Humble beginnings for this year’s sandbox garden
Last year I wrote about a new raised bed garden I created from a sandbox that wasn’t getting much use in our yard. Of course, I wasn’t about to settle for making a run-of the-mill raised bed – mine needed to be a little different! At the time, I was starting to experiment with vermicomposting trenches (which you can learn all about on my Red Worm Composting site – check out the “Hot Topics” page), so I thought it might be fun to try running one of these trenches through the middle of the garden.
The crop plants I settled on for the original sandbox garden were giant pumpkins and potatoes. I figured the pumpkins would really benefit from the the water- and nutrient-rich food waste that was being added to the trench (and subsequently processed by a herd of Red Wiggler Worms), and that the potatoes might do well in the loose, sandy soil of the bed.
Despite the fact that the pumpkins didn’t get planted until mid-July, they still ended up doing quite well, We didn’t get a truly ‘giant’ pumpkin, but I was nevertheless very impressed with the sizable specimen that was ready in time for Halloween.
The potatoes, on the other hand, were a bit of a disappointment. Looking back, I can’t help but chuckle though, since I now realize how little I knew about growing spuds. As such, I don’t feel so bad about the poor show in that department (and have come back with potato guns a’ blazin this year to see if I can grow a better crop).
Speaking of which, while I certainly didn’t intend to grow any potatoes in the sandbox garden this year (I have other beds set aside for them), as it turns out, some leftover tubers have been making their presence know by growing into very healthy looking plants. I decided to just ‘go with the flow’ and see how well they end up doing among the other plants growing there.
My main intended crop this year is actually sweet corn. I thought the corn would appreciate the sandy, fertile soil – I should mention that the garden basically served as an overwintering bed for a sizable population of composting worms, so there was plenty of vermicompost left behind when I cleaned up the garden (transferring many of the worms to my main vermi-trenches) this spring. I also predicted that, if all went well, the corn garden would make for a pretty impressive show as part of my surburban mini-farm.
Sweet corn, pole beans, and renegade potato plants growing in this year’s ’self-fertilizing’ garden
My dad (a retired professor of Anthropology) told me how native people used to grow climbing beans close to corn so as to provide the demanding corn plants with more nitrogen, while also providing the beans with natural supports (the corn stalks). I thought this sounded like a really cool idea, and ended up planting two rows of yellow pole beans between my four rows of corn.
The vermicomposting trench in the sandbox garden is pretty low-key this year. I don’t have access to the same (massive) supply of food waste as I did last year, and have switched to using mainly aged horse manure and grass clippings.
I’ve been pretty impressed with how well the plants have been growing thus far. It has been a really cool summer so the corn is definitely behind schedule, but we live in a very serious corn-growing region so I’m frequently reminded of the fact that my corn plants are actually quite similar in size to those growing in local fields – yet are not receiving any chemical fertilizers. They ARE receiving a little something extra however, but I’ll save that topic for another post.
I can’t wait to see how the pole beans do! I must admit that the plants were all in pretty rough shape by the time they finally made it into the ground, but they seem to have bounced back very nicely and are growing up the cornstalks as predicted.
Pole bean runner winds its way up a corn plant
I was a little worried about the big potato plants impacting (literally – haha) the growth of the corn, but everyone seems to be getting along famously!
Anyway – I will be sure to provide one or two more updates on the sandbox garden as the summer progresses!
Previous Sandbox Garden Posts (2008):
The Sandbox Self-Fertilizing Garden
Self-Fertilizing Garden Update
Technorati Tags: gardening, organic, compost, compost trench, composting, composting worms, worm composting, vermicomposting, vermicompost, worm castings, sweet corn, pole beans, potatoes, red worms
Written by Compost Guy on July 22nd, 2009 with 3 comments.
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I’ve decided to create a new category for the blog – ‘Fun Projects’ – where I’ll be adding all the posts written about various fun growing/composting projects that people might want to try at home. A fair number of these will likely relate to growing various types of interesting plants since this is something I like to do for fun, but I have little doubt that there will be plenty of composting projects as well.
Our first ‘project’ was inspired by the book I recently reviewed – The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible. In all honesty, I had never heard of a ’sweet potato slip’ before, and when I came across the little how-to tab in the book I decided it would be fun to try it out. Basically, a sweet potato slip is a sprout that is grown from a sweet potato tuber – typically, many slips will grow from a single sweet potato, as you can see in my picture above.
In some ways I really wish I had known about this earlier in the season, since it would have been fun to try growing sweet potatoes in the garden this year. But alas, here we are near the end of July and I just don’t think there are going to be enough warm days left to actually grow a crop of these tasty tubers (since they need to be harvested before first frost, and require at least a few months of growing time). Nevertheless, as I’ve discovered, the sweet potato plant is actually quite attractive so I think I will try to make a houseplant out of it and see what happens from there (perhaps I’ll still be able to use it for next year’s garden).
As I’ve discovered firsthand, growing sweet potato slips is very simple. I managed to grow a bunch (again, each little shoot is referred to as a slip) using one end of a very old (and semi-moldy) sweet potato that was hiding out at the bottom of a crisper drawer in my fridge. I suspect that had I used a recently purchased sweet potato, the growth of the shoots would have been much faster.
Getting your sweet potato ready to grow slips is about as simple a project as you can imagine – this is why I think this particular project could be a lot of fun for children. It actually reminds me a lot of the way my dad taught me to grow an avacado plant (using the pit) when I was a kid – perhaps another reason I was tempted to try it out.
Essentially, all you need to do is 1) cut off a chunk of sweet potato (an end section works best), 2) position it over a jar filled with water (using several toothpicks), leaving part of the potato immersed, and 3) place the jar in a warm, brightly lit room.
That’s it! Before you know it, you’ll find little white roots growing from the sweet potato down into the water, followed by little green sprouts springing up from the zone sitting above the water-line.
According to Ed Smith (author of the aforementioned ‘bible’), if you are planning to use the slips in the garden, you will want to wait until they are 4-6 inches long – at which time you gently twist them off and immerse them in water as well. Once the roots on each slip is an inch or two they are ready to be transplanted into a loose, rich soil bed in an area that receives a lot of sun.
So there you have it! If you are looking for a fun little plant-growing project for your kids (or your own inner child), and/or you live in a region that’s warm enough to still plant sweet potatoes (within the next month or so), I highly recommend testing out this simple technique.
Technorati Tags: sweet potato, sweet potato slips, ipomoea, tubers, potatoes, avacado, fun projects, children
Written by Compost Guy on July 20th, 2009 with 3 comments.
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A little while ago I wrote about my decision to learn a lot more about organic gardening/farming practices – after basically ‘winging it’ in the garden for quite a few years. Of course, a big part of the educational process involves reading.
While there is certainly plenty of great gardening information online, it just doesn’t compare to having a good book or two to read and refer to when needed (books are also much more mobile that most computers – haha). The first place I decided to look for gardening books was Amazon – and as it turns out, I decided it was the ONLY place I needed to look, after racking up an $80 bill.
One of those books was ‘The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible’ by Edward Smith. It looked to be one of the more popular gardening titles, and certainly had a solid list of positive reviews as well. The fact that the author was a proponent of ‘organic methods’ sealed the deal for me. As it turns out, while I’ve been very impressed with all the books I bought, ‘The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible’ is a clear winner! It has all the features I was hoping for, and then some.
I am a very visual person and always love a good ‘picture book’. Unfortunately, it often seems as though the books with great photos in them are either very expensive, or simply short on valuable information. Smith’s book, in my opinion, is very reasonably priced, is loaded with many great (and helpful) photos, and contains a weath of excellent information.
I can definitely see why they referred to this book as a gardening ‘bible’. While you certainly can set out to read it cover to cover (I am in the process of doing so), it’s also the type of book that’s great for pulling off the shelf and spending a short time with – absorbing one or two chapters (or even pages), before heading out to the garden.
The information in the book is divided into three main sections, and presented within these sections in a very logical, straightforward manner. The first section, aptly named “Seed to Harvest”, covers everything you need to know about planning/building/growing a bountiful garden. Part II, called “The Healthy Garden”, discusses methods for maximizing plant health/vigor and fending off diseases and pests. The last section of the book, “Vegetables and Herbs, A-Z”, offers detailed profiles for most of the well-known veggies/herbs that people grow in their gardens.
I love the fact that Smith has created this separate section for the plant profiles, since it makes it so much easier to quickly get the information needed for a given vegetable or herb. No need to wade through the whole book, picking up bits and pieces of information. Each of these profiles features “sowing”, “growing”, and “harvesting & storing” subsections, along with the incredibly useful “sow and grow” quick reference summary. This tab provides you with all the information you need to get started (eg germination/growing temps, planting depth, pH, moisture requirements, bad/good companions, light requirements etc) – again, ensuring that you don’t need to wade through paragraphs of info to find what you are looking for.
Over the years I have purchased my fair share of books that have simply ended up collecting dust on my bookshelves, or packed away in a box somewhere. I have no doubt that ‘The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible’ will not suffer the same fate. Even if, for some strange reason, I decided to give up gardening altogether, I’m confident that this guide will retain its place in my main bookshelf or perhaps find its way to a coffee table collection, where it can be enjoyed by others for years to come.
If you are looking for a very comprehensive guide for growing your own vegetables and herbs, I highly recommend The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible
. It definitely gets two green thumbs-up from me!
Technorati Tags: vegetable gardening, herb gardening, vegetables, herbs, gardening books, raised beds, organic, edward smith, companion planting, crop rotation, natural pest control, compost, composting
Written by Compost Guy on July 18th, 2009 with no comments.
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