Whew! It's been quite awhile since I updated this blog and quite a bit has happened since my last entry. As you know, both Randy and I went out of town for about 10 days (a wedding) and weren't able to do anything in that time. If we had planted before leaving there would have been nobody to water the plants, and of course the double digging was just getting started.

After returning from the trip out of town we decided to get to business. Randy had planted a number of seeds at home to germinate during our absence, but sadly they didn't do so well. We didn't have a grow light and his solarium probably just wasn't warm enough or sunny enough to do the job. Only about a third of the seeds actually sprouted...for example the salad garden seeds -- but they sure don't look like lettuce starts to us, more like watercress. But the starts I had purchased were doing quite well and had grown substantially. We're going to revisit the seed planting issue in the near future because we've got a lot of seeds. But we didn't have a prepared bed in which to plant! Doh!

We had much more turf removal to do and the double-digging. So we got to work. As Randy continued to remove turf by hand, I started to double dig the areas uncovered. Organic compost at Home Depot was $3.98 a bag I bought 10 ($39.80). I spread about two inches of compost atop the bare soil prior to digging. Double digging is the process of loosening the soil to a two-foot depth -- no easy task I can tell you! It involves a spade and a spading fork...first loosening the soil in the first foot with the spade, and then loosening the soil in the second foot below with the spading fork. As I dug, the compost on the surface would sort of "avalanche" down into the soil mixture and kind of "naturally" mix with it. It was amazing what the double digging and compost did to the soil. We started with packed dirt (not hard-pan mind you but still kind of like clay) and ended up with fluffy soft and fresh-feeling, spongy soil that just broke apart real nicely. As the digging process unfolded, the soil bed rose up from the ground about three inches in height above what had existed before we removed the turf. One benefit of double digging is to incorporate a lot of compost and air into the soil, and it works. The lighter, composted soil retains water much better and allows easier root penetration. Once it is done, if you maintain your soil properly, the job is less than half the effort the following year (we're crossing our fingers.)

After a few days of two-hour double-digging sessions I needed more compost and Home Depot was completely out of stock without any more inventory expected for a week! So I went to a local super store and found the same stuff for $2 more per cubic foot (ouch!) I bought six bags for $35.88. This brought our double digging success to just about half of the garden, and 16 total bags. We were beginning to see the outlines of our planned beds. So Randy bought 6 more bags of compost and I kept digging ($35.88).

We now had some prepared beds ready to plant our 'starts'. So we transplanted tomatoes (12 plants) lettuce starts (about 20 plants -- we're going to have an awful lot of salad, all on one day -- groan), three melons (although Randy doesn't remember if he started two cantaloupes and a watermelon, or two watermelons and a cantaloupe), four pepper plants, five broccoli, the rosemary, two zucchini (I hate to think what their going to produce,) two slicing cucumbers, and fifteen hills of potatoes. Our strawberry crowns arrived and we just looked at them and decided to give up on them. They look like a handful of wet straw and we just don't know what to do with them. We also planted corn seed, pea pod bush seed, and snap pea bush seed. We have a bunch of onions to plant but no more prepared beds to plant in until I double-dig some more.

So off to the store to get more compost. I think it will take another two bags and I'll have the double digging licked. That's a total of 24 bags of compost and a compost bill of about $125 for 24 cubic feet of compost, to cover about two thirds of our total plot space. The rest of the plot consists of pathways, the areas with the weed cloth, and the large bed planted by our Bosnian neighbor which will be returned to us when she harvests (we trust!) It would have been nicer and cheaper to truck the compost in but a truck can't get to the community garden! -- it's 50 yards away from the parking lot...across a lawn...and everything has to be carried by hand!...including our tools, every day.

Randy is getting anxious because we haven't planted flowers yet ... and he's set on having lots of cut flowers -- for the bees, and for his table. So the rest of the double digging, planting of the onions, planting the flowers, and planting more seeds of corn and then pole beans is coming up next week. We'll start more starts from seed too, to see if we can get them to grow. After all, this is just the first season!

Whew...this gardening thing is initially hard work, expensive, and has given me a pretty sore back so far. But the beauty is that we're just about done with all the hard stuff (at least that's what we think.) Now we sit back, water, weed a little, plant more seeds, and watch it all grow. The biointensive planting method requires spacing of plants much closer together than normal, which creates a sort of micro-climate under the leaves of the plants. This is supposed to deter both weeds and insects. With any luck, we'll more than break even on our investment with a very bountiful harvest.

As I look at the garden today I see several planted beds, many with plants growing, and apparently thriving. We know that the soil will retain water better and the roots will penetrate easier thanks to our initial intensive efforts. It's rewarding. I'll get you a photo next week. I'm going to lay down now.

OK. This is no April Fools Joke. I really went to the plot today to start the arduous task of removing the sod. Five minutes into it I thought to myself, "What the [bleep] was I thinking!?!?!" ...but continued on like the good trooper that I am. It took me two hours to clear about 1/10th of the entire plot, an area 12 feet long by 3 feet wide. Now this isn't the double-digging part mind you...this is just removing the sod so I can START the double-digging part. I was on my knees quite a lot and got to see the soil close up as I worked. It's full of earthworms and hummus! Yay! This is great news! The soil appears to be very rich and healthy, and our soil tests pretty much back up that observation. Now I need to learn about serious mud-stain removal from the knees of jeans -- something every mother out there ought to know...so clue me in, OK?

I also met the renter of the plot next to ours today. You may recall that our neighbor had encroached on our plot by just going ahead and planting a bed of onions on it. Well, today she came out to introduce herself, along with her granddaughter. She needed her granddaughter there to translate -- because she's a refugee from Sarajevo, Bosnia, that has been in America for just a few years and just "LOVE's Ahmed-i-cah!" Anyway, the reason she had planted on our plot is because nobody had gardened our plot for the past three years -- it has remained fallow (no wonder the sod has such well-developed, deep roots!). So, she just assumed it would continue to remain fallow and, no harm no foul, planted with the intent of trading produce with the new renter if there ever was one. So we bartered the "land for produce" deal and will be receiving strawberry's and other produce from her garden in exchange for the encroachment. A good time was had and we all ended up happy. It was great meeting her and I get the sense she has gardened for her family's food supply for decades. I might learn a thing or two from her either by watching, or by listening as her granddaughter translates. (Note to self -- learn a few words of the Yugoslav language.) Of course this necessarily changes our plot layout now. We had planned potatoes for that area, but it isn't a big deal, really. And now we won't need as many strawberry plants.

Randy, meanwhile, is managing the seed planting efforts to create seedlings at home that can be transplanted into the garden. A good portion of the seed order arrived in the mail today and we expect the rest before the end of the week. We discovered the Jiffy-7 product for planting our seeds ($3.65 for a 25-pack at Ace Hardware) -- it's cool, and way too easy. The Jiffy-7's (formerly known as "one-steps") are peat-pellet's, made from Canadian sphagnum peat moss and wood pulp which is then dehydrated and pressed into a pellet shape. All you do is line up a bunch of these pellets in a raised-edge tray (like a cookie tray for example), drop a seed or two onto the center of each pellet, and then add water to the tray. The pellets quickly absorb the water and expand to about an inch and a half high, and as they expand they envelop the seed(s) with about a quarter inch of damp peat mixture. (This is a "before" and "after" picture.) The whole pellet is surrounded by a very thin gauze-like material that is biodegradable and expands with the expanding peat to create a basket of sorts to hold the pod of peat together -- no pots needed. Just keep adding water to the tray each day, the peat pods soak it up. When the seedling is ready to transplant, just pick up the whole pod and transplant it into a hole in the ground. Done. This also helps eliminate transplant shock because you aren't disturbing the roots at all. Great idea.

Of course there are several seeds we will plant directly into the garden without starting in the house, like corn and beans and carrots. We also need to plan staggering the seed germinations and seed plantings so we don't get like 30 heads of lettuce to mature the same week, ya know?

Back for more sod-removal again tomorrow. And I have Donna coming to help! More later.

Today I ordered starts and certified potato seed. The previous order didn't include these items, just seed. I learned that if you try to use the potatoes from the grocery store as seed, they frequently don't work because grocery store potatoes are treated with some sort of spray (undoubtedly to extend shelf life) that retards sprouting and, so it goes, prevents them from sprouting in the garden as well. So one needs to buy "certified" seed.

I found the Natural Gardening Company, an outfit that sells certified organic seeds. I ordered potato seed, onion starts (including Walla Walla Sweets!), tomato starts, a couple of rosemary rhizomes, pepper starts, and strawberry starts. That ought to get us going! Total bill: $132. ouch!

Now we have a problem. Randy and I will be traveling sometime soon (yes, we bought carbon offsets for it) and we'll be gone for ten days. If we plant, who will water and tend our beds when we're gone? We're going to have to pray for rain! Worse, I've got to have the thing double-dug before we leave because the starts will be delivered before we leave and we'll have to plant them right away or they'll just die! Egads! The planning! The planning!

Luckily, the forecast is for drier weather this week. I just might be getting some excessive exercise and doing the "double-dig". (There ought to be a line dance with that name, don't you think?)

More later!

There is a 5-yr waiting list for my SE neighborhood garden. Since you want to start planting soon and smothering or solarization take time, are you going to hand-remove the grass? That'll take some time!

I recently learned of some mycorrhizal fungi-beneficial bacteria solutions for increasing soil biodynamism, available at fungiperfecti.com.