I can still hardly believe the cooler temperatures and the rain we're getting. After three days in the low 90's in mid-September, I looked at my husband and announced that fall had finally come and I was ready to plant arugula. For my part, I was so relieved to find that my love for this whole gardening thing had only been hibernating. My husband on the other hand... well, his eyes kind of glazed over. Just like when I bring up scrapbooking. When I start pulling out all my papers, pictures, tools and stickers, he takes a deep breath and just tries to stay out of my way. The albums themselves are great, but he has no interest in the creative chaos that creates them. He tolerates my gardening hobby much the same way. I guess I'm the little red hen, only I don't mind sharing the fruits of my labor with the dog, the cat and the duck.
So, I ended up planting two containers each of arugula and mesclun lettuce, and one large container of black-seeded simpson leaf lettuce. I wanted to plant two of these leaf lettuce containers, but I discovered that an ant invasion had overtaken my other one. I'm still figuring out what to do there. Stupid ants.
I'm much more willing to experiment, and potentially fail, this time around. Last season I read books, blogs and iPhone apps at every step of establishing my garden. Before planting each seed, I consulted at least three sources on spacing, companion plants, watering and potential problems. I wanted to be successful, and and that meant doing it perfectly. No mistakes, no dead plants, bountiful harvest.
Fortunately, I failed a lot. I made plenty of mistakes, and I had a very modest harvest. Now maybe I can just garden and enjoy the lessons, failures and successes along the way.
Figuring out what to do with the pre-existing dirt in my containers has been interesting. Here's arugula I planted in a mix of about 1/3 old dirt and 2/3 new dirt. I don't even remember the exact blend of compost, blood & bone, mushroom compost, vermiculite and perlite I used. See, I'm loosening up a little. And chalking up my first failure of the season. Each seedling is gradually shriveling up and dying. I probably should have dumped out the whole pot, rinsed it with some kind of vinegar solution and started fresh. But when you're working around a baby's nap of unpredictable length and you just wanted to get something planted, well, you just do the best you can with what you have.
I planted this arugula at the same time in a new, never-been-used pot with a fresh soil mix, and it's doing beautifully. Every once in awhile when I'm watering, I catch the spicy scent of arugula, and I almost swoon. Success! I'm watering 2 or 3 times throughout the day, trying to keep the soil moist and bitterness out of the harvest. At some point, I'll have budgeted and planned enough to invest in self-watering containers, since the DIY self-watering water bottles of last year didn't work so well. I've closed off 5 out of 6 drainage holes in these containers with duct tape this time around, and I collect the water from the remaining drainage hole in an old sour cream container.
In spite of the lack of recommended sunlight, I'm attempting a raised bed/lasagna garden in the backyard with cinder blocks I had on hand. I used the same spot my kids' first garden had been occupying; the weed cloth had kept out most of the bermuda, so it seemed a good place to start. My three year-old and I layered earthworms, thick layers of cardboard, veggie-scraps, mushroom compost, and two bags of soil mix. When October's budget roles around (hallelujah, that's tomorrow), I'm going to get 20 more blocks and some bags of organic soil mix.
We're planting snow peas. And hopefully lots of other things, but peas are the priority.
Apparently, earthworms like living under cinder blocks. My three year-old and I dug up a bucketful to transplant from the old resting places of these blocks. Frankly, this was a fun afternoon project even if the earthworms don't survive the transition. Digging in the dirt with this little guy was a blast.
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