.  Bringing up the rear is the leaky wicking bed.  Putting the soaker hose on trickle for the wicking bed hoping that it will begin to produce in earnest and at least come in line with the lasagna bed and the other beds. There is evidence of the rabbit I’d seen tasting our green beans, nibbling 1/2 a bean and leaving the rest. The potato plants are starting to turn, meaning that in a couple of weeks it will be time to harvest – they have already cut them back in Deerfield, MA* which is usually two weeks ahead of Goshen, MA. The carrots have begun to emerge in the insulated container garden, and I will have to hook up either some shade cloth or something shiny to scare away...

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Yes – as posted earlier, you can start cool weather crops in the summer – middle of a heat wave in fact, as long as you can keep the soil moist.  By covering the soil with a light mulch and watering enough to keep the soil from crusting, the seedlings have the right environment to sprout.  Be sure to move the mulch (but don’t remove it, just push it in between the rows) so the plants don’t get shaded, or stay too moist.  Here, we have started broccoli during our 95+ degree weather.  The carrots are starting to show up too!  Keeping the cooler weather crops cool will be a matter of shading them with some shade cloth or moving a potted plant nearby, such as a comfrey plant or possibly moving the box under one of the patty pan squash canopies for now, moving them out when the weather breaks.  Lettuce can be started in the heat of...

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Day 80 – When a Wicking Bed Goes Bad

2011/07/20
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It appears there is a leak in the plastic under the wicking bed.  Within hours of filling it (twice), the reservoir is empty.  The potatoes at the end appear to be missing the water, too – they are turning yellow and wilting.  Fortunately, I have some extra soaker hoses that I just placed there, and much of the “extra” water will be absorbed by the now rotting wood chips that were the medium above the plastic that was there to “break up the surface tension and help facilitate wicking”. The box beds are starting to catch up to the lasagna beds as far as yield is concerned, with the wicking bed taking a break to flower like mad and the hugelkultur bed following suit, though there was the one patty pan squash that was ready for a salad, and thus picked. I am hearing the water pump working away in the cellar, and it’s been an hour of soaker...

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Day 78 – Patty Pan Squash are Starting to Emerge!

2011/07/18
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Patty Pan Squash with Flowers

This gallery contains 6 photos.

Day 76 – Beans and Peas and a New Garden Experiment

2011/07/16
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Day 76 – Beans and Peas and a New Garden Experiment

The new garden experiment is: Miracle-Gro Garden Mix vs 1 part soil, 1 part Manure. Facing south, the left box is the Miracle-Gro, the right is the soil-manure mix. In the manure pile, there was some well aged manure (no smell, as opposed to the fresher, smellier variety that I’d dug, then dumped and left there) which I screened – one shovel full manure, then one shovel full soil, mixed well, and put into the test bed/box. Ran out of seeds before I finished planting the soil/manure box, so sprouting will be a little sparse there. I find it is extremely easy to make a new garden experiment using boxes to separate the different soils.  As these experiments are of the “home grown variety”, I have not separated the boxes with a barrier of soil between them as would be proper in scientific experiments. Once the frost has taken hold later (the later the better!) this year, I will...

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Day 71 – Potatoes

2011/07/11
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Four beds of potatoes with little difference between them. - gardenhacker.com

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Day 71 – Broccoli

2011/07/11
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Broccoli in the four different types of beds. Gardenhacker.com

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Day 71 – Tomato Comparisons

2011/07/11
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Tomatoes from the four different beds.

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Day 71 Bed Comparisons Snow Peas and Beans (plus a cuke or two)

2011/07/11
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Collage of Beans and Peas in the different beds. Gardenhacker.com

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Day 71 Continued: Squash in the Different Beds

2011/07/11
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Day 71 Continued: Squash in the Different Beds

Patty pan squash are a delicious summer squash that resemble a cross between an acorn and a UFO. They are delicious, reminding one of zucchini, though slightly firmer. Often times they are picked when only four to eight ounces (2-4″ in diameter), but the insides are edible up to over one pound, where the skins get tough, and the seeds begin to form in earnest. As shown in the pictures, patty pan squash really enjoy composted manure and rich soil. Pattypan variety is a bush type, making it an excellent choice for smaller gardens. Lettuce is often planted as a companion and the broad leaves shade the hot mid-summer sun so the lettuce won’t bolt as easily. Here, the lasagna bed and the wicking bed are tied for first, with the hugelkultur bed taking third, and bringing up the back end is the banana box beds.

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30 Minutes – Day 63: rain is a four letter word…

2011/07/03
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…we did have a sunny couple of days, but they’re always punctuated by overhanging clouds and rain on the weekends and days off.  Despite that fact, it is possible to dig in the old compost pile to create more beds (previous post re: temporary wicking beds), weed – about 20 minutes, planting bush beans into the strawberry “pyramid” – about five minutes – and picking more strawberries!  They are supposed to be reaching the end of their season about now, but so far have not shown signs of slowing.  No problem! The cucumbers are not liking the cool soil, they are growing in slow motion, where the patty-pan squash are growing like crazy. Broccoli so far are growing real well on the lasagna bed and on the hugelkultur bed, disappearing completely from the banana box bed (not enough soil, I think), and spotty in the wicking bed. Bush beans are growing well everywhere, as are the snow peas. Carrots...

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Day 59 – Strawberries Everywhere, and Comfrey Tea

2011/06/29
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We came back from a much needed vacation, and have not needed to water the garden.  Weeding is another matter, at least around some of the beds, but no need for pumping water – it rained here at least as much as it did in Florida (which was hot, but worth it!).  The strawberries yielded about three pints, minus about one pint that either rotted or were eaten by the slugs.  Everything else – carrots excluded – has continued to grow at a good pace. In the weeding arena, we’ll be clipping back more of the grass in the established strawberry plots, while the new plots are doing quite well without our help – the grass clippings have suppressed the weeds almost completely. Comfrey was in need of clipping as well (a ten minute job) and has been added to the compost barrel (top cut from an old plastic barrel, set almost sideways for easier turning) and we may be...

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Day 55 – What to do with Volunteer Plants

2011/06/25
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I’ve had a lot of volunteer potatoes popping up throughout the garden.  Some of them quite deep.  The best thing to do with volunteer plants (if you know what they are) is to replant them, filling in areas that didn’t sprout.  If you find you have too many to care for, you can also give them away.  The third thing you can do with volunteers is to create a “patio garden” – placing them into containers and using them to either dress up your porch, create a border up and down your driveway, placing them on bare spots on the lawn, near trees if they like shade, or below and beside the compost pile to take up any leaching nutrients. The rest of the garden “volunteers” consist of weeds, most of which are at the edges of the beds.  They are easily turned over, though there have been a few clumps of resilient grass that have begun to grow...

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Day 48 – Add Yet Another Bed

2011/06/18
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Day 48 – Add Yet Another Bed

Added another two banana boxes with a wicking option underneath.  Dug down four inches, layed down plastic, sifted the soil I had dug out and put the gravel and rocks onto the plastic.  Added a pipe and wood chips, then a perforated sheet on top, then the banana boxes on the top.  Put the screened soil into the boxes, voila! – one hour later I have another two spaces for tomatoes!  Added more grass mulch around the existing beds (another 30 minutes), and planted a box worth of carrots, hoping that these will mature past their first initial leaves.  Four days worth of thirty minutes.  Without doing the math, I think I’m back to “par” for the thirty minute challenge. The beans and peas are showing progress, the patty-pan squash are doing well, too.  Potatoes are not a problem and the girls are eating the strawberries as they become ripe.  So far, so good!

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Day 46: DIY Strawberry Hill

2011/06/16
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Day 46: DIY Strawberry Hill

With the rain, and the rain, plus the thunderstorms, unexpected downpours, not a lot has been happening in the garden other than the routine slug hunts, but all is not lost.  Now that it’s drier (for the day), I’ll be making up the time creating a strawberry pyramid.  Here’s the plan, and we’ll see how well it holds up over the season.  I may have to plant something other than strawberries, since they are fruiting now – but companion plants can be harvested and the transplants will be moved after June: Create a “pyramid” out of double corrugated boxes (banana boxes), add the irrigation, fill with soil (from the old garden, or you could buy/make your own mix), fill around the sides of the boxes to keep the soil in place, then plant.  More pictures to follow – no hieroglyphs: they take too long.

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Day 42 – Strawberries Thriving on Neglect?

2011/06/11
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Day 42 – Strawberries Thriving on Neglect?

…and rain, followed by more rain…  Moved the second set of tomatoes out to harden off, as well as the coveted cucumbers that have started, and the rain is pelting them pretty badly.  While it’s raining, though – you can always start the next set of seedlings, which is what I’m doing.  Started a batch of bush beans to fill in where they did not sprout initially, and will poke them in when they show up. The strawberries I haven’t relocated yet are looking very good: managed to neglect the tall grass around the plants until they started to flower, then cut back the grass and layed it down next to the plants to give them a little more nitrogen as it rots – made the strawberry plants grow very tall, hoping that this will keep the slugs off of many of them.  This took some time and care, but I am hoping it will pay off in the...

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Day 40 – Garden Wildlife and Carrots and when Cucumbers Go Bad

2011/06/11
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Day 40 – Garden Wildlife and Carrots and when Cucumbers Go Bad

More rain, more slugs, more salamanders!  We have these orange salamanders that show up in the tall grass and in the marshy areas, and sometimes on the road (I pick them up with wet hands and transport them across if I find them).  The kids love them.  They’re extremely gentle with them and let them go where it’s damp and there are no cars going by.  The slugs – they’re another story.  Ducks are an option I can’t work with, since the garden is not fenced in, and the dog would be wanting to do the “fetch and shake” that he was wired to do.  Sluggo is an option I’ve used before, but I am trying the old tried and true methods of scoop and drown when they’re in the garden, as well as an interesting one (since I had a cucumber that was going bad):  cucumber slices on an aluminum pie plate is supposed to drive them away...

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Day 35 – Experiments in Composting

2011/06/06
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Seems the 30 min/day is going to be more of an “average” than a set in stone scheduled time for me.  With young children’s schedules for acro, ballet, etc., along with work, trips to the “transfer station” (where we bring our garbage/recyclables), freak tornados, etc., we just have to be flexible. Started experimenting with a no manure compost pile.  Only food scraps, grass clippings, weeds and wood chips from the local highway department (they chip trees that are in the way of power lines and dump them in an easily accessible pile near our transfer station).  It is starting to heat up, but I believe I need more water.  One of the nice things about the wood chips is that they were already starting to decompose – had a lot of white “spiderwebby” fungal growth inside. Weeded for about five minutes, watered for ten, transplanted a couple of patty pan seedlings that were doing well (for a great recipe...

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Day 33 – Williamsburg Farmer’s Market

2011/06/02
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Day 33 – Williamsburg Farmer’s Market

I’d dropped by the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market last week and seen several people who had nice healthy plants for sale. Hoping to get a head start, or at least move things along, I went down there again this Thursday. The gentleman I’d spoken with was no longer there, but a couple of others were offering some beautiful cucumber plants as well as several varieties of tomatoes. Ah, I couldn’t resist the tomatoes, and I got some good information as to why my cukes didn’t sprout: seems cucumbers like warm moist soil, not cold rain drenched to the point of floating away soil, which we had when I planted them. Gotta love farmers markets! There was bread, fresh veggies, free range turkey and more right on the Meekins library lawn. The Williamsburg Farmer’s Market is on every Thursday throughout the summer, so if you travel Route 9, it’s worth stopping by and seeing the sculptures and the market too. So,...

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