The Vent Pipe

A Small Kitchen Garden

*** Update*** In writing this the first time I forgot to mention that all plants were provided courtesy of my mother’s hard work in her greenhouse back home.  Thanks, Mom!

Hard to believe it has been nearly a year since I posted anything here.  August 2010 — clearly that was the last time I had ten minutes to post anything before Grad school started up for the year.  But that is done for now — no classes until this August.  I am 16 weeks of study away from finishing my MA in history.  What a relief. Also, I am now I fully tenured teacher.  No, that didn’t involve any rigorous reviews or exams.  Yes, I am relieved to know that I have relative job security.

At any rate, I’ve been in my new house for nearly a year.  (How long do I get to keep saying “new house?”)  This spring I was determined to put in a small kitchen garden.  My parents always had a garden when I was growing up, and the though of having vine-ripened, still-warm-from-the-sun tomatoes is just too much for me to resist.  I had done quite a bit of reading on lasagna gardening, but soon found that I was a bit behind the curve to truly commit to the process.  Patricia Lanza’s book (see link above) suggests that you can speed the process up by sprinkling some compost accelerator and covering in black plastic.  I did this, but did not find it overly successful.

Instead, my new kitchen garden is a hybrid lasagna garden.  First I marked out the size of the proposed beds.  Then I removed all the sod–it was mostly weeds–and began the layering process.  Lanza recommends laying a layer of newspaper or untreated cardboard first, however I skipped that step for this bed due to my lack of time.  Next I alternated layers of old leaves and layers of (mostly finished) compost from my compost bin. Finally, I sprinkled some compost starter pellets over the pile, watered the pile down, and covered with plastic. Three weeks later, some of the less-than-finished compost had broken down, but the leaves remained mostly intact.  They are primarily acting as a sort of mulch around the plants until the layers break down completely.  Hopefully by next year they will be good and composted.

One thing that was promising, though, was that even after just a few short weeks, the ground under the layers was A) filled with earthworms and B) very loose and easy to plant into.  Before I planted, I sprinkled a bit of dehydrated manure and three bags of purchased garden soil, just to add a covering over the leaves.

Over the weekend, my dad helped me cut the lumber and frame the beds. Both beds are 5×5 constructed out of pressure treated lumber.  There is some talk about the dangers of using the old pressure treated lumber; new stuff, though, is supposed to be safe.  I plan to add a few marigold’s around the inside perimeter to soak up any potential leaching from the lumber into the soil.

I left an approximately 4′x4′ path between each beds, and plan to keep the paths as grass, but we’ll see how they hold up.  Yesterday I finally planted–a bit later than I had wanted.  Right now, there are approximately 7 tomato plants, 5 pepper plants (multiple varieties of both peppers and tomatoes), one squash and one cucumber.  I will add a zucchini, a watermelon, and some marigolds over the next few days.  In each corner, I constructed a bamboo teepee for pole-beans.  A small kitchen garden indeed, but sufficient for me and my soon-to-be wife.

More photos and updates as they become available.

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