Garden Tip - Soil Prep

I realize this topic may have been better as the first part of my garden tips series, but alas, I didn't think all this through and I didn't realize you guys would be as interested in this stuff as you seem to be. So after some comments and emails regarding dirt, i realized it might be a little helpful to know how we prepare our soil for growing food.


This past weekend we planted herbs, tomatoes and peppers in starter pots so as my husband mixed the soil, I snapped some pictures from my phone.

This is how he does it:

1. Start your base with some basic potting soil. We used about a half a bag and just dumped it into a wheel barrow.




You can find this at your local nursery (Stringer's if your in town) or garden supply center. While Miracle Grow works pretty good, the husband does not recommend it for food gardening because it's a little acidic and heavy for food.


2. Add in compost or dark soil from your garden if you don't have a compost pile/bin. You'll want about equal parts compost and potting soil.

If you haven't started composting, you should. It's like recycling your food and it's not only great for the earth, it also makes the most amazing soil to add back into your garden. Win - win.


3. Add about a shovel full of sand. Sand is great for drainage.



We got a huge bag of sand years ago for the icy months in the winter and still have some left so we just use it. Nothing amazing here.


4. Add about 2 handfuls basic 10-10-10 fertilizer - better to go light on this.



It's just a multi-purpose fertilizer. We get it at Atwoods but any feed store should carry it and there's also an organic fertilizer you can get too.


5. Add about a shovel full of perlite. Apparently it's an inert stone that is good for drainage and air.




This isn't make or break stuff for your soil and is a little on the expensive side, so you can skip this if you want.


6. You may want to put your gloves on at this point - if you haven't yet. Add a couple shovel fully of mushroom compost.



It's rich in organic matter and adds good fungus and bacteria to your soil. You can find it at your local nursery, Lowe's or garden supply stores.


7. Add cow manure. The same amount as mushroom compost.



It's also rich in organic material and its high in nitrogen, which is really good for early crops like spinach and lettuce. It's pretty inexpensive and you can find it at your local nursery, Lowe's or garden supply stores.


8. Add a little shake of Epsom salt, about 2 tablespoons.



It's like a multi-vitamin for your plants and helps fight diseases. It's pretty standard in any garden center and you can find it at Walmart too. It's really inexpensive and will last years.


9. LAST THING!! if you have some limestone, I mean, everyone has this right? Add about 2 tablespoons or so to your soil mix. You can find it at your local nursery, Lowe's or garden supply stores.



It helps maintain a good pH and sweetens your soil.



Now mix it all until evenly distributed.



Whew.

You can put this soil back in your beds, in buckets that drain or in your seed-starters and you'll have killer veggies in no time.



Now, if your like me, you might be asking yourself, "Seriously? Is that all necessary?"

It isn't.

According to the husband, if you have good soil in your garden to start with, just mix equal parts potting soil and garden soil with a little multi-purpose fertilizer and you're good to go.

So why add all that other stuff? Well, think of it this way, say your plants are your body - they need food to grow. Where does it come from? The soil and sun. So, if you plant your seeds in nutrient rich soil, it will help them flourish, just as if you feed your body with nutrient food like fruits and veggies, it will grow better and you'll have more energy than if you just ate oatmeal everyday. Sure, you could live off oatmeal and water for a while. But, you wouldn't be thriving. Same for plants and that's why we use this soil mixture.

I hope that helped! Good luck and enjoy!

You can see the other gardening tips here: planting strawberries or spring planting.

Garden Tip - spring planting

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day! While most of you are working on amazingly cute crafts and gifts, we're getting ready for our spring garden. Ha.

If you live in Oklahoma, or at least in our gardening zone, you should start thinking about what you'd like to grow because February 14th marks the day when you can get your spring veggies going. If you don't have your beds ready, don't worry. We've planted spring stuff on into March and have great success.

Let's get started, shall we.

Spring is by far my most favorite growing season because I love home grown salads. I can eat them every day and usually eat at least two a day during spring harvesting.


Here's little run down of what we're planting this weekend.

These we'll plant directly in the soil:

• onions - the plants that look like green onions
• radishes - from seed
• spinach - from seed, both curled and flat
• carrots  - from seed

 These we'll start in those little plastic trays in our greenhouse or you can start them indoors:

• lettuces - a wide variety from seed, including: butterhead, bibb, green leaf, arugula, meclun, red leaf, romaine
• mustard greens - from seed
• kale - from seed
• herbs - from seed, including: basil, purple basil, thyme, oregano, dill, parsley, chives, cilantro and probably more I'm forgetting

We get our onion plants from Warehouse Market. They're usually the cheapest in town and they do great but make sure you call before you go to see if they have them in. As for seeds, we get them anywhere and everywhere, Warehouse Market, Lowes, online through Johnny's seeds, Burpee or anywhere we happen to see a good deal or fun variety.

* Here's a tip we (being my husband and I because he's really the green thumb, I just do what he says) learned from my grandpa, plant your spinach and radishes in with your onions. If you're like us and don't have a huge are for gardens, you need all the space you can get so this maximizes your space. *

The following pictures are how we did it a few years back in a bucket. Side note, we have limited bed space so my husband prepared several buckets with soil. In the spring they held onions, greens and radishes and then tomatoes in the summer. So if you don't have a big bed, get a couple buckets!

Get your soil prepared then make holes all over for your onion plants.



These are what the onion plants look like:



That's a mix of red, vidalia and yellow.

Plant your onions and pat the soil back in around them. Then, in between all the rows, plant your spinach seeds according to the package, cover and water.



In a few weeks it will look like this:



See the spinach sprouting!!

A couple of weeks later, this:



You can actually start thinning some of the spinach by picking those tender, baby leaves and using them in salads, or smoothies.

Another week or so you'll have this:



And you'll be picking spinach like crazy!

You better keep picking that spinach because this is what it will look like in another week:



Good stuff folks!

Here's a couple pictures of onions and greens from another bed.



After all that hard work, you'll be eating stuff that looks like this:





And those little onion plants become these:



A general rule on picking onions is wait until the tall greens start to fall over. We plant enough to pick some in the early spring, when they're still small, and to also have enough to keep in the beds so they get bigger.

* Did you know you can store onions in a cool, dry place, like your garage, and they'll last all summer! So make sure you plant more than you think you'll need because we always run out - no matter how many we plant. *

Once the spring turns to summer and temps start rising the greens will bolt, which means they'll go to seed. When they do that, they get bitter and don't taste as good. No worries though because about that time it will be time to plant your summer veggies! Stuff like squashes, tomatoes, peppers, etc! More on that as the season gets closer!

I hope that inspired some of you to try your hand at gardening! And just in case you need a little more inspiration, here's what one of our beds looked like this time last year:



And this what that same bed in the middle of the summer!



You can see more of our gardening pictures on my flickr photostream, I grew this.


If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to help. Just leave it in the comments and if I don't know the answer, I'll as my grandpa! Ha!!

So go on, enjoy Valentine's day and get ready for spring gardening!

Garden Tip - Strawberries

I got a lot of questions last year about gardening and when to plant things so I decided to start a little "garden tip" series. Keep in mind, I live in Oklahoma so these tips are for what works best in my area and I'm not a professional gardener, my husband and I just do it as a hobby and a way to keep fresh food on our plates and for our kids.

That said, today I'm talking strawberries.

If you are wanting to start your own strawberry patch - now is the time.

First need to find an area that is in full-sun and prepare your beds by turning the soil so it gets nice and loose and mixed. Get a shovel, dig, turn the dirt out and repeat.

Once your soil is ready, go get your strawberry plants. We have found, and been told by my master-garder-grandpa, that Cardinal strawberries work best in these parts. They are June-bearing plants and tolerate our hot summers. Don't try buying your plants at the chain stores like Home Depot and Lowes. They have out-of-state green houses and farms that grow their plants so they don't grow varieties that do best in OK. We learned this the hard way and had several years of unsuccessful strawberry growing.

So where do you get strawberry plants? I'm glad you asked.

We get ours every 3 years or so from Stringer Nursery.



They carry Cardinals and a couple other varieties. They are located in Tulsa, between Sheridan and Memorial on 41st St. Call before you go to make sure they have the plants in.

Now that your soil is prepared and you have your plants - plant them!



Lay out the plants where you want them to go. Make sure there's a good amount of space between each one, at least a foot or more, because these things shoot off runners and spread like crazy!

Once you have them all laid out where you want, dig and area wide enough for the roots to spread out and mound it up a little. Fan out the roots, put the crown of the plant on the top of the mound and cover the roots with soil.

Repeat until all your plants are in the ground. Then water them really well.



It's really important to keep strawberries watered, especially in Oklahoma when our summers get really hot and dry.

The plants will shoot off runners which root and become new plants so before the end of summer, you'll have a bed full of strawberry plants, not to mention, bowls of strawberries throughout the summer to enjoy!

This is the growth in that same bed over the summer months.

Also, just a little fyi, the plants don't put off a ton of berries the first year.

But by year two and three, you'll be picking buckets almost daily for a month or two for all sorts of tasty treats!

So go, get some beds ready. You'll thank me later.

Oh, and here's a little heads up for you, Feb 14th is not only Valentine's Day - it's also when you plant your onions, radish seeds, greens and herbs. More on that next week.

Happy Friday!

 

She Likes Dirt

Sweet P is becoming an excellent gardener.

She is really good at rotating our soil.



She's not afraid to get a little dirt on her hands. And legs. And in her hair.



And she'll even taste it to make sure all levels are optimum for planting.





Hmm, I guess that dirt was not quite right.



But I do think someone should teach her to keep a little dirt in the bucket so we can actually plant something in it.



Eric...?

Sweet P Trys Fish

Our adventures in baby food continues.

The husband has been doing some fishing lately and has been bringing back some really good saugeye. If you've never had it, it's kind of like cod. A thick, white fish.

Anyway, we decided to let Sweet P have some. She seemed really excited about it.

 

I baked her's and made a pecan-panko crust for ours.

Her dinner.

And the reaction.

Not so sure she loved it, but she did warm up to it and ate it after I mixed in sweet potatoes.

And our dinner. Sorry, no reaction, we gobbled it up.

We have already hit that time of year where it's garden fresh salads with dinner every night! I love it!

Signs of Spring

I went outside to cut a little lettuce for a salad and was shocked when I saw all the little greens sprouting up! I guess I shouldn't have been shocked since we planted everything over a week ago, but still, I was.

Our radishes, mesclun mix and tons of herbs have starting growing their first leaves! YAY! And, we even have flowers all over our strawberries. I don't remember them ever blooming this fast in previous years.

I'm starting to salivate as I think of all the tasty strawberry concoctions I'll be making soon!

Another fun thing about gardening this year...

a new little helper! I'm so glad she loves being outside and isn't afraid to get a little dirty.

I'm also thankful I have a husband that really enjoys gardening. And I'm pretty sure he's going to enjoy it a lot more this year since he has a cute little helper.

Oh Spring

I saw this quote and thought it was very fitting for our family.

And with spring comes one of my favorite things: fresh garden salads!

Bring on spring and bring on the weekend!! Happy Friday!

Embrace the Camera - Daddy's Girl

I saved this photo from our afternoon of gardening for today's "Embrace the Camera" post.

The husband teaching his girl all about gardening.

I love everything about it.

Happy Thursday!

What a Weekend

Thanks to Nana and Pappy watching Sweet P one day this weekend, we did a LOT of house work and got to check a few things off the never-ending-to-do-list. Yay!

The husband worked on the garden planting everything from onions and radishes to lettuce and herbs. And he did a little yard maintenance.

This is leftover from our fall garden! Who knew lettuce could last all winter?

While he was outside, I was inside. I painted the entire kitchen (2 coats even).

Thanks Nana and Pappy!

With all that work and no time to take long breaks, I realized how hard it is to cook, so, we didn't. Instead, we ate super healthy!

After posting my dogs from Sonic, I felt like I was cheating on Jim's so I had to give them some coney love.

After I dropped P off at Nana's, I picked up a little breakfast.

It should also be noted that if you are looking for some of the best donuts in town, go to Daylight Donuts in BA (on 145th by Papa Murphy's). They are amazing and they have these little, square donuts (about the size of a donut hole) filled with bavarian creme. mmm.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't that healthy but they were fast and delicious!

And when P wasn't with Nana and Pappy, she was helping us in the garden!

I think we have a tiny green thumb in the making!

Hope you had a great weekend and hoping this week will be just a productive!