Plot Update

I thought today I'd share photos of my garden plot. Unfortunately my utter lack of money has led me to only plant half the plot.

Tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno, radishes and some cornflowers that haven't bloomed yet.

Ruby corn, spinach, strawberries, peas and out of view are black eye peas.

My First Salad

I harvested some of the lettuce from my balcony and made a salad to go with dinner Wednesday evening.


This is the first thing I've grown and then consumed. A first step towards sustainably growing my own food.

The Balcony Garden

An update on my balcony garden: After over a month, it's going great! I have gourmet lettuce mixture, arugula, kale and peas planted. It's going really well, despite the problem with the assholes at my apartments taking out the gutters in rainy march and all my plants and soil in box #1 being washed away. Frustrating at the time, but spring is a forgiving time of year!

Planter box#1: kale, lettuce mix, arugula, peas.

Kale.


Planter box #2: Peas, big lettuce plants, little lettuce plants.


Another view of box #2.



The peas even have a little flower starting to grow!

Here is the Sacramento area, we've been having unusual weather for the time of year. Usually by April, we've seen all the rain we'll see until fall. But this year it's been intermittent rain. Yesterday we even had hail! Hail is a rare event in this region of the country. I've lived here almost my entire life and I can only remember it hailing maybe 2 or 3 times. The good news is, this weather makes my late start to my garden plots not actually late! And hopefully I'll be able to get the next crop of lettuce before heat makes it bolt. After that, I'll have to look into what plants to replace the lettuce.

A Bit of Dirt: Balcony Planter Boxes on the Cheap

It's not quite spring here in Carmichael, California but it's beginning to feel like it. So far there has been three days warm enough for me to wear shorts. And by "warm enough" I mean temperatures almost in the 60s. A few sunny days is enough to kill my winter blues and make me instead stress about gardening.

This weekend I made a planter box for our sometimes sunny balcony. The balcony doesn't get enough sun to grow things like tomatoes but I think somewhat shade tolerant veggies should do okay.


I have some peas that I mistakenly thought would be a good idea for start here and transplant to the plot, so I have two of them already in the planter box as an experiment to see if I can get them to grow. It's probably a fool-worthy endeavor. Mostly the boxes will be use for spinach, arugula and lettuce.

The box was simple to make, and we'll see how it holds up over time. All in all it was about $20 for the two of them, one medium and one large. I used a simpson bracket, screws and bolts and the plastic planter box.



A Rough How To

Materials needed:
Plastic planter box
2 Simpson brackets (shaped like a squared-off U) for each box
Nuts + Bolts to fit bracket, not too long. 4 for each box, but this may vary if you get a different bracket
Pencil or Pen

Use the holes in the bracket to mark where on the box you want the screw holes. Use a utility knife to cut holes. It doesn't have to be perfect. Insert the screws from inside the planter box. When you are digging in it later you don't want to have a surprise injury from a screw that you forgot was in there! Tighten bolts, Hang on your balcony railing. Make you your box has drainage, and a few rocks covering any drainage hole so you don't lose dirt with the water.

I apologize if I didn't use enough building terminology. It's only because I have no idea what I'm talking about.

A Bit of Earth

A few days ago I went outside to get the pots and dirt from last year that are on our apartment balcony. My dear friend Monique gave me some seeds to plant and this year I wanted to get a good start. To my surprise two of the pots had already sprouted from last years seeds!


This is Cat Grass, which despite being something I don't plan on eating, it's a lot of fun. You can leave for a few hours, come back and see a noticeable difference in size. Watching the grass grow can be fun! I bought the seeds last year so my evil cat Baldar would have something to destroy. Unfortunately his plant-murdering lust was taken out on the rest of the seeds I started in 2009. A moment of silence for the lost souls.

This one I have no idea what it is. Time will tell. It's nice that I have a head start on whatever it is!

In a week or two I will be getting a plot at a church's community garden two miles from my apartment. I've started quite a few of the seeds and some have already sprouted.

What I have started:
Roma Tomatoes
Basil
Purple Basil
Sage
Chamomile
Oregano
Spearmint
Peas
Lettuce Mix (this will stay in my window-sill or go since it likely will not deal with the heat very well)
Arugula (same as lettuce)

My window where it's all getting started.

Lettuce sprouts! There are more sprouting plants but they are quite hard to photograph.

There are more things I want to grow, but that's the seeds I have so far. I still want to get one or two more varieties of tomato, corn, squash, bell peppers, zucchini and cucumber. Soon as I get paid I'll be making a trip to the nursery.