The Long-Anticipated Garden Post
Jun. 25th, 2010 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyOkay, y’all! I have finally managed to get some pictures of what Dad’s been referring to as The Farm! So here I’ll finally give you the story:
In the last few months, I’ve started to want to branch out to a new set of skills. I’m marginally good with arty-crafty skills, and brilliant at headskills, and total pants at moving-around skills but I do a few of those anyway. I’ve decided that I need to move on to what I call, for lack of a better term, Apocalypse skills*—that is, useful things like emergency response, first aid, and how to rebuild the internet out of soup cans and twine.
But the first one I’m focusing on is learning how to grow my own food.
I am not a good gardener. I understand, through many construction-paper filled hours at school, the basics of Seed --> Plant, but like so many things I’ve only learned about in school, I don’t really believe it,** because I have never really done it for myself. My experience with gardening pretty much consists of helping Mom plant some stuff and then wandering off, never to consider it again. Not helpful.
So last month, I picked up a couple of gardening books and set out to learn to garden.
I started with a container garden for two reasons: first, I may get an apartment rather than a house with a yard, and I want to know how to grow things that way; and second, because I wanted to start small before taking on a big ol’ garden. Thus, The Farm!
These are homemade self-watering containers. I took pictures while I was building, but they didn’t turn out—but I would just like to thank my brother for helping me with their construction, since Power Tools have not been added to my list of skills yet. So you only get to see them after I dumped dirt into them.***
Laurel helps show them off!
Container the left: cherry tomatoes, marigolds, edamame soybeans, and peas. The upper left corner is waiting on either a mint transplant from the front yard, or perhaps some basil.
Also, the tomato on the left may be smaller due to the sun’s angle, but it may also have to do with certain asscats tearing off one of its branches and chewing that branch up. Charlie was having a snot day.
But I looked again today and they’re both showing signs of proto-tomato action, which is cool! I will have to take more pictures.
Container the right: lime thyme that needed more dirt when I took this, a couple of marigolds, onions, a bell pepper that looked kinda goth on the tag (this one worries me—I haven’t been able to find anything saying that bell pepper doesn’t go well with onion, but I don’t know for sure), and a nasturtium. Also, I just planted some carrot seeds and beet seeds in those blank spots.
I was thrilled when the nasturtium bloomed. Red is awesome.
Laurel risks a fall off the deck and/or you staring at her backlit legs (she’s got leggings on, because doll modesty!) to demonstrate how to water these containers, which aren’t exactly as self-watering as you would assume. See, the pipes lead to the chamber below the dirt, where the water waits for the soil to wick it up. The idea is to simulate the way wild plants get water from underground sources.
This has been a really interesting project. I’m learning a lot, but the best part is finally feeling like I get this whole “gardening” thing. Plus, I may hate regular-size tomatoes unless you’ve turned them into sauce, but there is nothing bad about cherry tomatoes. Hooboy yeah I’m happy about them!
*Okay, possibly a better term would be Boy Scout skills, but I apparently have more issues with the Boy Scouts than I do with the goddamn end of the world as we know it.
**Same reason it took me a trip to Africa or a coastal vacation to make me believe in Africa or the ocean.
***And then had to dump it out and put the right dirt in.
In the last few months, I’ve started to want to branch out to a new set of skills. I’m marginally good with arty-crafty skills, and brilliant at headskills, and total pants at moving-around skills but I do a few of those anyway. I’ve decided that I need to move on to what I call, for lack of a better term, Apocalypse skills*—that is, useful things like emergency response, first aid, and how to rebuild the internet out of soup cans and twine.
But the first one I’m focusing on is learning how to grow my own food.
I am not a good gardener. I understand, through many construction-paper filled hours at school, the basics of Seed --> Plant, but like so many things I’ve only learned about in school, I don’t really believe it,** because I have never really done it for myself. My experience with gardening pretty much consists of helping Mom plant some stuff and then wandering off, never to consider it again. Not helpful.
So last month, I picked up a couple of gardening books and set out to learn to garden.
I started with a container garden for two reasons: first, I may get an apartment rather than a house with a yard, and I want to know how to grow things that way; and second, because I wanted to start small before taking on a big ol’ garden. Thus, The Farm!
These are homemade self-watering containers. I took pictures while I was building, but they didn’t turn out—but I would just like to thank my brother for helping me with their construction, since Power Tools have not been added to my list of skills yet. So you only get to see them after I dumped dirt into them.***
Laurel helps show them off!
Container the left: cherry tomatoes, marigolds, edamame soybeans, and peas. The upper left corner is waiting on either a mint transplant from the front yard, or perhaps some basil.
Also, the tomato on the left may be smaller due to the sun’s angle, but it may also have to do with certain asscats tearing off one of its branches and chewing that branch up. Charlie was having a snot day.
But I looked again today and they’re both showing signs of proto-tomato action, which is cool! I will have to take more pictures.
Container the right: lime thyme that needed more dirt when I took this, a couple of marigolds, onions, a bell pepper that looked kinda goth on the tag (this one worries me—I haven’t been able to find anything saying that bell pepper doesn’t go well with onion, but I don’t know for sure), and a nasturtium. Also, I just planted some carrot seeds and beet seeds in those blank spots.
I was thrilled when the nasturtium bloomed. Red is awesome.
Laurel risks a fall off the deck and/or you staring at her backlit legs (she’s got leggings on, because doll modesty!) to demonstrate how to water these containers, which aren’t exactly as self-watering as you would assume. See, the pipes lead to the chamber below the dirt, where the water waits for the soil to wick it up. The idea is to simulate the way wild plants get water from underground sources.
This has been a really interesting project. I’m learning a lot, but the best part is finally feeling like I get this whole “gardening” thing. Plus, I may hate regular-size tomatoes unless you’ve turned them into sauce, but there is nothing bad about cherry tomatoes. Hooboy yeah I’m happy about them!
*Okay, possibly a better term would be Boy Scout skills, but I apparently have more issues with the Boy Scouts than I do with the goddamn end of the world as we know it.
**Same reason it took me a trip to Africa or a coastal vacation to make me believe in Africa or the ocean.
***And then had to dump it out and put the right dirt in.
