Soil Preparation

This past week we prepped the soil for the gardening season.  The first step was to kill the grass that was growing there.  There are really three options for doing this: removal of the grass, smothering, and chemicals.

When we built the raised beds last year, we used the chemical approach, which involved spraying with Round-Up a few times.  This worked fine, and the Round-Up disintegrated within a few days.  A more "organic" approach is to smother the grass.  This can be done by laying a few layers of wet newspaper down, and covering with compost or topsoil.  After a few weeks, the newspaper will decompose and you can till the compost into the soil.  We haven't tried this yet.  The third method is to simply till the green grass under, which is what we did with the field behind the garden.  This works, but must be done several times, staring in the fall and through early spring.

Once the grass was dead, we needed to amend the soil with nutrients. We used the organic approach to this, which involved adding Plant-Tone, greensand, and rock phosphate.  Plant-Tone is an organic plant food made from compost and supplemented with microbials.  Greensand is derived from sandstone that has marine sediments in it, and is high in natural potassium.  Rock phosphate is a sedimentary rock that is high in phosphorus.  We added 5–10 pounds of each of these per 100 sq.ft. of garden.  We also added Osmocote (2 lbs. per 100 sq.ft.), which is a slow-release chemical plant food that releases over a four to six month period.

After we added the supplements, we topped with "Booth's Blend" (a mixture of compost and manure supplied by a local farmer) a couple of inches deep and tilled the entire mixture to a depth of about six inches.  Then we planted (or transplanted) and mulched with a couple more inches of the compost mixture.

Once the soil was prepped, we planted a few things (yes, already!).  It is now three weeks until last frost, so we transplanted the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts.  We also planted lettuce and potatoes.  To plant potatoes, we dug a trench about a foot deep and planted the eyes of the seed potatoes in the trench.  We then topped with about three inches of soil; once the potatoes sprout, we will "hill" them by adding a few more inches of soil at a time until the sprouts are back to ground level.  We also transplanted leeks and onions.

I recently learned something interesting about cabbage.  I knew that cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts were closely related, but what I didn't know is that they are actually the same species.  They are all cultivars of Brassica oleracea, which is wild cabbage in its uncultivated form.  Other cultivars of B. oleracea include kale, collard greens, and kohlrabi.  

Well, that's all for this week.  I will end with some assorted pictures of the seedlings and the garden.  A few weeks ago we extended the split rail fence around the raised beds and added green netting around the wheat and the bed in the back of the garden.  We also placed chicken wire on the lower part of the fence to keep the dogs out of the garden!

Seedlings:  tomato (8 in. tall), cucumber, squash, celery

Seedlings:  cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, thyme, cilantro

Seedlings:  celery and leeks

Seedlings:  cucumber, squash, and celery

Seedlings:  cilantro and cabbage

Raised beds

Peach tree

Asparagus (almost four feet tall!)

Chives, garlic, and rhubarb

Onions and Brussels sprouts

Winter wheat

Seedling Update

I haven't posted to the blog in the past couple of weeks.  We have been busy on the house and our "Broadway & BBQ" church event.  We have a painting crew at the house to scrape the entire exterior down to bare wood, and prime and paint the siding and trim.  Next week we will post pictures of the progress of the painters!

Two weeks ago, I transplanted a few of the seedlings into peat pots.  I use a custom mix of one part each of peat, vermiculite, and perlite for the potting "soil."  It is important for young seedlings to get plenty of light, water, and air (both to the leaves and the roots).  Peat is a great absorber of water, and is breaks into tiny pieces that enable to roots to efficiently absorb the water.  However, if you planted a seedling in pure peat, it would get too much water and no air, and would drown (think of the peat bogs in Scotland; not much grows there other than moss).  On the other hand, perlite (a volcanic glass) allows lots of air to reach the roots, but doesn't absorb any water so the seedlings would dehydrate.  In the middle of the spectrum is vermiculite (a naturally-occurring mineral).  It can absorb water (though not as much as peat) and create voids that allow air to reach the roots (though not as much as perlite).  I have found that a 1:1:1 mix of these three products creates an ideal germination medium.  I use the mix for transplanting seedlings from peat pellets (after the first true leaves appear), and for germinating larger plants, such as cucumber and squash.

I use 3" peat pots for my seedlings and "soil" mixture.  When the pots are sitting in the plant trays and exposed to air, they remain dry and contain the seedling and mixture.  Once the pots are planted directly into the ground (where the bottom lower sides remain moist), the plats roots will recognize the peat as soil and grow right through them.  So, the roots do not get disturbed when you transplant with peat pots.

I have transplanted the tomatoes, cabbage and relatives, and cilantro into peat pots.  I have also planted the cucumber and squash seeds.  The celery and leeks are ready to be transplanted, but I don't have enough pots right now, so they'll have to wait (the can still wait a few weeks).  As I transplanted each peat pellet, I pulled out the weaker seedlings, so there is only one seedling per pellet (I did the same with the leeks and celery even though I have not yet transplanted them).  The peat pots are on plant trays in the rack that has my plant lights.


There are no seeds scheduled to be planted this week.  We have "Booth's Blend" (a mixture of compost and cow manure sold by a member of our church) arriving during the week, so next week I will talk about soil preparation and post pictures of the garden.  We have put up some fencing to keep Mason (our 96-lb Chesapeake Bay retriever) out of the garden and wheat, and the peach tree and chives are blooming!

Smoker

There were no seeds to plant this weekend, but the seedlings are looking great!  A few tomatoes and celery have sprouted, and pretty much all the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts!  The cilantro has set its first true leaves, so we have transplanted it into a peat pot.  Next week we will plant cucumbers, which go directly into peat pots, and we will talk about the potting mix we use.

Our plan was to talk about composting this week, but we are going to talk about our new smoker instead. Later in April, our church will be hosting an event called "Broadway & BBQ," for which we will be smoking eight briskets!  Our original plan was to borrow smokers from friends and split up the workload (briskets take between 12 and 18 hours to smoke), but we were unable to find adequate smokers.  We decided to look on the internet and see if we could find any good deals nearby.  What we found was a great deal on a six-foot trailer mounted smoker!  The only problem was that is was located in Athens, Georgia, and they weren't going to deliver.  So, Ashley and I decided to take a road trip to the Deep South!

We left Friday morning about 6:00 am and drove straight to Georgia, arriving around 1:00 am on Saturday.  After sleeping in late on Saturday, we picked up the smoker (after donuts for b'fast) and started back to New York.  The trailer has a pretty narrow wheelbase, so we limited our speed to about 60 mph on the highway.  We made it to Roanoke, Virginia, on Saturday night, ate Mexican food for dinner, and fount a hotel.  We left Roanoke around 6:00 am Sunday morning, and arrived home in New York around 6:30 pm on Sunday.

The smoker is mounted on a trailer, about nine feet in length.  It is a traditional offset smoker, with a fire box about two feet on each side and a cooking chamber about three feet in diameter and six feet long.  We figure we can smoke up to a dozen briskets on this thing!  It has bypass smoke flow, so the meat doesn't get radiant heat from the fire, and is constructed from 1/4" plate steel.  These will allow it to keep a constant, even temperature for a long time, so I don't have to check the fire as often!  It also has a charcoal grill (2'×3') mounted on the back of the trailer, and a propane burner as well (for boiling corn or frying catfish).  We will get plenty of use out of this smoker, especially if we do this church thing every year!

Next week I will likely transplant many of the seedlings (and start a few more seeds), so I will probably talk about our potting mix and show some pictures of the seedlings (I will talk about composting the following week).  Check out the smoker pictures below!