Is your garden looking slightly yellow?

Some fellow gardeners have been experiencing some yellowing of plant leaves and have found that their plants aren’t growing very well. This is most likely due to the PH level of the water and sand. We consulted the Garden Master Ted Hallett on what to do and these are the solutions he recommended.

First you need to find out what the PH of your water is, call the city, or get your own PH test done. There are inexpensive PH water testing kits you can get online, or at garden stores. Opinion is divided on their accuracy. Once you know the PH of your water, there are two things you should do.

1) Foliar Feeding Nutrient Spray - based on the chart below add APPLE CIDER VINEGAR to your nutrient solution to get the water you’re using in the solution to the right PH. Then spray your plants once a week for three weeks then go back to spraying once every three weeks. The Garden Master recommends that you spray at sunset. You will want to add the Apple Cider Vinegar to your nutrient solution indefinitely. It would be good to check your water PH on a yearly basis. As you prepare your nutrient solution add the water, then the apple cider vinegar, then the nutrient concentrate. The Garden Master now recommends spraying in the evening just at sundown.

2) Bag Flush - for four weeks flush the bags in your garden with a quart of water mixed with apple cider vinegar based on the chart below. If your plants are really struggling also mix 1 teaspoon of the concentrated nutrient solution into each quart. Dump one quart on each bag once a week for four weeks.

You should start to see an improvement within a week.

So, why does PH matter?

The PH scale measures acidity and alkalinity, a 7 on the scale is neutral. Below 7 is acidic and above 7 is alkaline. The PH of soil and water around a plant determine the plants ability to absorb nutrients. Most plants like a PH of 6 to 6.5. The natural PH of sand is around 7. Depending on what it mixed in the sand it can vary, but for practical purposes the sand in our gardens has a PH of about 7. The PH of your water varies from city to city. For example, Spanish Fork city water has a PH of 7.1.

Hope this helps your gardens grow out of control!

Oh, one more tidbit of info from Ted.

If you’re having problems with crawling bugs, the Garden Master offers the following suggestion. Purchase some food grade diatomaceous earth and sprinkle 1 Tbsp around the base of the plants. This will prevent any crawling or earth born pests from attacking the plants. (Diatomaceous earth can be found here - it’s also often at animal feed stores like Cal Ranch and Pet stores - call the stores first to make sure they care FOOD grade diatomaceous earth)

Day 20: Poorly Planned Planting

This post represents DAY 20 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 20: Poorly Planned Planting

It's not great when you leave work an hour early to plant in your precious garden and see clouds like this when you arrive...

My planting today was not the most productive it could have been. I was prepped w/ printouts of the planting schematics from Day 6, the new primaries to add to the garden, a companion planting guide, and lots of seeds... But I had yet to decide exactly which seeds were going in which bags...

The unfinalized plan in my head involved 1) planting the primaries and 2) replanting any secondaries that hadn't popped up yet from Day 6 {two weeks seemed like a long enough opportunity window} and 3) adding lots more secondaries. I didn't get through the second or third objectives...

First - the rain was ruining my planting schematics...

Then lots more secondaries had popped up since the last time we looked at the garden and so we were worried about replanting all of them... We decided to give them one last DDD {drop dead deadline} - Day 23. Any secondary who has not shown green by Day 23 will be considered a casualty and we'll move on without them.

I did however decide to plant more secondaries in a few of the bags. The secondary planting that was done today involved a new approach based on new knowledge from The Garden Master. Sand is not as dense as dirt - thus it allows light to filter into itself - thus seeds can be planted underneath the sand and still receive sunlight. So this time, rather than placing the seeds on top of the sand, we buried them a little bit. We also took a much more generous approach in seed application - in a location where we wanted one plant we put a few seeds assuming some will grow and some won't. Worst case scenario: we get too many plants growing in one location we can pull a few out. Better to have too much than too little right?

Here's an illustrative example of how I planted some radish seeds.

Step One: make a small trough with your finger

Step 2: sprinkle seeds in the trough

Step 3: push the sand over the seeds gently - I didn't even push down the sand - I just left it loose hoping it would let in more light

More planting will be done on Day 23 and I'll post updated schematics etc. then.

Here are a few action shots of our little secondaries - they are so tiny! We'd better enjoy it while it lasts because they won't be this way for long.

And here is the garden on Day 20. I'd definitely say growth is happening! Not as quickly as I'd like it to but hey - I wish I could plant a carrot seed today and pick the carrot tomorrow - maybe someday we'll all get that good if we keep at it... or not ;)

Day 17: Another Shopping Spree

This post represents DAY 17 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 17: Another Shopping Spree

After work today I made a quick trip to the local nursery for the last primaries for the garden. Armenian cucumbers, yellow zucchini, crenshaw melon, and watermelon transplants. Cost $4.

I took care of these plants and got them ready for planting on Day 20 the same way I took care of the first transplants purchase on Day 3.

Except that one of them died... My crenshaw melon... I think a snail got it. It was probably the wife of the husband I accidentally stepped on last weekend... I didn't mean to step on your husband and I would have much rather not lived throught the horrible crunch - really - did you have to eat my crenshaw melon - rude. 

Day 16: Hello Secondaries

This post represents DAY 16 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 16: Hello Secondaries

Look at her - isn't she cute!!! Can't wait to eat her...

Yum!

Still haven't seen any traces of lots of the secondaries - but I've seen a few and I know the others are down there somewhere... Just got to give them a little time. Beans and peas are growing strong! I'm going to wait a few days to spray the new growth with nutrient - you are supposed to spray seedlings once they have developed their first true leaves. I'll be watching for the "first true leaves" and they're going to get some serious nutrient spray then.

Day 15: Trellising

This post represents DAY 15 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 15: Trellising

Today marked the {almost} completion of the construction of our garden. It began with a trip to the local hardware store to purchase the following:

- Six 6' u-post fence posts

They look like this on one side and...

Like this on the other side

- Two of the shortest u-post fence posts we could find -  I can't remember the exact measurement... it's not too important - you'll see.
- 50lb test fishing line {found this at WalMart}
Cost: $40

We also brought with us our trellising material from The Garden Master, a wooden mallet, and scissors.

I didn't take the time to take pictures during our installation of the trellis... So, I'm going to have to illustrate how we decided to make our trellis work with completed pictures which will make things somewhat anticlimactic because you will see the finished product way before the end but whatever...

We started by driving the 6' fence posts into the ground. We place two on each end of the 8' side of the garden and then place one post in between each of those. We then placed the two smaller fence posts in the center of the 4' side of the garden. Rather than trying to drive the posts through the weed barrier - we just placed them outside the barrier - this can only be a good thing because it gives our plants extra growing space on the trellis - right?

Next, we measured and cut the trellis material to fit our garden. I can't give you measurements because we just used our magic powers to pretend like the trellis material was attached to the posts to figure out where to cut. Your garden measurements will probably be different. This was definitely a two-person job. We cut three long pieces to go from one 8' side of the garden to the other. I think the pictures illustrate what we did better than my words can.... 

I drew the red line along the edge of the trellising material to indicate that it is one piece from one side of the garden to the other.

After we had our three beautiful pieces of trellis material cut we started fish stringing... We attached fish string to one of the green poles and then weaved it through the trellising material, over under over under over under etc. This picture shows two strings - however we started with one string on each side to get everything in place - later we went through and added another line to help make it stronger. You can't tell that the fishing string is weaved through the material in the picture - but it is - not sure yet if that makes any sort of difference but we felt like it did when we were doing it so we followed our feelings.

Once we had the fishing string holding the trellis material up on both sides we added the line down the center of the garden. This part was super easy - just tie fishing line to one of the short fence posts - through the other end of the fishing line to your helper on the other side and have them tie it to the other post as tight as they can. We did not do any sort of weaving for this part.

You can see that it does a great job holding the trellising material down.

Once we had the trellising material contained life felt much more under control. We finished by running another line of fishing string along the tops of each side of the trellising and by tying the 3 pieces of trellising together at the tops - eventually we will buy some zip ties and fasten them together properly and we may add additional lines of fishing string. We are crossing our fingers that 50lb test is strong enough. We'll definitely let you know if it's not... 

And now - the anticlimactic presentation of the final product {that you have already seen during this entire post - bah.}

Now we just need our plants to get big enough that we can start training them to grow on the beautiful trellis we made them.

FYI - when the plants that we train onto the trellis grow big things like watermelons and cantaloupes and large zucchinis we will support the produce w/ cutup ladies nylons... Haha!

As always - let me know if you have any questions about any of the above - or anything else!

Interactive {Trevor's comment}

Trevor says:

I love this site--can you help me with some basic info. Everything you have shown so far is extremely basic and makes perfect sense. Where do you find a good bag or bucket?

Thanks Trevor! I'm so glad our ramblings make perfect sense and that the info is extremely basic. I like basic things - no point in making something more confusing that it needs to be, right? Your question about finding a good bag or bucket is a great one.

I feel like we are maybe a little biased in that department. The "bucket-garden" system that we are using mimics the one used by Ted Hallett. We have all been buying our supplies from him because he is the garden master who has taught us the little bit we know. The bags he uses are specially made in Australia or somewhere like that... They are not any normal plastic bag as they are designed to last 15+ years and grow lots of yummy produce... If you would like to purchase supplies from him you can visit his online store by clicking here.

I'm not sure why we are calling it a bucket garden because none of us are growing anything from a bucket - the bucket just comes in handy during the garden installation. Quick tutorial: the planting bag is placed around a bucket that has the bottom cut out of it so it is open on both ends - the open bucket with the bag around it is placed in its place on the garden plot and then filled with sand - once it reached the appropriate level the open bucket is pulled out of the bag leaving the sand inside the bag. That is all the bucket is used for - to help keep the bag in place while it is filled with sand...

I suspect that there are other bag/bucket options out there - but I'm going to direct you to my dear friend Mr. Google for researching that department. Or maybe there is another reader out there that has more experience than we do with other bag/bucket gardening systems who'd be willing to share some BASIC info???

Day 9: A Quick Feeding

This post represents DAY 9 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 9: A Quick Feeding

Today we stopped at the garden for a quick feeding on our way out of town for Memorial Day weekend. We used our nutrient mix from Day 4 {the 2 Tbsp for 1 gallon of water ratio}. I generously sprayed the tops and bottoms of each leave on each of our growing plants.

I have decided that it is ok to leave the nutrient mixture in our sprayer because it is kind of smelly and messy to try to pour it in and back out each time. I don't think this will cause any problems because it is an organic spray. You are welcome to copy me.

You may notice some gaps in my posting for the next little while... Any day where I don't do something eventful I probably won't post any sort of documentary. Those days just include looking the garden over for any harmful insects and making sure the water is working properly. I'll save you {and myself} the boredom of posting the same thing day after day. If I see any problems though - I'll be sure to let you know - and of course I'll keep posting whenever I do something other than checking for bugs and checking water status. Don't you even worry about that!

Cross your fingers that we have some little seedlings popping up in the near future! Thanks!

Day 7: Boring

This post represents DAY 7 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 7: Boring
Today was not a busy gardening day - in fact I didn't even get to see the garden today. However, eyewitness reports state that it is doing well. One of my plants {the beloved honeydew melon} snapped due to extreme winds. We'll have a proper burial for her someday... Fortunately she can easily be replaced in our next planting.

So far we don't have any insect problems, and it looks like the birds next door are leaving the seeds alone. Phew!

Tomorrow I will be feeding the primary plants and hopefully within the next little while we will start seeing some green popping up from the secondary seeds we planted.

Wow, day 7 is a boring one... Sorry...

Actually, I'm kind of not because the great thing about this garden is that most of the days will be boring ones because it really doesn't require much work! So go enjoy yourself doing something other than gardening today - ok!

Day 6: The Garden Must Go On

This post represents DAY 6 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 6: The Garden Must Go On

I woke up this morning with a serious case of the stomach flu - work only lasted 1 hour... I think it turned out to be a blessing because I was able to get all prepped for planting this evening with my time at home. In hindsight, there is no way I could have accomplished everything in the garden I wanted to today if I hadn't been home from work sicky... But it would have been nice to just sleep and relax today - oh well - the garden must go on.

I spent my time in between trips to the bathroom researching companion plants. I used information from Ted's website and I also did lots of research here. {If you decide to do research on this website let me share with you a simple trick that will make things much quicker. Once you are on the page hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and press the F key on your board at the same time. You will see a 'find' box pop up somewhere on the page - mine pops up at the top. In this find box type in the produce you are looking for (i.e. bean) to quickly find info about it under its own heading and also under the headings of all the other plants that reference the one you are looking for.}

The biggest controversy on companion plants between these two sources are peppers and tomatos - Ted says never plant them together - this site says it's ok... I decided to do my own little experiment regarding this conflict so you will notice my schematic has a few primary peppers next to primary tomatos. Speaking of the schematic would you like to see mine?

Here is the bag summary

And here are the planting layouts for each of the bags - only the plants shaded white were planted today. You will notice lots of empty space in my bags - that will be filled in about 2 weeks - and filled even more in another 2 weeks = and filled even more in another 2 weeks - etc. This way we won't be producing more than we can eat. {Disclaimer - these layouts are my best guess - don't think they are 100% perfect - I'm learning here too!}

If any of you would like a Microsoft Excel file with these layouts leave me a comment with your email and I would be more than happy to send you one. That way you can adjust it for your individual families.

Once I had these layouts finished I ran to the store to buy my seeds - any guess how much this many seeds costs?

$41.72... I could have found better deals but I was famished and had to get these babies planted before I passed out from lack  nutrition.... $41.72 isn't bad considering that is how much it costs for the produce I buy for 1.5 weeks from the grocery store... Also, there is no way we will use all of these seeds this year and they will be great to use next year!

There were a few varieties I could not find {Kale, Summer Savory, Celery...} so I had to adjust my layouts accordingly. I will add these items when I plant again in 2ish weeks.

Next it was planting time - hooray! The location we chose for our garden is about 20 min. away from our house and is part of where my husband works... Long story... Maybe I'll tell you about it on a day where we don't have sooo much to go over.

We started by planting the primary plants that I have been taking care of the past few days. They were easy!

Step1: Dig a hole

Step 2: Carefully remove plant from it's pot and place it the hole {I squooze the outsides of the pots lightly to loosen the dirt around the edges then tipped the pot upside down and held the plant gently at its stem - I was very careful not to touch any roots}

Step 3: Push the sand around the plant - I made sure to dig my hole deep enough so that I could cover the dirt with 1/4 inch of sand.

See - it's super simple! To plant the peas and beans I pushed about 1/2 inch deep holes into the sand with my pointer finger - dropped the seed in - then gently covered the hole. Here's a picture of the holes w/seeds in them.

Next we placed each of the secondary plant seed on the sand. Typically you can just set them on the sand - I gently pushed them down because it was pretty windy while we were planting. Phew - some of the seeds are really tiny so I hope you have nimble fingers!

After the secondary seeds were placed on the sand I manually turned on the water for the sprinkling system - this gently pushes the seeds into the sand which is why you typically don't need to do more than set them on top. You can manually turn on the water using your timer by moving the yellow lever - you normally shouldn't use this lever... But it's ok on planting days I guess...

I let the water run for about 1 minute then turned it off. I then lightly sprayed each of the bags with nutrient - I tried not to spray any primary plants since they were already fed - the idea is to get a little bit of nutrient on your seeds. The next time the sprinkler system turns on the water will push the nutrient directly onto the seeds.

Did I tell you the exciting thing I figured out today? I was looking over Ted's nutrient application guide and realized that I didn't overfeed my primary transplant plants on Day 4. Yay! I'm not so bad at math in the mornings after all - you are really supposed to use 2 Tbsp for 1 gallon of water when you are spraying TRANSPLANTS - this ratio however is not the same for all spraying situations. When you are spraying SEEDLINGS you should use 1 Tbsp of nutrient for 1 gallon of water. Make sure to look over his nutrient guide - click here if you don't already have it and would like to use it.

I will be back to feed my primaries with nutrient on Day 9 and I'll be watching for my seedlings to pop up so I can feed them too!

Also, just in case you were worried about me I'm doing much better. I have now kept down 2 saltine crackers, 3 ice cubes, and a little Sprite. Hooray! I'm so excited to have home-grown produce to eat to keep me healthy so I never ever ever get the stomach flu again! Ha! I wish...

Oh - here is the garden after all of today's planting. It might not look like much yet - but just wait until Day 60!

Day 5: Over Exaggerating

This post represents DAY 5 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 5: Over Exaggerating

Well my plants are still alive. They seem to be doing well overall but any tiny tendency of looking less than green and crisp and hydrated makes me so angry at myself! I think I'm way over exaggerating.... I whispered to each of them today as I watered them that I would never ever ever ever double the nutrient I was supposed to feed them ever ever ever again {AND THEY PROBABLY LAUGHED AT ME BECAUSE THEY KNEW I HADN'T OVERFED THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE TRANSPLANTS - see Day 4}. They appreciated that {see Day 4 for the over nutriented feeding low down}.

Today wasn't super sunny so I only watered them once. The dirt in the pots is nice and moist - all the way to the bottom - I did the finger check again - remember? Stick your finger into the dirt {in a corner so you don't disturb any roots} and make sure the soil is moist at the bottom. I didn't do a really drenching watering - mostly I just sprayed the leaves. The leaves only absorb the nutrient when they are wet so it's a good idea to get them wet. Unfortunately, my priority was more trying to spray off all the extra nutrient I gave them...

Tomorrow evening marks almost 3 days from their first feeding which means I will be planting them in the garden! Wish me luck!

Day 4: The First Feeding

This post represents DAY 4 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 4: The First Feeding

My alarm woke me up and I immediately ran to our plants to check on them. Yay! They looked well hydrated and ready for their first feeding. I put them out in the sun - YES - a sunny day - and got ready for work while I read the assembly instructions for our sprayer. Got a little frustrated - put it together a few times to seal all the right places but finally got it working. I tested the sprayer with water before I used the nutrient to make sure I had it figured out. Phew - it worked on my third try! Mmmm I'm probably going to be late to work - oh well - they'll understand - I was feeding.

Because I didn't have very many plants to spray I mixed a minimal amount of nutrient. I used 32 oz (1/4 gallon) of water and should have used 1/4 Tbsp of nutrient. I'm sitting here recording this and realizing that I fed my plants too strongly but this is a place to share successes and failures right? So I'm not very good at conversions first thing in the morning and I used 1/2 Tbsp of nutrient instead of 1/4. Forgive me please! Ah! Bah! I'm frustrated! Luckily my plants looked great this evening so I think they will survive. I will make sure never to make this mistake again and it would make me feel much better if you make sure not to make my mistake. Thanks! {IMPORTANT EDIT AS OF 5/27/2010 - THESE PLANTS WERE NOT OVERFED HOORAY! HOWEVER I HAVE LEFT THIS DOCUMENTARY HERE BECAUSE IT ILLUSTRATES AN IMPORTANT POINT - enough of the capital letters already sheesh - ok so TRANSPLANTS should be fed with a 2 Tbsp per 1 gallon of water ratio but SEEDLINGS should be fed with a 1 Tbsp per 1 gallon of water ratio. Just follow Ted's nutrient application carefully ok!}

This picture is not quite correct because I have shown a 1/2 Tbsp measure - IT SHOULD BE 1/4 for 32 oz of water... {NO IT SHOULDN'T - 1/2 Tbsp is correct for TRANSPLANTS!}

 

Here is what my water looked like after everything was mixed. Yours should look a lot lighter because once again I doubled the nutrient..... grrrrrrrr.... {NOPE - YOURS SHOULD LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THIS IF YOU ARE FEEDING TRANSPLANTS!}

Using this kitchen measurer was genius {just soap it really really good afterward because it stinks - I think I will buy one to use just for the garden so I don't have to worry about cross contamination}. It made it so super easy to mix and to transfer into my sprayer. Once the nutrient was inside the sprayer and the sprayer was pressurized it was feeding time! I sprayed the tops and bottoms of the leaves on my plants. I don't think this is an exact science. The sprayer does a great job spraying the nutrient everywhere. Hooray for the sprayer!

I used about 1 cup of nutrient to spray all of my plants. Here is what was left when I was done.

AND


Here are my forgiving {NOT} over-nutriented plants after their first feeding.

I also spent some time today pondering my secondary planting desires and the rest of the primary plants I want... I started designing my garden schematic and will be super relieved when it is finished and I can share it with ya'll. I also did a bunch of research online about companion plants and plants that ward of bad insects and attract beneficial insects. It was fun! Seriously!

Oh, and when I got home from work I watered my plants again in the kitchen sink. If I could do today over, I would have watered them in the morning as well as in the evening... Oh well - you can't get everything perfect the first time.

Day 3: Our First Primaries

This post represents DAY 3 of the day-by-day documentary of the gardening adventures of a newly-wed first-time gardening couple. They are not only first-time bucket gardeners but first-time any kind of gardeners. The details of their successes and failures will be communicated here so you can follow along with your garden - if you wish. To see links to each of the "days" click here.

Day 3: Our First Primaries

After thinking about our plants all day at work we hurried to our local nursery to purchase our first batch of primary plants. We decided to buy small starts rather than growing them so we could speed things up. Cost: $14

Our cast of characters included:

We arrived at the nursery 10 minutes before it closed - Bah! We hurried really really fast to find some yummy plants to start with. The main thing we looked for was small plants - small plants will grow quicker once planted in our bag and they will adapt to the new environment in the bag better than a larger plant. Indeterminate tomatoes were a must for us. Really that's all. Maybe we'll get better at the shopping thing once we get some more experience.

When we got home I watered the plants thoroughly to prepare them for their feeding in the morning. Before spraying your plants with nutrient it is crucial that they are well hydrated. The top soil around the plants felt moist but when I put my finger in the pot and felt the dirt in the bottom it was fairly dry - that is how I knew I needed to water these babies. To water my plants I ran the kitchen sink sprayer on the soil until a puddle of water formed then left them in the sink for a few minutes to let the water drip out of the bottom. I tucked them in a safe place inside our home for the evening - we've been experiencing very cold evenings {even at the end of May} here in Utah so I'm going to keep them warm inside as long as possible. Hopefully we have plenty of sunlight tomorrow!

Note: For day 4 you will need your nutrient bottle and sprayer and you may want to set your alarm a little earlier than normal tonight. Sweet garden dreams!

*Today I also printed off a copy of the Garden Master's nutrient application instructions for quick reference. You can do the same by clicking here.