When, what, and how much to plant

The average frost date for the last spring frost for my area is around April 16th. To find the date for your area visit http://www.almanac.com/content/frost-chart-united-states. Most seedlings need to be started 6 to 8 weeks prior to this date, so I have already started most of mine. I have started 7 different varieties of tomatoes, including Roma, Beefsteak, Tommy Toe, Yellow Pear, and Cherry. The Yellow Pear and Tommy Toe were developed to be dwarf cherry tomatoe plants that grow well in containers. They can be grown indoors to yeild tomatoes all year long. I have also started bell peppers, jalapenos, and candlelight peppers. All of these can also be grown in containers, indoors, and produce all year. Peppers like to be planted in pairs, so even when you transplant them to their permanent places, leave them planted in pairs. I have started broccoli, which hasn't started growing yet, chinese cabbage, brussels sprouts, and mustard. I'm going to direct sow my carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers after April 16th.

So, the question is, how large should my garden be to keep my family of 4 supplied with the basic vegetables all year? According to http://www.aselfsufficientlife.com/how-big-should-the-vegetable-garden-be.html a 650 square foot garden should be plenty. My garden is going to be 16' by 33'. That's 528 square feet. It's a little short of the 650, but I will be planting much of it vertically. The entire perameter of my garden will be a fence made from upcycling wooden pallets. I'm going to enclose them with slats of wood so that they will hold soil better. They will look similar to this:The instructions for this pallet garden can be found at: http://lifeonthebalcony.com/how-to-turn-a-pallet-into-a-garden/. My pallets will be completely enclosed except for the top. I am planting all of my vining plants here. This will include squash, zuchini, cucumbers, and cantelope. This will keep most of my produce off of the ground and take up much less space in my garden. The rest of my garden will be 100% containers. I purchased 12 plastic storage containers that are about 24" wide x 36" long x 24" deep. I am covering the entire surface area of my garden with a material that hinders weed growth. In past years, the weeds have been a losing battle. I am not going to deal with them this year! Container gardening has many benefits besides weed control. I have better control over the quality of the soil. Mine will be half potting soil and half compost. Very rich! It will take less water since I am not having to water as large an area and the water is going exactly where I need it to go. Also, I have a hard time bending over to tend to plants planted directly in the ground. This raises them up as high as I need them so it's not so hard on my back and my knees. Some of my containers will continue to be used throughout the winter for winter crops, but the containers that aren't being used can be covered with the lid that came with the storage container to preserve my soil and keep it where I want it. I will also be building some containers from upcycled picket fence that will look similar to this one:

 

I found this planter at http://www.raisedbedgardenkits.com/urban-vertical-container-garden.asp. Taller plants such as tomatoes and peppers will be planted on the top rows, and shorter plants like lettuce, cabbage, and some herbs will be planted on the bottom rows. I am also growing red and yellow potatoes. They can take up alot of ground space, so I am growing them in large burlap sacks. Each sack should be able to grow anywhere from 50-100 pounds of potatoes. I have 5 sacks started, so I should have plenty of potatoes to last me all year. I am going to be doing alot of canning! To start potatoes, fill the bottom of the burlap sack with about 6" of good soil. I placed 5 small started potatoes in each sack, then covered them with about 3" of soil. I have the sides of the sacks rolled down so they can get light. When the potato plants grow to about 12" I will cover them with more soil until only about 6" of the plant is above the soil line. I will unroll enough of the sides of the sack to hold the soil in place.  I will continue doing this each time the plant grows to 12" until the soil line has reached the top of the sack. The leaves that are buried under the new soil will being to take root and grow more potatoes. When the plants leaves start turning yellow it should be time to harvest my potatoes. This can easily be done by dumping the sack out onto a tarp. When the potatoes are all gathered, I will return the soil to the sack to be used next year. This sure sounds better than trying to dig the potatoes out of the ground without damaging them! You can learn more about growing potatoes here: http://greenupgrader.com/11708/4-simple-steps-to-grow-a-hundred-pounds-of-potatoes-in-a-barrel/

I am very excited to get started on my new garden. I will be adding photos as it progresses. My hope is to be able to supply my family with homegrown, organic vegetables all year long. No more supermarket veggies! Nothing tastes better than homegrown veggies!

Update on lemon trees

It has been exactly 3 months since I plucked my lemon seeds from their nesting place inside some store bought lemons. I have been nuturing them daily since. A few of them have really made me happy, but most of them stopped growing after they were only about an inch tall. They are still alive, just not doing anything. I'm not giving up on them. I think I'm going to re-pot them into some less compacted soil and see if that will help them. This is a photo of my largest lemon tree.

As you can see, it is much larger than the lemon trees around it. I can't explain it.

Lemon Trees

It all started at my grocery store. Lemons were on sale 5 for $1 and oranges were on sale 2 for $1. Who could pass that up? So I bought 5 lemons and 2 oranges. I saw a recipe on Pinterest (awesome site) for a homemade all-purpose citrus cleaner and wanted to try it. I'll post the recipe later on my Saving Money and Going Green blog. So, I juiced the lemons and oranges and made a gallon of orange/lemonade. It was wonderful! It didn't even last a day. I cut up the peelings for the all-purpose citrus cleaner, and was left with a small bowl of lemon seeds.

These seeds were plucked from lemons on about November 7th. I decided I was going to get the absolute most out of that $2 that I possibly could, so I decided to attempt to grow a lemon tree. So off I go to GOOGLE. Of course, everyone does things differently so I had to just choose a method of germination and cross my fingers that it would work. I decided to clean my seeds thoroughly and wrap them in a damp paper towel. I then put them in a ziplock bag and placed them near my grow lamp. After about 4 weeks, yes, 4 weeks, this is what i get:

I was actually pretty happy with this. I decided to change the paper towel because it looked like it was getting mold spots on it. So, I wrapped them in a clean wet paper towel, put them back in their ziplock bag and put them back under the grow light for another 2 weeks. I'm sorry, but I don't have a photo of them at 6 weeks, but they had a lot more roots by this time, and were starting to sprout leaves. I decided it was time to plant them. I took an 18 count cardboard egg carton and filled it with my compost and planted my seeds. I made sure the roots were completely covered with compost, but left the sprout above the dirt. I then covered the carton with plastic wrap and used 2 straws to keep the plastic wrap raised off of the lemons. Like a mini green house. This is what they looked like at this point:

This is about December 15th. I placed them near my grow light. For Christmas, Randy bought me a green house. It's about 5 1/2 feet tall, about 2 1/2 feet wide, and about 1 1/2 feet deep. I absolutely love it. It has 4 shelves and is small enough to keep indoors. I then removed the plastic wrap from my lemon trees and moved them into the green house. About a week later I found mushrooms growing in them. One morning I found 1 mushroom growing in my Goji berries which were also in the green house. It looked like this:

Pretty, isn't it. Looks are deceiving. By the next morning there were about 20 of them in both my Goji berries and my lemon trees. Once again, I run to GOOGLE. As it turns out, they are called Japanese Umbrella Mushrooms and they are poisonous. I also found these mushrooms growing in my lemon trees:



I still don't know what kind they are. In an attempt to rescue my precious Goji berries and lemon trees from multiple fungi I decided to replant them. I'm not sure if it was the compost, the egg cartons, or a combination of either being in the warm, moist environment of the green house, but I wasn't taking any chances. I decided to plant them in plastic starter containers using only potting soil. To avoid cross contamination I removed all of the compost from the roots and sprayed the plants and roots with a generous amount of colloidal silver since it is known to kill fungus and I happen to have a colloidal silver maker. It worked! No more mushrooms!!! Some of my lemon trees have not grown much, but they are still alive and I'm not giving up on them. Some have really thrived. This is what they look like today, January 9th, 2012.

Once a week I spray them with a mixture of about 1 part colloidal silver, about 1 part Epsom salt, and about 10 parts water. The colloidal silver destroys bacteria, virus, and fungus. The Epsom salt is magnesium, which the soil needs. 2 or 3 weeks ago they all looked like the seed in the bottom right corner of the photo. I have seen lemon trees grown indoors that were about 5 feet tall and producing lemons. That's what I hope to do with these. Hopefully in about a year I will be giving all of my siblings, my daughter, and my parents a 1 to 2 foot tall lemon tree. That would take care of 6 of them. I probably have room for 3 in my house. That leaves 11 lemon trees if they all live. I guess next year I can give them as Christmas gifts!