The First tranplants

So.. a few weeks in all is well. Seeds are germinating, plants seem to be growing. Seedlings have been thinned and thrived afterward. The next challenge lies in the first transplant. Splitting out seedlings, putting them in bigger pots and hoping they keep growing. Well the first challenge was that we quickly realized we were lacking enough light space. So back to Home Depot for an additional light. We decided not to skimp this time and went with a double tube 48" T5 fixture, effectively quadrupling our light space.

So here are the new transplants looking pathetic in their now bigger containers..




But looking much better after a few days under their new lights.

The first plantings

We didn't want to just trust our seeds to leftover yogurt cups and the windowsill. However we didn't want to go overly high tech either or high expense. So after lots of research and indecision we decided on starting with basic six pack cells in a seed tray and a cover. Grand total for that was around 5 bucks. We did however buy a soilless seed starting mix which so far I have no regrets about. So the germination setup was quite simple.



That's pretty much it. The planting is nice and simple. Wet the starting mix, sprinkle or tweezer a few seeds in, sprinkle just a touch of starting mix on top of it, spray it with a fine mist and stick the lid over it.

Once they germinate you pull the cover off and put them in the light. So along with not entrusting the light from window sills we didn't want plants scattered all over the place so we built a grow light setup.




I was able to build this using scrap lumber. I bought one shop light fixture, a single tube 20" T5 flourescent, plus some S-hooks and small chain. I was able to build this for about one fifth of cost of a commercial setup. Now.. you can certainly argue my aesthetics are lacking but it works well.

The first three cell packs are under there. All doing well.. they are as follows.



Top to bottom; sweet onions, green onions, broccoli.




Top to bottom; sage, oregano, rosemary




And finally.. parsley.


These were the earliest seeds.. 90% plus germination.. so far so good.

The Seeds

Ok I get it.. seeds are small. But when you write a significant check to a mail order company you expect a significant box(not really.. but you know what I mean). So the seed box arrived in early March.



That was the whole thing. Luckily once you open it and see all the seed packets you feel a little better.

Double Digging

So in the last post I said we "planned" to use a lasagna gardening system, filling our beds in the fall and letting them decompose over the winter. However as we looked into the amount of material that would be needed for lasagna gardening we realized we were behind the eight ball with an urban garden. Lasagna gardening requires access to lots of chopped up leaves, and straw, and grass clippings none of which we had available.

So instead we let the gardens sit over the winter with the intent of double digging come spring. For those of you who have never heard of double digging, the concept is this. Strip off the top twelve inches of soil. Turn over the next twelve inches of soil underneath and then use a pitch fork to loosen as far down as you can. Then replace the top twelve inches. A labor intense process to be sure but it leads to raising the soil level roughly four to six inches and loosening the soil down to a level of two feet or so. Below are some pictures of the double dug bed on the left and the not yet dug bed on the right. It is a little hard to see but if you look at the edges you can see how much higher the soil level is on the left. We did this starting in mid-March and continuing as the individual beds are planted.

Part of double digging is a good opportunity to improve the garden beds with organic material and any necessary nutrients. In our case this was adding compost and upping the nitrogen which we did organically using blood meal.

A side note regarding compost that I feel is important. I learned this purely coincidentally but many commercial composts come from something called sewer sludge. This is a refined sludge created from waste treatment plants. Yes, it is treated human waste that is used for much of our compost. However this isn't disturbing for the reasons you may think. Properly composted all animal waste, including human, is high quality fertilizer. However because this sludge comes from waste treatment plants it includes everything else that is flushed down the toilet. Many commercial composts include heavy metals and trace amounts of various pharmaceuticals. That is the disturbing part. So.. if you are going to use compost best thing is your own compost pile, but if you have to buy it ask some questions about where it comes from.


Undug on the right, double dugged on the left.


Undug



Double Dug

The Beds

So we decided in that we wanted to use a raised bed system. This allows for a couple of good things. First we can clearly demarcate beds with space in between. Second it allows us to enrich the soil more easily. Here in Denver we have a mix of clay and loam(thick sand) soil. The loam isn't too bad but the clay is a bit of a problem as it is too dense for the plant roots to get through. When we first envisioned raised beds we planned to use a lasagna gardening system, which consists of building multiple layers of organic material(leaves, peat, newspaper, hay, etc..) that then break down over time creating nice loose soil.

With that in mind we built our beds in August of 09. Two of them are 3'x12' and the last is 3'x8' to accomodate a tree stump that is on the "future" list to remove. This was also one of Sara's first hands on experiences with power tools.







And the finished product in the yard.

The Site(Otherwise known as our backyard)

First up.. the site. So the backyard looks something like this in July of 09.

To the left is the South side of the backyard.











And the North side of the backyard.











The natural choice seemed to be the far end of the south side of the yard. Among other things while the grass in the yard was spotty at best back there it was none existent so that was one less step to developing the garden area. Luckily most of the back yard gets full sun so there was little concern there.







A little closer look at the south side of the yard. As you can see the back is starting to develop some vicious weeds. Sadly I didn't document it but before we got to clearing the area those weeds were about waist high.

However wanting an organic garden we didn't want to use any chemical in that area so we managed to clear it all by hand, with a lot of help from friends and family(basically anyone who had the misfortune to visit in the summer of 09.

However.. it got cleared and will be our garden spot.

Welcome and an Explanation.

Welcome to our blog about our first garden from scratch. Many of you have been through this process before, so I imagine this will provide an amusing reminder of mistakes you made. For others hopefully we can provide some forward looking information that might be useful. And of course both of those assumptions are based on anyone at all reading it which is incredibly presumptuous.

So we are starting this in early April. It won't be a true chronicle because we want to back date all the steps we took over winter and early spring. So we will provide an estimated date of when each event occurred. Hopefully everything is caught up by mid-April and we can then provide some real time updates after that.

Enjoy,
Chris and Sara