This is what my garden looks like

Tiny so far, it will grow year by year to be truly awesome. And look what I found this evening!

Green! Already! I just planted my seeds on Sunday, so that's a mere four days to germinate.

For real

I'm starting the garden tomorrow. It's not going to be exactly as I planned, which isn't a surprise. Here's the new plan:

• Build one 4' x 4' raised bed.
• Make container soil out of six cubic feet each of compost (picking up for free from the city), vermiculite (already got from Menards), and coconut coir (already got from Mother Earth Gardens - a totally awesome place, by the way).
• Fill with said soil the 4' x 4' bed along with two drawers I salvaged from my bedroom closet. 
• Make fertilizer out of alfalfa meal, bone meal, and kelp meal and mix some of that into the containers.
• Plant some stuff! Like:
• Calendula
• Thyme (in its own container)
• Catnip (in its own container)
• Lacinato kale
• Parlsey
• Arugula
• Lettuce mix
• Scallions
• Carrots (I'm using 10" x 1" boards for the raised bed, which I'm hoping will be deep enough.)
• Plant more stuff next weekend (since the average last frost date for my area will have passed), like:
• Lemon cucumber
• Shintokiwa cucumber
• Sweet Mama squash
• Pole beans
• Basil
• Eventually buy transplants:
• Tomatoes (at least two different kinds - hopefully I can find Sungold)
• Peppers (mild and hot)
• Eggplant
• Watermelon
• Echinacea

I think this is how I'll lay it out:

I can't wait to get started. The four day weekend we took to move ended up including absolutely no time for anything outside. And today involved over eight hours of work putting in the dishwasher. But it's in!!! Not like I would have wanted to do garden stuff in 40-degree drizzle, anyway.

Soil contamination

Some urban gardeners go to town with vegetables in their backyard. Some build raised beds to avoid eating lead, cadmium, and arsenic that commonly contaminates urban lots. This info sheet is helpful, but it raises more questions for me than it answers: Urban Gardens and Soil Contaminants. It seems to suggest that urban gardeners forgo expensive soil tests and simply build raised beds on the assumption that the soil is contaminated. But it also mentions that planting in enriched soil (which I will be doing) can decrease the amount of contaminants taken up by the plants. What to do?

Something seems fundamentally wrong to me about carting in loads of soil to pile on top of soil that's already in my yard. Of course I don't want to eat heavy metals, but I'm very curious about the degree to which planting in compost-rich soil can reduce the plants' intake of contaminants. I'm not going to start out with the assumption that my soil is unusable for vegetables. Instead, I'm going to stick with my original plan and get the soil tested right away when I move in. I was going to do a lead test and a basic soil composition test through the University of Minnesota, but now I'll add tests for arsenic and cadmium.

Start a compost pile

I just finished reading The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin, and I have decided to start off composting like this:

• Turn all of the vegetable garden I'm not going to plant this spring into compost beds. Since most of it is grass right now, I'll lay down cardboard (of which I'll have an abundant supply, post-move) right on top of the lawn and cover with layers of whatever of browns and greens I can obtain. Next spring, I'll just have to chop up the piles and plant.
• Stick with the super-simple, wire-mesh cylinder kitchen compost pile I started at my first house. But actually monitor the moisture content and try to balance the carbon and nitrogen. One excellent idea in the book is "walking compost," where you keep moving the pile around every time you turn it. This makes available for planting the nice soil that develops at the bottom of the pile. I might make two of these and let them progress from the backyard to the front along the property line.
• In the fall, I'll catch some of my own worms and start a vermicompost bin in the basement so they can work on my kitchen scraps all winter.

This is a really simple system to have gleaned from such an enormous book, but I did get a lot of useful information out of it. I'm not sure if I'd recommend the book for urban gardeners with teeny yards, since most of what they describe would be ridiculous to attempt in the space of a standard city lot.

Materials/tools I'll need right away:

• Wire mesh/hardware cloth, 1/2-inch - 3 feet wide, 20 feet long (to make two bins)
• Zip ties
• Brown/carbon materials - anybody have bags of leaves from last fall?
• Greens - I'm going to start collecting coffee grounds at work, and anyone who would like to donate a freshly-clipped bag of grass is welcome to do so.
• Shovel
• Digging fork
• Hose
• Spray nozzle

Turning the shed into a greenhouse - nope

We drove by the house yesterday, and looking again at the teeny yard made me realize that I'm going to want all the yard space I can get. That means tearing down the shed rather than possibly converting it into a greenhouse. I'll save the materials for building garden projects - like a sun box - and use the space underneath the shed for my first garden beds.

Decide what to grow - second plan

After reading up on composting and soil fertility, I think it would be wise for me to spend a lot of my energy this year on the soil. The very first thing I'll do when I get the house is take soil samples and send them in to the University of Minnesota for testing. But I think it's safe to assume that an area of the yard that has been un-cared-for grass is not going to be immediately ideal for planting a garden. I know I'll have to buy compost and other things (natural fertilizers) to improve the soil in the garden before planting. But if I expand the garden more gradually, I can make my own compost for new beds.

So, here's my revised plan:

I figure that starting with two beds and two trenches shouldn't require buying a crazy amount of compost. Plus, having fewer vegetables to tend will give me more time (and mental capacity) to get a good system going for my own compost, work on other areas of the yard, and spend time with foster kitties.

I cut out the potatoes and garlic, partly because it's best to plant those as soon as the ground is workable and partly because it's more difficult to find seed potatoes and seed cloves than it is to order packets of seeds. Next year, I will definitely try to grow them.

Seed catalogs

In almost all the gardening stuff I've read so far, people go on and on about how wonderful it is to page through a stack of physical seed catalogs in the dead of winter. I'll probably order a few, but in general I like the idea of ordering online and saving the paper and shipping.

Here are some of the better places I've found so far for ordering seeds:

Seed Savers - They're based in Iowa, and they're a nonprofit with a mission to... we'll, I'll just let them say it:

Our mission is to save North America's diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, while educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity.

Their online catalog seems a bit limited, but you can become a member of their seed exchange for $40 a year and get access to all kinds of stuff. Maybe someday...

Fedco Seeds - They're a cooperative based in Maine, and they don't sell any GMOs. They sell mostly (70%) conventional seeds, but I'm not sure how much I care about the seeds being organic. The seeds are super cheap. I have a feeling I'll end up ordering from them.

Johnny's Selected Seeds - Also based in Maine, they're employee-owned and have been around since 1973. They have a nice website, but their seeds seem really expensive.

Making a rain barrel - resources

The Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District has this immensely useful info sheet on building rain barrels. And by far the cheapest place in the metro to buy a used 55-gallon barrel - for $25 - is:

Western Container
8811 Science Center Drive
New Hope, MN 55428
763-533-3093

Besides the barrel, the info sheet lists these other necessary materials:

• 1/2" hose spigot
• 3/4" inside diameter rubber washer
• 3/4" inside diameter steel washer
• PVC bushing with inside diameter to fit on non-hose end of spigot (?!)
• 1-1/2" wing nut plug (rubber)

Then for the overflow assembly, you need a 1-1/2" sump pump drain kit, including:

• 1-1/2" inside diameter male adapter
• hose clamp with range of  1-1/2"
• 1-1/2" overflow hose (weather resistant)

It will probably cost a total of around $40-50 to build the thing. Some places around here sell rain barrels for over $200!

Decide what to grow - initial plan

Despite numerous warnings in the book, I'm going to start with a good-sized, two-person garden. Four 4' x 4' blocks and four 1' x 4' trenches. The trenches will all hold vining plants, and two of the blocks will have vining plants on the northern edge.

So far, my plan looks like this:

This is just how I'll lay out the interior of the blocks - not the blocks themselves. That'll depend on where I decide is the best spot in the yard to put them.

Now I just need to choose varieties and then decide what stuff I want to plant from seed (and order them). I'm going to build at least one sun box, so I can grow some of my own transplants.

My favorite online seed catalog so far is Seed Savers, but they don't have a ton of variety in the regular catalog (without becoming a member of the exchange).

Square foot gardening

I just finished Mel Bartholemew's Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work. This is the method I've decided to use in (soon-to-be) my yard. I borrowed it from the library, but I have my own copy on order from Better World Books. I'm glad that I read this earlier version of the book, since the newer one is all about building raised beds. The idea of using and improving the actual soil in my yard is much more appealing.

I'm really looking forward to planning everything out, now that I understand the general idea. I want to keep this blog as a record of my experience in case other people out there can benefit.
 
Next steps - stuff I can do before the house is actually mine:

1. Decide what to grow.
2. Make a detailed calendar of when to start seeds inside and outside and when to transplant.
3. Make diagrams of the two blocks I am going to start with this year.
4. Order seeds.
5. Figure out where to buy vermiculite, peat moss, compost, and manure.
6. Decide what I want to do for fertilizer and figure out where I'll buy the ingredients.
7. Figure out how much chicken wire, tomato wire, wood, pipes, plastic, and storm windows I'll need to buy/find.
8. Research turning the shed into a greenhouse.

Stuff to do right away once I get the house:

1. Get the soil tested.
2. Demolish shed (if turning it into a greenhouse isn't feasible).
3. Pick the spot and cover with plastic to heat up the ground.
4. Grade the west side of the house.
5. Start a compost pile - preferably build a three-bin system using pallets.
6. Make a rain barrel.
7. Build at least one sun box.
8. Make soil mix and fertilizer.
9. Start some seedlings inside.
10. Build the little chicken-wire cages for protecting individual squares.