The Garden
I'll start May's NaBloPoMo effort with an update on my garden, if for no other reason than to remember it later. (Wait, that's pretty much 90% of the reason I write *anything* here.) After planting the tomato and pepper seeds back in March, I discovered, via an incredibly helpful post at You Grow Girl, the difference betweeen determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. It turns out I've been growing the wrong kinds of tomatoes for years. Determinates = smaller, usually bushier plants (thought not necessarily smaller tomatoes—the Sweet 100s that I grew a couple years ago and that volunteered in the compost pot last year were indeterminates), whereas indeterminates = monstrosities that require a ton of space and water. Once I determined that my beefsteak-variety seedlings fit into the latter category, I set about scouring the seed racks for determinate varieties... and came up empty.
However, all was not lost: Gayla came through with a generous offer of seeds, and I found a website which offered several determinate varieties of grape and cherry tomatoes (the seeds Gayla sent were for Czech's Bush and Patio Orange, which yield medium-sized fruit). Gayla also offered some seeds for these cool Barbie-sized watermelons (actually gherkin cucumbers :-) and some "chocolate cherry" sunflowers. Thus, a second round of seed-starting was in order:
The Gold Nugget cherry tomato seeds didn't germinate, so I started another cup of them this weekend; hopefully these ones will sprout. The sunflower seeds I added to the mostly-cooked compost from last season, and I also donated a few seeds to the Beaner's school when I was there taking photos for their Arbor Day activities last Thursday.
Meanwhile, I planted just about everything I started back in March in pots on the back deck... and then discovered why all the bags of soil I'd been using said NOT FOR USE IN CONTAINERS on them. I'd never had any *trouble* using this soil in containers, but I discovered when I FINALLY bought Gayla's book (and this is something you should do, too, if you have the least interest in growing anything yourself—I put it off for so long because I AM NOT A GARDENER, or so I thought—because it's a beautifully-designed, easy to understand, virtually unputdownable and downright fabulous guide that's like no other "gardening" book you've ever seen) what I should have been using instead and why. What it boils down to is that containers need a special mix—usually some combination of peat or coir, vermiculite or sand, and perlite (the little white balls in the photo above)—that retains water well and gives the roots room to breathe. Regular soil compacts too much and suffocates the roots. Well, fart! Given that I've grown things in containers using my weird topsoil-homemade compost-manure/hummus mix before, I figure I'll get *something*, and if I make it through this gardening season and end up wanting to do it all and more next year, I'll know better and will possibly even get better results.
I suppose I could have figured out that container plants like peat, vermiculite, and perlite from experience (and not just from that all-caps warning on the bag—that's not for me, that's for stupid people!). I ended up using seed starter mix, which contains those magic three ingredients, instead of the "layer of fine soil", which I did not have, when I sowed the beet and pea seeds outdoors. Those two veggies are doing swimmingly. In fact, that the Beaner accidentally raked up the soil in the container right after we planted the peas probably worked in their favor, as it distributed the space-and-drainage-promoting seed starter throughout the soil. These pots also drained a heck of a lot faster than the soil/manure pots when we got a heavy downpour on Monday.
The other upside is that—as you'll recall from the second paragraph of this post—I haven't yet planted the second round of seedlings, so there's still a chance to get it right this year. To that end I hunted up some organic potting soil (the only "container mix" I could find contained chemical fertilizers, which I DO NOT WANT) and some more seed starter mix, and I've been creating a custom blend of those two items, the topsoil, and the manure/hummus. This morning I spotted a container/potting mix at Whole Foods that contains coir instead of peat, so I might get a bag or two of that tomorrow if I remember to bring my granny cart or the wagon with me to the gym. I think it'll be another week or two before the indoor seedlings are ready to be planted outdoors, so I've got time if I forget.