Brad’s Take

So my big plans for the garden are still more plans than plantings.

The starts for the watermelon (8 of 9 seeds) were about 4-5″, and straining with roots wanting more dirt than the starting cell. But the luffa (loofah) – 3 of 9 seeds – was what got me motivated. The first start was starting to throw a creeping vine, about 12″. The 2nd and 3rd seeds popped out of the dirt nearly two weeks later, and I lost one of those two while “hardening off” the flat. That gave me three hills (three starts each) of watermelon, and one of the luffa with two starts.

I tried disking up the garden space. An offset disk, 15 feet wide, is a heavy piece of machinery, not well suited to preparing a 25 by 50 foot space. That is, I used up the space under the disk, 4 to 8 feet, off the east side, getting the disk into the dirt and started tearing off sod. Then it worked fairly well, to the 50 foot end of what I wanted tore up. I made a couple of passes, last Monday, and much of the sod died off over the following few days. Except the east part, where I had set my sights on putting the Watermelon, and, in the northeast 6×10 spot, popcorn. I hacked it up some, weedeated the prairie grass a bunch, gathered compost.

I want to start a compost pile, really I do. But for now – I went into the pony’s yard, and scraped up some of the decade-old piles where hay bales had been set, and ancient layers of favorite spots for droppings. With the wheelbarrow full of clods and dirt, I screened out fines with a 2 foot square section of half-inch mesh hardware cloth. The big pieces, and any grubs I spotted, entertained the chickens something awesome. You would have thought they were getting tickets to Ironman 2 (or maybe Letters to Juliet, depending). A few buckets of screenings and the next day all there is is a bit of loose dirt (compost) waiting to be scraped up and re-screened – or maybe fill in some holes in the chicken pen.

I am jealous of my neighbor, Jim. Jim has a nice, big 15 by 50 foot oval space where an above ground swimming pool was taken out. Leaving a nice, deep bed of sand. Sand will be much easier to hoe than my heavy clay prairie sod.

For each of the four hills I dumped a bucket of the clods where I wanted the hill, then a bucket of screened compost. Next I combined peat moss and vermiculite with some of the fines, and made a bit of nest for each start on the top of the hill. I found a kitchen butter knife works pretty well to lift starts out of the starting cells, and used an old butter knife for the watermelon and luffa. For the watermelons I tried to set one of the biggest three starts in each of the hills. Then the water hose and start wetting down the hills. This turned out to be a bit time consuming, trying to get all that peat moss and vermiculite saturated the first time. It seems that using materials intended to absorb water, for some reason, means that they, um, absorb more water than I expected.

I am working on sod and dirt condition for putting down peppers and tomatoes. They would do better in the sun than under my grow light. I managed to find homes for most of my starts, but the remaining list still seems daunting. I wanted to try four Poblano/Anzo peppers, but somehow ended up with some of the seriously hot peppers – that I don’t care for – three Jalapenos and a Hungarian Yellow Hot. I suppose those last four might just get “lost”, I haven’t decided.

Of the sweet peppers, I gave away another of the Sweet Chocolate and a Red Cheese yesterday. That leaves me six of each. Maybe I can open a road-side stand or something. There are four Purple Beauty starts, and then I “rescued” some distressed peppers at TSC – two “Better Belle” and two yellow peppers. The color variety interested me, and the green bell peppers (how did I forget to order seed?) are the only ones I have actually used to cook.

Most of my starts, and all of the tomatoes and except the last four rescues, have been heritage varieties. Open pollinated. I could keep seeds on the peppers, except they cross pollinate when different strains are grown within 500 feet of one another. The tomatoes should make good seed-keepers, and won’t be propagating the tomato blight of last year that so many people got using commercially started plants.

So, I figure a garden might be nice. I like popcorn, I plan a patch of that, maybe 6×10. I like a nice bell pepper in the crock pot, so a few would be handy. A couple of tomatoes seem like they would go well in the crock pot, too. And beans. Lots of beans. I forget why, I think for combining with vienna sausage or hot dogs. Maybe some ground beef and peppers for a version of chili without chili powder (I consider “spicy” is when I add brown sugar to the oatmeal).

So I got to ordering seed. I have a box. Some say to start the seeds early. I built a bracket for an old card table; it holds a 13 watt flourescent under-counter light fixture, with an 18 inch grow light, about 17 inches above the table. The table sets in front of an east-facing windows.

Lowe’s had some jiffy planting setups. I picked up a three-pack of trays with 72 little plug cells each, and another with five of the cardboard plug 10-packs.

I figured if I needed to thin things, I should plant the beefsteak tomatoes (millingtonseed.com) and black cherry tomatoes (Baker Creek Nursery, rareseeds.com) two to a plug, then replant if both seeds sprouted. Almost all did. I figured, if everyone is buying tomatoes at $3 and $4 at Lowes, I can sell a bunch at the flea market and make up the cost of the Lowe’s expedition for planting stuff. Greenfield’s nursery opened a hut behind Payless Shoes here in Ponca City. $2.50 for four plants. I sold 48 plants at $0.50 each, gave away a couple dozen. I have six beefsteak plants about 3-4 inches (I sold and gave away the bigger plants, it just seemed right), and three Black Cherry (I wanted to keep four, but, well). So I didn’t make a bunch, and the starting planters didn’t cost much.

The peppers were interesting. I ordered Red Cheese (Baker Creek Nursery, rareseeds.com) and Purple Beauty. They stuck in a packet of Sweet Chocolate peppers. The Sweet Chocolate germinated 100%, quickly, and matured faster than the other peppers; they look exciting. In my excitement, though, I forgot to order Bell peppers – so I picked up a distressed pair at TSC. I am looking forward to these peppers, for me and maybe some to sell. We’ll see.

I have been reading about some good Brussel’s Sprouts, so I got some. And feeding cabbage and broccoli to the chickens seems to make sense. Supposedly I can feed Mangel-Wurzel (a beet plant) to the pony. We’ll see – I have been feeding beet pulp shreds for years.

Now, if I can manage to covert historic-grade prairie sod to garden soil bed. .