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???