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.