Straw bales are here!

Yesterday my hubby (a wonderful man) went out and picked up my 8 straw bales.  I've done my tomato plants for the past 2 years in straw bales with great success!  In the community garden they served a dual purpose of being a fence as well as a growing medium.  This year Joel Karsten wrote a book on Straw Bale Gardening (here is his web site http://strawbalegardens.com/).  Now, when the book initially came out I thought the book was $20.  For me it was a bit steep given that I've already had been using method for the past 2 years.  Yet, I want to support innovation, so there was my dilemma.  Well two days ago I got on my trusty Kindle (not the Kindle Fire) the black and white old as dirt but has over 500 books on it, Kindle.  Straw Bale Gardening on Amazon was on sale there for $10.00, which I then promptly purchased!  Strange how a few dollars makes the difference?  On the same hand this book has a TON of information in it!  Something’s I didn't know, some I did, some ideas I'm going to try.  Now, I feel kind of bad, this book is well worth the $20!    

Now here is what I've learned.  It looks like Joel Karsten has a way better method of trellising than I have used over the years so I will trying that out this year.  I've already rope my hubby into construction.  In the past I've done a Florida Weave technique and have struggled with the height issues of some of my tomato plants.  Remember the bale is already 2 ft. off the ground, so a 6 foot stake only becomes a 4 ft. stake, which for some of the crazy tomatoes is about 2 ft. short.  In the past I had to put a fence around my bales (the cheep 3 ft. kind) to keep my bales from tipping over because of the size of the tomato plants.  I think I'm still going to do this just because if I grow a 6ft tomato plant it will be 8ft in the air.  Not a good situation.  Because I had to orientate my bales in an east to west direction instead of a north to south, I'll be planting low growing tomatoes cabbage, onions, basil on the south side of the garden.  On the north side I'll plant my taller tomato plants.  

  
I'll also be starting my bales earlier next year, this year this was about as soon as it could have started because of other construction issues.  But in the future I may try and get my bales out by mid-April and with a little help have them ready to plant the first of May.  This year given the weather here in Minnesnowta I'm not sure that would have been feasible, but it is worth the try next year!

 
Other ideas I got from the book;  I'm going to be planting Trailing Petunia, Trailing Nasturtium, in the bales and 4 o'clock and tall Marigold next to the bales.  All for the beautician process!   I have a garden club member who was thinking about doing the Straw Bale Gardening but her husband talked her out of it for fear of adding some weeds to their yard.  Well as you guys can plainly see, I got weeds in my grass already (remember that's hubby's job).  My goal is to show her and everyone else that this method does not add weed to your lawn.  As I also live along one of the many paths in Champlin, this is a perfect opportunity for me to show people that this is not an ugly thing in your backyard.  

Here the final issue, my back and knees.  Two years ago when I started Straw Bale Gardening, I had no issues with my back and knees.  I was looking for a cheap fence around a big garden (60'X60').  This year, I’m struggling with a herniated disc, arthritis of the knees and a weight gain from not doing anything.  This is part of the reason why my husband built me all those wonderful raised beds.  Happy wife, happy life.  Even so, I'm struggling!  My mother, who is my hero, is 79 years old and had a hip replacement last year.  She and my dad usually go up north (north of Brainerd, MN) and have always had a pretty big garden.  This year it sounds like they will be spending the majority of their time in town at their town house, to help other family members.  We've all looked at raised beds for her, and so far have not found a good option.  I'd love if she tried the Straw Bales method, but I think I'm going to have to prove it to her first.  Right now, the plan is she not going to do her own garden (a first for her) but she come over to my house about 5 miles away and sit in the back yard with me and watch me garden.  I'll enjoy have her there, but at the same time if I can figure out a way for her to have her own garden for a couple of tomato plants next year all the better!  Until then I'll be growing for the whole darn family with a smile on my face!  

So all in all, here is me eating crow!  Buy the book!  Straw Bale Gardening by Joel Karsten, here is the link http://strawbalegardens.com/.  It well worth the price even if you have done Straw Bale Gardening for the past few years.  

So What's New in the Garden?

Well here in Minnesota it has stopped snowing!  We have all been out in the garden trying to catch things up outside.  Today though it is a rainy day, time to catch things up on inside.  Which means taking a moment to blog about what going on in the garden.

Despite the name "Serial Tiller Pat" I've left behind my best friend for raised beds. Above is my little red machine, my super duper cool Troy-Bilt Super BroncoRear Tine Tiller!  This lady in red does some serious work!   It is kind sad because she hasn't been in the garden this year but is in the garage collect dust not dirt.  Doesn't it look like she is pouting there in the corner.  I'll be sad to see her go, but she off to my brother place with 10 acres of un-touched land just waiting to be tilled for vegetable and flower gardens.  I know going to a good home.

This year is the year of my raised beds.  I've spent most of the winter planing and changing plans enlarging plans and scaling back just a bit after my husband see them.  He has put in for me six raised beds using 3"X4'X8' Cherry Stained Landscape Timbers we got at Menards for $2.19 a piece.  Each bed is 3' Wide X 8' Long and 11 1/2 " tall.  First he laid the beds out, then he told me what would and wouldn't work.  As he is always telling me I'm the engineer he's the guy that makes it work.  First he laid it all out in the yard, then he started building each individual bed.  After some debate, I convinced him that yes the sod needed t be removed.   Now he wasn't happy about this hence you can't see his face, but up came the sod.  He also didn't think the bed needed to be level, after a lengthy debate, the beds are level too.

Once the base of the bed was level we put down hardware fabric to keep the moles out, and then cardboard

on top of that and then landscape fabric on top of the cardboard.  We then put 1/2 of the frame that we had nailed together in place.  Once that was he had added the next two layers of landscaping timbers I had him line it with that Professional Landscape Fabric.  This is the stuff they tell you to put under walkways and patios not gardens.  It doesn't really breath but here my goal was to prevent the Landscape Timbers from leaching into my soil.  I was told it was perfectly safe, I just wasn't entirely sold on what they were telling me.  So we put in this added protection.  To the right is the first finished bed.  Jim could knock out about 2 of these in four to six hours depending on the help he was getting and the engineering discussion we had.  We then went to Lynde Greenhouse and Nursery on 9293 Pineview Lane North in Maple Grove and purchased compost.   For $15 they will put two bobcat scoops in the back of your pick up or trailer.  We used a trailer an then backed the trailer into the back yard, less wheel barrel work that way.  Now we could have gone to the city compost and shoveled into the trailer for free, but I thought having them load the trailer for $15 was well worth the price.  It took us four loads to fill all the beds so $60.

We then went to Fleet Farm and bought Hog Panels, I had one way I wanted my squash arch to go up and Jim had different way.  We did it Jim's way, it looks nice but I'm thinking we may have a problem with it if we get a big storm and it's full of squash but we will see.  Right now, I have a side by side comparison of before the project started (It is the dreaming photo with snow falling) and to now other photos I took today as we are almost finished!  I have some more planting to do (let's hope it stops raining).  Jim is bring home 8 straw bales that I will use on the ends of the outside beds to do some more tomato plants.  Right now with the straw bales the whole project has cost $412 not including plants.  My budget was to do it all for less than $500.  That means Jim's got $88 to go fishing this weekend.  :)

Dreaming 

Looking good!   

    

Transplanting seedlings grown in organic material pots

This is something I never realized. This information came from the University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension department.
" When transplanting seedlings grown in peat pots, newspaper pots, cow-dung pots, or any other containers made of organic matter, trim the pots down to soil level. The collars of these pots, exposed to drying air, will wick water away from the root zone. To encourage roots to spread out into garden soil, carefully cut or tear holes in the bottoms of these pots, because they usually don't break down completely in the soil, and may inhibit root growth."

Winter one more time?  

If you don’t like the weather here in Minnesota just wait a day or two it will change.  Today’s high of 69 with a chance of thunderstorms and winds at 25 mph, rain after 4pm.  Tomorrow, rain possible mixed with SNOW.  Temperatures falling to around 40 by 10am.  Wednesday night, rain and SNOW, becoming all SNOW after 1 am.  New SNOW ACCUMULATION of 1 to 2 inches possible. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!   Seriously this isn’t funny anymore.  Who can I talk to about this?  As much as old man winter doesn’t seem to want to leave the party, mother earth needs to explain the situation to him.  Do you think he’s gone senile? 

59 milk jugs & 22 misc container

So when winter refuses to leave the party when he should what do gardener’s in Minnesota do to keep themselves sane?  This year I Winter Sow.  Sow Digging it Meredith, turned me on to it this winter, and I have gone crazy!   My husband was complaining this winter when I was hanging around the street corners asking for milk jugs, but he’s starting to see the benefits.   With today's weather forecast an as it is April 30th, I am very glad I found winter sowing.  Sow Digging it Meredith knows a lot more about it than I do, and is really a good source of one on one information and wrote a bit about in earlier.  

One of the great things about Winter Sowing is once the snow is gone, the neighbors and the neighbor kids are over to see what going on.  I have had more than on little girl ask me if she can help me plant the flowers.  The boys well they just want to know if I'll need toads this year.  They have neighborhood toad hunts for my garden, you have not seen anything until you've seen a several ice cream pails full of toads.  Luckly, for them I live pretty close to the pond.  So even though it a week day, the kids saw me out moving my jugs off the grass (I’m starting to kill it) and onto my driveway.  They were walking to the bus, and lucky me I suddenly had lots of helping hands and questions.  “Will the snow hurt the plants?”  I don’t thinks so but I hope not.  “Did you drink all this milk?”  Nope, you guys did.  “Are you going to have tomatoes again this summer?”  Yes, I should have lots of tomatoes to share.  “Are you going to need the toads to help?”  Yes, I am. 

So don’t despair, Summer is on its way!  In the meantime as Rebel is telling me now, “Mom, get off the computer.  Let’s go outside” 

Indoor herbs

I experimented this year past by transplanting herbs from my summer garden into pots. I placed the following herbs in the same pot and found not only did they make it through the winter, but they grew and flowered. Sage, Rosemary, Mexican oregano.
The different growing habits complimented each herb. The culinary advantage of using just picked herbs all winter has spoiled my taste buds. I will put them back into the garden this summer. I wonder how long I can recycle these same herbs?

Winter Sowing Jugs 4/11/2013

So where is Serial Tiller Pat?  

So, did I fall off the end of the earth/garden?  No, I’ve actually have been a busy ole lady in the garden.  Well not the real garden, but getting my winter gardening issues ready to be put to bed for the summer.  Huh?  One of the things I do to get me through the long Minnesota Winters is belong to a Garden Club.  I actually belong to the Champlin Garden Club (which is my cities garden club); however there are more garden clubs to belong to then there are weeds in a first year garden plot.  There are community Garden Clubs, there are Garden Clubs for Ponds, Garden Clubs for Rose growers, there are County Garden Clubs and there are State Garden Clubs.  If you are interested in something specific they got it!

What do we do at the Champlin Garden Club?  Well, we met from August through April once a month.  At the monthly meeting we have guest speakers who talk about a variety of topics.  We have had speakers on “Planning, Planting & Tending a Rain Garden”, “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT EATS?”, “Orange Punch” and my favorite  “Top Ten Gardening Mistakes”, by speaker Don Englebretson.  All of them were informative; some had more useable information for me than others.  But learning is never a waste of time, and I learned a lot from all the speakers. 

We also do Community Work.  I enjoy the community work but with my job I’m not always sure I can get certain dates off, so volunteering gets to be a bit of a challenge for me at times.  Never one not to carry my share of the load, I tend to volunteer for the organizing part of things and hope I can get time off to do the fun stuff.  Our Club has about 30-40 members and have several projects this year.  They have their 23^rd Annual Plant sale to raise funds for community projects, we are in charge of decorating the Cities Christmas Trees, we take care of Doris Kemp Park and this year we are doing our inaugural Champlin Garden Tour during Father Hennepin days. 

I’m a part of the Champlin Garden Tour Committee and I’ve seen the picture of the gardens on the tour, and all I can say is WOW!  These are truly inspirational gardens that make you want to step up your game and do more!  Now, I’m a vegetable gardener at heart amongst flower gardeners for the most part, and a weed is a weed is a weed.  But I think I could benefit from incorporating both ideologies into my backyard.  With the snowfall still on its way, I am continuing to look out my windows and plan, draw and envision my backyard piece of paradise and the front yard will be next year.  I would encourage everyone to look into joining a garden club; it has been a great educational experience as well as an inspirational experience.  Most Garden Clubs do not meet in the summer (because we all in the garden) but as you spend time in your garden this year.   There is so much more we can all learn and so much more we can teach each other!  

Container Gardening/ Make your own

I love all the different methods of growing vegetables in containers. I'm not a real fan of all the containers used. its okay to use buckets or Rubbermaid containers but why do they have to be so unattractive? I say they don't. see the examples of containers I made below. The buckets ,(2 for $5 Menard's) were covered with duck tape. I removed the vendor markings with nail polish remover (acetate) so I could stencil some sort of design on them but changed my mind. the point is you can be as creative as you want.
Pdf flyer used to create my self watering container pictured below.