Thanks to all for taking the time to share all the helpful information! I like what you did with your garden Dtrammel: seems very cost-effective too!
I’ve ordered three 2 x 4 x 10 h open-bottom planters two of which I’d like to use for vegetables (potatoes, carrots, zucchini, garlic, onion) and one for blueberry bushes.Initially, I wanted to try square-foot gardening but I don’t think we will get around to building the frames as we have other projects around the house to complete. According to the square-foot gardening method, the recommended soil mix is 1/3 of peat moss, compost, and vermiculite.Then I read elsewhere that peat moss isn’t sustainable.So I wondered if there were any other options.
I don’t know much about the soil in my area (Seattle) but I do know the contractor who put my fence in said it was harder than any he’s ever worked with.He had to use a power washer to loosen the soil first! This is really one of the reasons why I figured we have to buy soil for a raised garden bed. However, one of the locations for my garden bed will be on an existing flower bed which we cleared, so that may be ok.
I am also wondering about the location of the beds.I had initially picked a spot that has sun from morning to night, but read that there should be a bit of shade in the afternoon.Is that right?I suppose it might depend on the type of vegetables I’ll be planting.
boy howdy that is a great question with a million answers of which you will be getting a goodly portion here (already some good advice) . since no one knows where you live it is difficult to get too specific. I have been organic gardening for 65 years and I am still learning new things, thank god. I have lots of friends involved in organic farming , csa’s farmers markets, etc. No matter what route you take you will have to add soil amendments. A good place to start is with a soil test. County extension offices provide that free of charge. I think for the first year it would probably good just to think of your bed as a “growing medium” . Like hydroponics, water is the growing medium. A way to avoid buying soil is to solarize the ground. I am against tilling as god did a pretty good job of layering the soil and if left alone will grow lots of stuff. A couple of organic farmers I know roll out a big roll of black plastic over their rows which have drip irrigation ( cheap from the big box stores) , burn holes for their plants with a propane torch then plant in the holes. they then covet the plastic with whatever organic matter they have (leaves , straw, well rotted hay, i am not a big fan of hay because dang it always has seeds that i don’t want in my garden, So presto a very little expense easy way to get going the first year. I am focusing on quick easy things because it is getting late. As for soil amendments I start with manure. If there is no local source (rabbit, horse, cow etc) you can always go to a garden center and get some bags of manure. My next in line is soft rock phosphate also known as calphos. After that I add Azomite which is a rock mineral that comes from Utah. The guy who discovered the deposit lived to be 90 something. He would put some in a glass of water everyday and drink it. It is used in animal feed. It is called Azomite because it has A to Z minerals. I use chicken feather meal for my nitrogen , wood ashes for my potash. Most people don’t know but earth worms love the minerals. Actually if you create a great home with lots of food for them they will grow your garden for you. Last but not least I add paramagnetic rock dust. This stuff is pretty amazing. It is not a fertilizer. It is magic. It has been found that it works even if it is contained and not in contact with the soil. It has been placed inside an old garden hose and laid in the bed and it has magicall increased yields and shortened maturation time. I got turned onto it by a retire USDA scientist (if you can believe that) He had grown corn with a 90 day maturation in 57 days. That means 2 corn crops in one year in certain parts of the country. The really cool thing is you just add it once and it lasts 50 or more years.
So if I were you ( and lived in a moderately good area ( not the desert lol) I would just plant in the ground sheet compost add the amendments ( use the plastic if you want, btw the lumber yards just give away those big tarps that lumber comes wrapped in, generally white on one side black on the other. If you want to use them they are useful for all kinds of things and when they fall apart just throw them away. ) mulch heavy. Then in the fall when all is said and done you can build your bed/beds right on top of some pretty good soil. Btw if you use the lumber wrappers if you put the black side up be sure to mulch well as they will get hot in the summer and burn your plants.
Gardening is not a one shot one size fits all deal. Find and talk to some local gardeners and see what works for them. As you can tell us gardeners like to share what we know and get some good info from them’ that are doin. Almost forgot, I would start growing some mushrooms. As has been mentioned here they are great for the immune system. You can do logs (they last for years or sawdust. Just need a shady spot and water. You can dry them in the sun and they pick up vit d. When dry they last a long time. I get my spawn from the Mushroom people at The Farm in Tennessee. It is the commune started by Stephen Gaskin. Great people.
Good luck
Just saw that you are in Seattle. Damn start with mushrooms. You can grow zillions of them there. It is absolutely the perfect climate. Get started now and you might have a good crop in the fall. Plant the blueberries in peat. they like acid. They like lots of water a little at a time. They don’t like wet feet so make sure they have good drainage. I would not put them in the beds. I dug holes 2 feet deep and 2 feet wide and filled them with peat. In retrospect I would have gone wider and not as deep. They are shallow rooted. Btw I like to foliar feed with Maxi Crop and fish emulsion during the growing season. I make my beds no wider than 3 feet which makes it easy to work from either side.
Another possibility you might consider, if you have access to them, is to start with a straw bale garden - lots of info on the web about how to do it. With a heavy clay base, you may not have time to build something up for this year, but this would let you start growing right away. By next year, the bales will have broken down and be terrific compost to enrich your beds. When I built my second lot of raised beds (very high sides - I have no soil below, just rock), I couldn’t afford to truck in enough soil to fill the beds, so I put in the best I could get, and filled up the rest with hay bales (a local farm had some spoiled bales they couldn’t use for feed). You have to prep the bales for about a month, but then you can start planting. In my experience, everything grew beautifully, and now the soil/composted hay beds are continuing to build up as an excellent growing medium. (The difference between hay and straw is that hay has more nutrient in it, but also more seeds that will try to grow and you’ll have to keep weeding. Straw has somewhat less nutrient, but also fewer unwanted seeds.)
I think any estimate of the fatality rate is almost as bad as using a random number generator because the data is so poor. The numbers in the worldometer table or the Johns Hopkins app vary so widely across the world that it’s impossible to figure out a rate overall. There have been a few studies to date - based on Diamond Princess data, based on the Vo, Italy data and based on extensive random testing in Iceland. Probably 10 people could made 10 different estimates from those data.
Personally, I’m expecting the fatality rate to eventually be calculated above 1% but less than 2%. But that’s just a finger in the air number. The best we can say with any certainty is that this is much more infectious and much more fatal than than 'flu.
I see that the serious/critical number for Germany is now much more believable at 1,581 but their death numbers seem so much less than others with case numbers in the same ball park. The case and death rates vary hugely across countries which begs the question of whether all have the same virus and the same species of humans.
Of course, we don’t know whether the rates are an artifact of testing (I haven’t seen testing data for various countries or the policies applied to testing).
If some countries are deliberately reporting misleading numbers, one must ask why? It helps no-one to not have the most complete data. Even my own country seems to have some numbers that don’t make sense - the number recovered has been greater than the number of confirmed cases just a few days ago, which makes no sense unless some recoveries happened only hours or a couple of days after testing positive.
So we continue to speculate on what this all means, and policies are being formed on the basis of bad or incomplete data.
LOL
Kerry of Skull and Bones fame married to Heinz 57 kinds millions calls Rep, Massie an asshole for wanting a real vote on the theft, er I mean stimulation. i guess he thinks somebody ought to read it before they vote on it, what an absolutely novel idea. Maybe we could get a clue on what lobbyists wrote it.
The funny thing is none of them want to go back to DC because they would be afraid of getting infected, what with being in close quarters with each other. Not one picture have I seen where any of these bozos are practicing social distancing. They could wear masks then we wouldn’t know who they are. LOL
This whole sorry bunch of mid level mismanagers has bungled this thing since the beginning and the ones who will get rewarded are their corporate masters.
Here is the calculus. Pay off the corporate benefactors, blow up another bubble, put people back to work in 3 weeks (the corporations will pocket the money and then the unemployment benefits will be done) No telling how many will die or be permanently damaged but most of those who die will be SS recipients and Medicare recipients. Long term that will save a ton on those " entitlements) Trump and cronies will cut off Federal aid to those states that don’t comply with going back to work. The second wave of the virus will be much worse.
Then they have the balls to call it " The Save the Workers Bill"
I agree with O’Toole . “That Murphy was a damn optimist”
Who was it that said “never let a good crisis go to waste”?
Compost is sold in bulk in our area. It has more beneficial bacteria than “soil”.
If it is hot and steaming, it cannot be planted in until it is “finished”. Finished means that it has gone through a cycle that uses nitrogen and oxygen to accelerate the decaying process. When the decaying process is done, this is a great material to use as soil or to add to your existing soil.
Hi all, I’m sure this has been discussed here but I can’t find the answer! We are needing to set up a home isolation area for our son who is a healthcare worker in our local hospital. We have an area of our home with a door to the outside and it’s own bathroom. We have put plastic over all of the vents and taped them to seal them off. To seal the area off to the rest of the house we hung painters plastic and sealed it all the way around (assuming the virus can’t travel thru plastic??). After work, everything is taken off including shoes before entering the house and kept in the garage until laundry is done. We bring food to the door and the only contact we have is out in the backyard a good 12’ apart. We are also spending time with him on the other side of the painters plastic as we can hear and see him and it helps to be able to spend time with him and live as normal as we can right now. He has no symptoms and he don’t even know if exposure has happened or not, we are assuming it will happen within a week based on current cases and how quickly they are moving. Any help would be appreciated. If there is a post about this already, can someone point me to it? THANK YOU!!!
Soil, like politics, is a subject everyone has an opinion on.
As some have mentioned, good soil is a rich and varied ecosystem, with microbes living in layers. The ones in the 1-3" depth are different from the ones at 12-18". When I first started, by digging up my area down to 18" I destroyed that ecosystem BUT here’s the thing, most lawns especially in suburban and urban areas are deserts. If they haven’t been pilled over with fill and clay when the place was build have been leeched of essential minerals by decades of monoculture grass.
It sounds like you are in the same situation I was in when I began. One of the reasons I turned my soil over so completely and added lots of compost. If you just add compost on top of that hard layer, then when your plants’ roots get to it, they will have no way to penetrate and will just go laterally looking for food.
Its worth getting in there at least to loosen things up.
But its also true that just dumping store bought garden soil is going to give you less than stellar results for the first few years and you know what, that’s ok. Modern hybrids are designed to give great results for amateur gardeners. Once you learn a bit more, you can branch out into heirloom plants and niche veggies for your particular situation. And you will learn more about soil, if you keep at it. What to add, and what kinds of mixes work best with different plants. Which like acid soils and which don’t.
Given your soil, I would stay away from root crops like potatoes and carrots. You might be able to get onions but I’d try bunching types first. Maybe some squash and other above ground veggie types, but be careful some of those are the type that really spreads out.
Try a few things and experiment, don’t try to even get much more than token additions to your pantry. Have fun.
Also have a place for flowers. I don’t know how many mornings when I worked on third shift I would come home, to go out and just sit in the garden and watch. Seeing the pollinators going from bloom to bloom. Being there when a humming bird showed up, or the robins who made a nest on the top of a downspout on the garage behind my yard for three years now. That is worth the effort of doing a garden all by itself.
Let us know what you decide to do. Take loads of pictures and document. Right everything down because that will end up being very important down the road.
Hi Bethiew and welcome. Sounds like you have a good start. Let me point you to this post. https://peakprosperityfilelibrary.wordpress.com/2020/03/13/example-post-3/
Its the collection of comments for the videos here on sanitation, PPE and self quarantine. Its a little out of date because I haven’t had a chance to get it updated but luckily the self quarantine stuff was spoken of early in this crisis. That should give you some suggestions on how to proceed.
I am also wondering about the location of the beds.I had initially picked a spot that has sun from morning to night, but read that there should be a bit of shade in the afternoon.Is that right?I suppose it might depend on the type of vegetables I’ll be planting.
You can always cut the amount of sun with a makeshift shade like a umbrella or just a flat reflector made of cardboard. What you can't do is ADD sunlight so I would plant where you can get the maximum sun and go for plants that like sun to plant.
Its been my experience that what does a plant in isn't too much sunlight, its too little water. Water is the grease that keeps the engine of sunlight on track and spinning. One of the reasons I put that underground tube system in, was so that I could keep the ground at 6-9 inches moist while the sun cooked the surface and killed the weeds.
Plus I've read anecdotally that surface watering can damage the plants either by burning (the droplets on leaves act as lenses and damage the leaves) and if watered in the evening, promote mold and other problems when the temperature cools down and the leaves are all moist over night.
I’m sure there are many who have read this thread and think “Wow, what am I gonna do, I got no place to plant something, not even a few pots, I’m screwed!”
That’s not true.
There are going to be lots of people with extra veggies and produce this year. Not only that, Farmer’s markets are out there too, selling their produce. If you can’t grow your own, you can at least use what others grow to fill out your deep pantry and keep you family feed. And home grown or local farmer’s produce is ten times better for you to eat. Better tasting and better nutritionally.
Start hitting the thrift stores and garage sales now, look for one of those multilevel food dryers. People buy them, then don’t use them and then donate or sell them for a few dollars.
Drying food is an easy and economic way to add to your deep pantry. A store bought can of soup, with a big handful of dried vegetables can extend that soup and make it very tasty. Learn when things are in season, and look for times when they are on sale. Buy extra and dry it, bag it and put it away.
Once you try drying, then consider learning how to can and preserve. It takes a little capital to buy the tools but again you can find them at thrift stores or garage sales for less.
Not only canning, but the old art of pickling, not just cucumbers but a wide range of veggies can be pickled with little more than good jars and the right spice mix (plus a bit of heat on the stove).
Even if you can’t grow your own, you still have options to protect your family and weather hard times.
New Zealand should actually give a pretty accurate answer to which scenario is correct. All our cases have come to NZ recently, currently there is very little community transmission, mainly family or close contacts. Even though we have closed our border, NZer’s are continuing to come home and many are testing positive (but they are hopefully all isolated?). Basically two weeks on from people first testing positive, we are now seeing hospitalizations.
Can anyone point me to the video with the data on how long we think it can survive on various surfaces? I’ve been looking for it and just can’t find it.
Just to clarify, not all of the cases are people who’ve arrived in the country recently. We do have some community transmission. But we should note that confirmed cases are only those that have been tested. There is a strict policy on testing where you need to meet some criteria, and those seem very narrow since I know of one person who seemed to tick a lot of boxes to get tested but wasn’t allowed a test.