Grow $150/mo worth of vegetables

The spinach in my garden was planted too late, of course. The weather turned warm and it started bolting before the third set of leaves came in. Besides, those tiny bugs were still out there, and made me not want to go near for fear they’d get on me.

The peas came up, and are now flowering. I haven’t been faithful about watering, but they seem green and alive anyway. Not thriving, probably for the same reason as the spinach. It’s a cold-weather crop being forced to live in summertime.

Nobody has given me any grief about having my planting box there. The gardeners sprayed Round-Up around the base if it, just to keep the grass from growing up the sides. That makes me sad both because I hate Round-Up and because it means now if I ever AM forced to move the box there will be a big dead ring of poison where the grass will not want to re-grow. Where my garden was the grass may be killed, but at least it would re-grow easily if reseeded. It’d probably be even healthier than the surrounding grass, what with the encouragement of earthworms, etc. to lighten the soil.

I can’t say I’m thrilled to pieces with the production of the garden, but to be honest I guess I am thrilled with whatever I can grow at all. It is normal for a heavy carbonaceous mulch like that to take a long time to break down, like six months to a year. I’ll keep feeding it all winter with as much nitrogen as I can get, from places like my fish tank, etc. That should encourage faster breakdown of the carbon and transformation into rich compost.

The end of August approaches. It is time to set in cool-weather crops. Maybe I’ll try the peas again, and also swiss chard. My chard didn’t really respond the first time. Maybe it’ll be happier this time around.

WARNING! Do not read if bugs gross you out.

Today I went out to plant a bunch of seedlings of chives, as well as parsley, sage, nasturtiums, and scarlet runner beans. In a different spot in the garden than last time I found the place overrun with zillions of those same tiny mites that grossed me out a week or two ago. I didn’t notice them until I felt the insidious buggers crawling on my hand and arm. They move FAST!! They are as tiny as the prick of a pin, but can crawl like an inch every two seconds.

Again, nothing in my garden seems chewed on or damaged in any way. It’s all growing very well, in fact.

I just feel bad because I really wanted to get these things planted. I tried getting a bucket of water and washing my hands off after every time I touched the soil. But they seem to be able to hold on even through a rinsing, sometimes.

I’m sure I unconsciously touched my head, adjusted my glasses, scratched my nose, etc. Plus I think they were crawling on the ground too, and I was barefoot. I felt them crawling all over me soon.

I finished my planting, then ran to take a shower. I scrubbed and washed and used hot water and blasted and rinsed and repeated. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that a few managed to hang on somewhere (especially in my hair). I don’t know if it’s my imagination running away with me, or if they’re actually there.

My clothes, of course, went straight into the washing machine. Everything I touched (counter, floor, bucket, etc.) got washed and wiped TWICE. Even then, I did find a few little crawlies that somehow evaded capture. I wiped them up with tissue and flushed them.

I feel like I want to bathe in bleach. These things might not bite, and they might not hurt my plants, but whatever they are they’re tenacious and I’m completely creeped out by them.

I wish I could know whether this is a fresh hatch, or whether last time when I thought I didn’t see any maybe they were just hiding, or I was blind. I wish I could know what kind of thing this bug is.

The garden sprouts are growing well. Today I noticed the first true leaves coming out on the spinach plants. They’re as tiny as a mouse’s ear, but they look beautiful to me!

YEEK!

Today when I watered the garden I found the soil covered with millions of tiny whitish creepy-crawlies. They are too small to identify by eye. They might be some sort of mite, or maybe they’re spider babies, or maybe (I dunno) aphids or something.

Obviously I have no clue. I couldn’t begin to guess where they came from or even whether they’re going to bother my plants. So far the young sprouts look normal and are still growing strong. I guess the only thing for me to do is be patient and see what happens. Either things will work out fine or everything will die. I’m definitely NOT going to spray any sort of poison. If my garden can’t make it organically, I’d rather not even have a garden.

I hope it all works out. I hope they go away soon. Whatever they are, they make me feel creepy.

I spoke to Denise again about the garden. She really is in favor of it, and hopes I’ll be able to have at least one harvest from it, if not keep it. She’s just sure, though, that the owner will demand it be removed as soon as he finds out about it. So she’s not going to bring it up. What a nice lady!

If we can just hold our breath for a month or two, we should have at least that one harvest which would almost justify the expense and trouble this garden has been to install.

Denise, the apartment manager came by today and saw my garden when she was walking her dog. She sounded enthusiastic about how well it’s growing, and noticed I had lots of kids all squealing with delight over it too. But she said she’s afraid the owners won’t like the structure I’ve built, because it seems “too permanent”.

She approved my idea for a garden when I said it would be containers. I didn’t think that changing the shape would matter that much, since I followed the rule of keeping it out of street view. And it IS popular. Denise says she’ll try to lobby for me using that as leverage, but I still might have to disassemble or move it.

Of course, moving it would ruin almost everything I’ve gained so far. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Everyone in my building looks forward to sharing the peas and spinach I’m growing.

The sun was warm today. Tiny baby spinach leaves showed up by this afternoon. They are as little almost as hairs of grass, but more oval-shaped. Children were gathering around the garden actually counting them. They said they found 18 so far.

I hesitate to ennoble the growth I’ve seen with the term “sprouts” because to me a sprout indicates something green poking up above the soil. This is almost the opposite. What I’ve seen is some of my pea seeds this morning have developed their first root shoot, which is pushing the pea up above the ground, though no green leaves or stem shoots are yet developing.

I don’t know why the growth is apparently going backwards. Maybe I just didn’t plant my peas deeply enough. I went by the rule of thumb that a seed should be planted three times as deep as its own diameter, and since pea seeds are about a quarter inch across I planted them about an inch down.

The soil on my garden is about 2”-3” deep, over a thick layer of straw. I know this is a strange experiment, but I’ve heard it can work, so I still am hoping for the best. But I am really surprised at this development. I know straw is very tough when it’s fresh, but there are many air holes in and around each stalk, and each stalk is itself soaked with water. I’d have thought the roots would easily find their way down into and through this straw layer, always finding adequate moisture as well as air.

My garden looks like it’s sprouting little alien eyeball beings. I should go out there with a marker and draw pupils on them all and freak out the neighbors.

The pea seeds were beautifully soaked, and some even showed tiny sprouts this morning. So I planted them. I sure hope they grow!

I didn’t water them because I don’t want to wash them away. I need to get a watering can with a gentle sprinkler head. All I’ve got right now is a bucket, which would be very rough on newly-planted seeds and loose soil.

It is now the middle of June, but the weather feels more like early April. It is barely into the sixties sometimes, and the sky is mostly cloudy and rainy. The rain is light and drizzly. I don’t know if or when warmer weather will ever come. For the last two years summers have been like this, sometimes with only two or three weeks of weather over 80 before swinging right back into fall cold drizzliness.

Since I don’t know, I’m just going to chance it. A lot of seed packets say I should have planted them months ago, but what the heck. I’ll just plant what I have, and maybe it will live. Surely SOMETHING will grow, a little at least. And anything that grows will add to the biomass of my garden.

I had three varieties of spinach seeds, so I mixed them all up and scattered them all over the garden. That will make a nice ground cover when they all sprout. Maybe one variety will do better than the others at handling the heat when it comes.

I have rainbow chard and nasturtiums and scarlet runner beans planted in a seedling tray. When they sprout I’ll transfer them to the garden along the edges so people will see plenty of color rising up or spilling over the sides.

I have some zucchini seeds. I think one plant at each corner is a good bet. It will look lush, and the leaves may spill over the sides and take up space in the walkway instead of shading my garden. I don’t know if there will be time for it to fruit much, but maybe with four plants going we’ll get at least a few meals out of it.

I found about three packets of my favorite snap peas “Sugar Lace”. They stand without support and grow to about two feet tall, and produce continually once established. Right now they are pre-soaking so they will get a jump start once they’re in the ground. I’ll cover the middle of the garden with them. Many of them may shade my spinach plants, but that’s okay. There should be enough spinach to glean in between and around.

I’ve never felt the need to plant vegetables in neat rows. Even squares, like “square foot gardening” seems a bit regimented to me. Nothing in nature would ever look like that. In nature everything is a jumble, all jostling for position wherever the plant best likes the light and water etc. At the risk of people telling me my garden is “unkempt” I intend to grow things in rather a chaotic celebration of hope. I don’t know what may grow or what may fail. I’ll let them all figure that out for themselves.

My daughter’s boyfriend came over tonight, and while (on a whim) I cooked a dinner worthy of Thanksgiving itself, they built my garden box for me, and spread in the straw. Yay!

Now I just need to bless it with bone and blood meal, and spread on the topsoil.