We Have Planted!

It has been a while since I posted. I've been a little busy and a little lazy when not busy. In any case, my daughter and I planted on May 9. Thanks to the generosity of Dave D. and Kathy G., we were able to fill the entire garden with free baby plants. Thanks to Kathy for the strawberries and to Dave for the collection of tomatoes and peppers. Each tomato plant is different from the rest, as are the peppers. Maura and I planted:

Tomatoes

• Jubilee Yellow
• Yellow Pear
• Beefsteak
• Better Boy
• Big Boy
• 4th of July
  

Peppers

• Hot Banana
• Anaheim
• Tabasco
• Mariachi
• Spanish Spice
• NuMex Sandia

and some great looking strawberry plants! Maura started out eager to help plant, as this has been "our" garden from the start. Alas, after helping transfer a couple of peppers from their containers to the ground, she lost interest so I finished up by myself.

In case you're new to this, as I am, I've heard the goal in transplanting plants is to move them as intact as possible from the container to the ground, with the depth of planting being about equal as it was in the container (e.g., the plant should have the same amount of itself above the soil as it did before). One exception to this is in the case of the plant being root bound. This refers to the tendency of plants to get their roots bound up in a tight knot while inside the confined space of a container. In this case, you should loosen up the roots as best you can to allow them to open up into their newfound home in the ground. Just be gentle.

It rains and rains and rains

We're all ready to plant, but it keeps raining. Lettuce, broccoli, and peas could all go in right now, since they are cold-weather vegetables. We need to wait for the soil to not be so soggy before we can plant.

FYI, April 29 is the date at which the chance of frost is <= 10% in Frederick. So, we'll plant warm-weather vegetables in early May.

How We Built Our Raised Bed

Last weekend had perfect weather, so we decided to go ahead and create our raised bed. This was great fun and took less time than I thought. It took about four hours, including a couple trips to the Dutch Plant Farm and one trip to Home Depot.

On Saturday evening, I cleared the 2.5' x 13' area I had chosen for the bed. First, my daughter and I staked out the area we planned to use. She had fun planting the stakes. We chose an area up against our back fence.





Second, I used my spade to create the borders of the area. Then, I used a combination of my trowel and shovel to clear off the grassy surface so that only soil was left. Most books and web site I consulted suggested only clearing off the top 1 or 2 inches. That makes sense for most people, as you want to retain as much soil as possible.

However, my yard is filled with crab grass, so I had to remove more of the surface just to get most of it out of the bed area. When creating a bed, its very important to remove all weeds (crab grass is definitely a weed in this context). Once I had removed most of the surface, I removed a few remaining crab grass roots and then, with my daughter's help, smoothed out the remaining soil with her tiny trowel, my trowel, and my steel rake. She had a blast and it was a lot of fun for me, too.

With the area cleared and the sun setting, we called it a night and got excited for our work the next morning.

In the morning, we went to Dutch Plant farm and bought fast-acting hydrated lime to bring up the PH level of the soil in our bed. I followed the instructions and, after using my digging fork to aerate the cleared bed, added enough to raise the PH level 1 point, as suggested by the results of the soil sample analysis I had done a few weeks ago.

We also bought 15 bags of topsoil (1 cubic foot / bag) and 6 bags of leafgro (1.5 cubic feet / bag). This was slightly too much for my 32.5 square foot area, so I returned 5 bags of topsoil and 1 bag of leafgro. In any case, after placing a 20' fiber edge around the bed to prevent grass and weeds from growing into the garden, I put the leafgro (organic compost made from leaves) on top of the cleared bed, then the topsoil on top of that. My daughter and I then sculpted the edges of the soil with our trowels and shovel so that the sides would gently slope down to the edges of the bed. We then wet it all down for good measure.

Finally, I went back to the Dutch Plant Farm and got 5 bags of pine bark mini-nuggets mulch, which I put over everything else. It is important to avoid leaving any soil exposed, b/c any seeds that fly off a lawn and land on the new bed will result in weeds in the garden later.

Now, we just need to wait a couple weeks to plant. A friendly co-worker told me today that she's going to give me some extra strawberry plants that she has -- my daughter will love that!

Frederick Community Garden Plot Cleared and Graded

If you haven't heard about the Frederick Community Garden yet, you should check it out. It looks like they've found a good plot of land, cleared, and graded it. What a great idea!

Techniques for Labeling Your Garden Plants

I thought that this was a useful survey of techniques for keeping track of what you've planted and where. I'm sure I'll use this info in a few weeks when my daughter and I plant our first seeds :)

Horticultural Society of Maryland Spring Lecture Series

I've mentioned the ongoing Master Gardeners Seminar Series at the Coop Extension here in Frederick a couple times. You may also be interested in lectures offered in Lutherville, MD by the Horticultural Society of Maryland.

Upcoming Lectures:

April 14 7:30 PM: Designing the New Kitchen Garden
May 12 7:30 PM: Creating Landscapes With Roses

Master Gardner Seminar Series covered by Gazette

I thought that guy was taking way too many pictures. Turns out he was from the Gazette and was covering the first Master Gardener Seminar Series class four weeks ago. Check it out.