Hey guys, SmokinErb here. Just signed a lease a couple weeks ago and the landlord is allowing me to plant a garden! This will be a new first with me - 9 years of growing cannabis in my belt, we'll see what we can do here. So I picked up 3x 40 lb bags of compost/manure that came from a local nursery. The instructions on the bag say to mix it into 40 sqft of soil about 6" deep (so 1 lb per sqft) for a garden. I figured a 12'x10' (or similar dimensions) would be good sized garden for a first-timer and it really only needs to supplement food for 2 people, so it doesn't need to be huge by any means. So here's my first question - does that compost/manure ratio sound about right to you? One bad experience with manufacturer directions and I'm wary every time since. It just seems a little...light? Do I need to pick up some more bags or just go with that suggestion? I also grabbed 2x 4 lb bags of Espoma Garden Tone. According to the "soil preparation" instruction - I just mix 3.5 lbs per 50 sqft. Based on that ratio, the other 1/2 lb should mix into just over 7 sqft of soil - so both bags combined should amend 114 sqft of soil. I could have gotten the 20lb bag, but I didn't want a bunch of excess fertilizer that I won't be using anytime soon. Sound good enough? 120 lbs compost and Garden Tone for 114 sqft to cover a 120 sqft garden? Now, I'm concerned about how to actually go about this. I figure I was going to go out there this weekend and prepare the garden to allow the compost/manure and Garden Tone to go to work for a few weeks before actually planting anything. I don't have too much to use for this, but here's what I have free access to (thanks mom!): Spade Garden rake Garden hoe Lawn and garden cultivator - Yard Machines 31 CC, 2-Cycle Yard & Garden Cultivator - 21A-121R900 at The Home Depot Now, I know I need to remove the grass. That "tiller" is only good for the top few inches (claims 5" on the website). So. The grass. Do I need to remove the sod, or can I just till it in? If I need to remove it, do I just... what use the spade and dig up the first few inches or whatever? Weed prevention. This is going to be an organic garden of sorts, so I don't want to be spraying a bunch of grass/weed killer - otherwise I wouldn't be worried about removing sod. Not sure if there's anything I need to be doing for this, or just pull 'em up as they grow? The idea I had was to dig up about a spade blade depth (with or without the sod layer) and put it all to the side and then till the exposed ground, then fill half of it back up, till over that. Then do the last half, and till over that as well - this should counter the lack of penetration of the tiller I have access to. I'd then use a kiddie pool to mix up the compost/fertilizer real well and then spread that out over the garden and run that tiller over it until it was mixed up decently. Or should I do this with the garden rake or something? Taking it too far, maybe? Just rent a real tiller and till as deep as it'll go and forget the "dig the soil up" idea? I figured a deeper tilling would be more beneficial for root penetration. I don't want to spend all day doing it obviously, but the local rentals are sort of ridiculously priced. I plan on getting all of this done tomorrow and I'll post pics afterwards.
So I charged head first into this endeavorer as I found out it was supposed to rain all weekend. So here's a quick update - I measured out a 16x10' area, sectioned it off into three 4x10' areas with 2' pathways between them using stakes and twine. I then dug up and pulled off the sod layer, used a spade to loosen up as much as I could in terms of depth, should be a good foot deep decently loose. I then mixed up the Compost/Manure and Garden Tone and evenly applied it to each section then I ran the tiller over it to mix it in real well and break up the little chunks even better - 2.5 hours and a lot of sweat later... Okay so there were some setbacks. There's a lot of rock, brick and glass - of which gave me a rather nasty cut - in that soil. I made my best effort to remove most of the glass, which is remains of someones disposed mirror. Lots of bricks, that have all been removed. Still quite a few rocks, but nothing major. The fertilizer which wasn't going to be enough from the start somewhat has me concerned. Each section needed 8.4 cups to amend it based on the directions on the back, however each one only received 7 cups. Don't think its anything major - anyone think I should add some more compost and fertilizer? Maybe some mushroom compost + Espoma's bio-tone, lightly amended? On the plus side, the soil was in much better shape than I orginally expected. It was some good loam, all except for the very top right corner in the right side plot which had some rather clay-ish packed soil - but I threw a lot of that loam in that corner and mixed it up real good and it helped. There were A LOT of worms in it, so I imagine there's plenty of worm castings as it is, and they'll keep the soil real nice. I actually felt bad about tilling as I knew I was destroying a lot of them.. but meh, it was necessary. Also all the sod was placed into a pile, I may turn it into a compost heap. Sorry about the 2nd pic's quality - my phone which took the 1st pic died while I was out there and I had to use the iPod for the 2nd one.
i see you've already started but i would recommend Square Foot Gardening, look it up, its MUCH more effecient and TONS easier to do, it is the only way i will garden because row gardening is just TOO difficult and requires WAY to much weeds, plus it wastes space
I actually read one of your posts about it on another thread here and it was one of the first things I looked into. I can even get free rough cut timbers from work, but my girlfriend didn't really care for the idea of building boxes around the garden so much. Square foot gardening is sort of where I got the idea to put those rows to divide the garden into 3 sections. I should be able to reach just about every single part of the garden as nothing is more than 24" away at the closest point without having to step on the garden compressing the soil. When it comes to planting, I'll still be implementing square foot gardening ideas, just without the boxes. I may lay down some stakes and some more twine prior to planting so I can use those as reference to determine placement of the plants of what go into each "square" if that makes sense. I wanted to build a raised bed but I just couldn't afford to spend that much money on a soil mix, unfortunately. However we're looking into buying a home, and once that happens I know I'll end up with a really nice permanent square foot garden where I won't have a problem spending a bunch of money on a good soil mix and amending it every fall. I just can't put myself to do it for a rental in which will only give me one vegetable harvest.
awesome man, and yea i would say the soil expense is definately bigger tahn other ways of gardening for sure, so totally understandable, thats why my garden isn't all that big, but i definately gewt more out of the smae space, we are starting our own compost pile and it isn't done or even cooking yet but we found that the local composting facility is REALLY cheap compared to store bought compost (about 25gallon container for less than 5 bucks) i would think that if you planted efficiently according to sqftgardening, you'll do pretty well, let us know how it goes man gardening's pretty sweet
Thanks a lot man. I'll be doing my best here. With the prices of food these days skyrocketing, I figured I'd test my ability with a little more than just cannabis. I just really need to decide what to grow, because it's about that time. I'm pretty sure I'm decided on 3-4 types of tomatoes for the north end of each of the 3 sections - some type of beefsteak tomato for slicing for burgers and stuff in one section; Romas for sauces/pastes and probably some type of cherry tomato for shish kabobs in another section; and then a great flavorful tomato, probably a heirloom for salads and such in another. Other than that I have no clue. Onions are going to happen as well as cucumbers, probably some carrots, radishes, lettuce, maybe come celery, probably 3-4 types of peppers... I have no idea what else. I was really hoping to do some corn, however the north end of the garden is the end closer to my house, I was really hoping it'd be the other side because there's another house back there and I was hoping to use the corn as some type of "privacy fence" but I'd like to be able to keep an eye on the garden to make sure none of the neighborhood dogs go in it and destroy everything... so corn is out.
awesome to hear man,if you're really gonna get into gardening i'd also recommend all heirlooms in your garden or at least a few, one strain of each type of crop per year or something so you can collect the seeds for the future I believe the REASON for the food prices rising so much isn't JUST gas prices but i THINK(capitalized cus i'm not sure) that something like 1% of the world or the united states, whichever it is, feeds the other 99%, which doesn't seem very substainable to me, and that the system of such a small number of people feeding the masses is beginning to fall apart, MAKING GARDENING, HEIRLOOM PLANTS, AND CREATING YOUR OWN FAMILIES FOOD SUPPLY are starting to become VERY VALUABLE things indeed, not trying to be a doomsdayer or anything but IF something were to happen your area, those with a garden(i.e. you now) would be the MOST LIKELY to survive, not sure if that whol rant made as much sense as it did in my head but moral of the story, CONGRATULATIONS on the garden, i think its great, and look into and consider hierloom plants as well GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ENDEAVORS MAN, gardens are a lot of fun
I planned on getting at least one as I mentioned - but from my understanding hybrids are better for disease resistance and such. I'll probably be getting a couple of heirlooms for sure though, probably as many as possible minus the beefsteak type tomatoes. Got a little friendly thing going on with my step-father. He claims he can grow better stuff than I can because he's had a vegetable garden for 13 years and said to me "We'll see who gets the biggest and best tasting tomatoes." I know it'll be me - to him, gardening is chore, something that has to be done, but something he can't stand doing. I know that the more love you show anything that you're growing, the more it'll give you in return. He doesn't prepare the plot, he takes that tiller and tills it every spring and plants. No compost, no fertilizer, no nothing. For 13-years now. That soil is depleted and has been for a good while. But hey, I'll take that old man back to school
sounds like a fun competition, my mother does a garden be every year thats just a traditional bed, she adds compost and what not but its still not the greatest soil, i haven't had as many plants last couple of years so i haven't been able to compete, but i do this year, i just put all my transplants outside and i think i'll challenge her to grow more than me, nice idea!
Just a little update. Been doing ok now, but had some serious rabbit problems at the beginning. Little bit of nute burn early on too. Smaller than they should be as a result. 12 tomatoes - 3 types (brandywine, roma, belgium giant) 12 peppers - 3 types (chocolate bell, jalapeño, cayenne) 11 cucumbers - 3 types 6 melons - 3 types Green, red yellow and white onions.
Actually, there's some strawberries in that blue bowl in the background, and a yellow plum tomato plant in a container as well.