Front Yard Garden

FRONT YARD GARDEN

Most of my time has been spent in the Front Yard Garden. It gets a lot more full sun this time of year compared to the back yard, and is ideal for most of the stuff I have been planting. It’s been a lot of work though, separating and moving rock, and loosening up the compacted lifeless dirt. Lots of compost and soil amendment were added to make the soil something a vegetable would flourish in. Weeds don’t seem to mind compacted dirt, but healthy vegetables needs lots of well draining, nutrient rich soil.

So far I have two 3′ x 20′ beds and one 4′ x 13′ planted.  The final 4′ bed was prepped last night, and will be planted with potatoes this weekend.  The first bed in the photo above is planted with beets, radishes, peas, beans, spinach, and sun flowers.  The second bed has green and yellow squash, and one mound of cucumbers.  The third bed is full of tomato and pepper starters from the Greenhouse Garden center.  I also threw some cilantro seeds into an open space to see how they do out in the full sun.  I still have a final mound of rock to sift and move in the northwest corner of the garden, but it’s such a relief to have made it this far!

Many people ask me if I’m afraid to plant a garden out front.  It does make me a little nervous, but so far it has been ok.  Many people want to stop and talk about the garden, and I even overheard some teens walking by remarking that the garden was cool!  So far the biggest threat to the front yard garden has been the neighbor kid’s soccer ball. Hopefully the garden will be good advertising and encourage others to start their own.

Garden Journal

GARDEN JOURNAL

I’ve read of other gardeners keeping a journal, so I thought I’d give it a try this year. Every time I do something significant in the garden, I just make a quick entry with the date and what I did. Time goes by so quickly, and I tend to forget what I did when. So far the journal has been pretty helpful. When I’m waiting for new seedlings to emerge, I can look back in the journal to see when I planted and check if I’m on track or if something may be wrong. If I have some great successes or failures, the methods will be documented.

Radishes

EARLY HARVEST

Work in the garden has already begun to pay off. We’ve already been eating radishes and Swiss chard, and I’ve been throwing the thinnings from the spinach and lettuce into the salad bowl too. As I pick the radishes, I’ve been putting new seeds in to replace what I’ve taken. It looks like I’ll have some peas to eat soon too, although I’ve had to replant most of them. They didn’t seem to survive the snow storms too well.

Peas

BACKYARD GARDEN

The backyard raised beds receive partial sun, and have been good for planting lettuce and Swiss Chard. Strange things are happening with the chard this year. Two of the three plants that survived the winter are doing great, but one plant seems to be withering and dying. I plan to pull it out this weekend in case it’s diseased. Thankfully the new chard I planted is starting to come in, and I will have replacements for the dying plant.

Swiss Chard

I also have a big bush of parsley in one of the beds. When I got the seeds, I remember the lady saying, “You don’t need a lot of parsley…”. And now I know why. From just a few seeds, we have way more than we can eat!

I recently read that the average last frost date for northern Nevada is May 15th. We got a decent snow storm on April 22nd to remind us of this fact. Remember to plant only frost tolerant plants this time of year, or be prepared to closely monitor the weather and cover your plants.

Making a furrow with a hoe handle

After turning in fresh compost and organic fertilizer into my garden bed, I raked it smooth. Next I took the handle of my hoe and slightly pressed it into the soil to make a uniform, shallow furrow. Gently pressing the soil down helps restore the capillary action directly beneath the seed bed too, helping to keep the seeds moist.

Tape measure to assist with seed spacing

Next I laid down a tape measure to help me keep track of the seed spacing. I overseeded, one seed every 2″, and will thin as the plants become larger. In addition to keeping the seeds spaced correctly, the tape measure helps you keep track of where you left off. When you take your eyes off the furrow, it’s hard to see the little brown seeds in the dirt and figure out where you last dropped a seed if there is no reference point.

Furrow covered with fine compost

I finished off by sprinkling a thin layer of fine compost over the furrow, and patted it down gently. The fine compost makes it easier for those little plants to break through the soil.

And now for the hardest part…waiting! What are your tips for planting small seeds?

Recycled tree branches trimmed up into garden stakes

Using a pair of loppers for the bigger branches, and hand trimmers for the smaller branches, I trimmed down the branches into various size stakes. With just a few minutes of work, I had more stakes than I would have had if I had purchased them.

You can make quick fences with Garden Stakes and Natural Fiber Twine

I got my first garden bed planted in the front yard last weekend. One of the biggest challenges of a front yard garden is to keep people from walking on it. Until the plants are established, the garden looks like just another pile of dirt to playing kids. I used my new stakes and some natural fiber twine to quickly make a little fence around my newly planted garden. It’s not strong and wouldn’t prevent vandalism by any means, but it does create a very visible border that even a running kid would notice and go around.

I’m still experimenting with ways to keep the night time meandering cats from passing through. I’ve had foot prints in the garden bed the last two days…

Grow Your Own – Weekly Steps to a Great Vegetable Garden

• Part 1: Getting Started
• Part 2: Location, location, location
• Part 3: Seed Secrets
• Part 4: The Dirt on Dirt
• Part 5: Starting From Seed
• Part 6: Cool Season Crops

Looks like a great resource for getting your garden started!

Garden Sieve

Last year I yanked out bushes and raked rock away from the center of the yard, and made a reasonably sized garden with 3 rows. It wasn’t pretty, but I was able to get a vegetable garden growing quickly. This year I’m finishing the job, and relocating the remainder of the rock.  When completed I’ll have four 20′ rows for growing veggies.

To get this job done easier, I built a garden sieve to separate all the dirt and rock. I have been surprised at how much time and effort it has saved me, and I’m rapidly acquiring new area to build my garden beds. Here’s a summary of how it was put together.

Materials:

• Two 8′ long 1″x4″ boards
• A 5′x2′ roll of 1/2″ Hardware Cloth (metal mesh)
• Nails, U shaped nails, and wood screws

Each board was cut into two 36″ sections and one 24″ section.  The frame was built with two 24″ sections and two 36″ sections nailed together.  The hardware cloth was tacked to one side of the frame using the U shaped nails, and the excess was trimmed with wire cutters on one end.  The remaining two 36″ boards were screwed to one side of the frame to elevate it.  Using nails and screws I already had in the garage, the whole thing cost less than $15 to build, and has proved to be a very valuable garden tool.

Adult Squash Bug – Acanthocephala terminalis

I don’t have too many plants, so I’ve just been killing the bugs I find rather than spraying. I thought I had it under control, but I recently found a hundred or so eggs and many nymphs on the underside of the leaves. My son and I scraped them all off into a jar and disposed of them.

Squash Bug eggs

We’ll see if this method keeps them under control. So far, the plants still seem very healthy. They have left the cantaloupe and pumpkin alone at this point. Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping these pests under control without harmful chemicals? Someone suggested spraying a little soapy water on the plants…

Squash Bug nymphs

I’m having really good luck with my peppers this year. They’re getting full sun from about 8:00 AM until sundown, are watered twice a day, grown in Full Circle Compost garden mix.

Squash Mounds

I didn’t have enough garden soil to make complete rows, so I dug big holes and filled them in with the remaining soil that I had. Seed packets always tell you to plant your squash seeds in a “mound”, but never really tell you what a mound is exactly. I made mounds 2 – 2 1/2 feet across, with a modest rise to help keep the soil in place when watering. I planted 6 seeds per mound in a circle, imagining the final spacing of 3 plants per mound when the squash started growing.

Squash planted and mulched with straw

After planting the seeds according to the package instructions, I mulched the mounds with straw. The straw helps keep the mounds moist in the hot summer sun, but the straw also keeps the dirt in place when watering. After the Waterfall fire in 2004, they dumped thousands of pounds of straw all over the steep slopes of Ash Canyon to help prevent erosion. It worked pretty well up there, and works great in your garden too! Mulching softens the water impact from the hose, and also creates a complex path for the water running off your mound…water runoff is slowed and it soaks into the mound better.

Squash Flower

I planted a pale green Middle Eastern style squash (looks like zucchini), yellow squash, winter squash, and pumpkins. All did well except the winter squash, which did not germinate at all. More on this issue on the next post…

Big Healthy Plants

The squash are growing really fast in this summer heat, and the pumpkin vines are growing away from the mound. I even got my first flower this morning! I have 3 plants spaced pretty evenly on each mound, so there shouldn’t be too much root competition under ground. Now it’s time to wait for the fruit!

Chitted potatoes ready to plant

The first step is to chit your seed potatoes. We stuck ours in the kitchen window for a few weeks, a bright spot, but with no direct sun. We probably chitted ours a little too long, but we were still building the bed to plant them in.

Potatoes planted 4 inches deep

You can cut larger potatoes up and plant the pieces as long as each piece has a couple eyes. This turned out to be unneccessary for us though as we ran out of room to plant before we got to the cut pieces. We planted a 4′ x 8′ raised bed right down the middle, 8 – 10 inches apart, at a depth of about 4 inches with the sprouted eyes facing up.

Quickly Growing Potato Vines

Within a couple weeks, the vines emerged. They’re starting to grow really fast now, and it’s almost time to start hilling them up. Stay tuned for Part 2…