If It Ain't One Thing, It's Another, And if It Ain't That, It's Somethin' Else!

The thing that the beginning gardener/homesteader will learn most quick, is that something is always going Mother Nature way instead of yours. How in the world do you stay ahead of every little crisis that rears up? Are they truly crises? Today, when I went to check on my garden, I noticed that the potato plants in the trash cans looked wilted. It was almost the kind of look a plant gets when they have gone without watering too long. It couldn't have been that because the soil was moist, but not wet. I noticed little critters flying away when I disturbed the foliage. So what did the organic gardener wannabe do? He temporarily saved his taters by using garden dust. Now I need to learn how not to resort to what another gardener referred to as, "the big guns." There are other ways to fight pests and diseases. I do hate thinking of losing a whole crop to an ideology though. I'll find my way. No doubt about that.

One Product That Works!

Shortly after I planted my fruit trees, I noticed that the deer had stripped the leaves clean off of one of my apple trees. I wasn't very happy about that. I started to make cages to put around the trees, but I wasn't too happy about that either. I went to the Garden Co-op, and they sold a product to me called Liquid Fence. It should be called Liquid Stench, but I digress. The point is, it works! I wonder if it is the same as the homemade rotten egg stuff I've read about? I may try that next year. Anyway, I spray it on the foliage once a week unless it rains heavily. The deer have not bothered the trees since. They still come in the yard and I have watched them grazing on the weeds in the backyard, but they have left my trees alone! The tree that they did eat has new growth so all is forgiven.

What Have I Learned So Far?

When you start something that is outside of your main experiences, you are bound to make mistakes. Heck! You're bound to make mistakes dealing with things you are well trained for. I think it is just as true that if you don't think about the mistakes you have made, and plan to not repeat them in the future, you are guaranteed to repeat them. This is a record of the things I've done so far this year that can be improved upon.

I started my seeds indoors on March 9th and 12th for many of the crops I was planning to raise this year, but I didn't get them planted in the garden until May 9th. I don't have a greenhouse nor do I have grow lights to use indoors. All of my seedlings became very leggy. I learned three important things. First, it is critical that seedlings get the proper amount and quality of light or they will not thrive. They do grow, but they become spindly and weak. Second, planting particular crops at the correct time is also critical to good growth. Cold weather crops are just that. I planted between a month and two months too late for many of my crops. Others that were planted at the proper time from seedlings are doing poorly because they were weak and leggy. Last, it is very important to harden off seedlings. My peppers are doing horribly because they got burned by the sun. They are weeks behind where they should be and don't appear to be growing at all. Hopefully they are busy developing roots!

I have also learned that you can't learn to garden organically by reading. You can read until your eyeballs explode, but it won't prepare you for those emergencies that crop up seemingly overnight. Only experience can do that, and in a pinch it is very easy to reach for a chemical. I didn't want to lose a whole crop of dry beans to rust so I went and bought a fungicide. The disease appeared overnight; I was weeding in the garden yesterday and the beans were beautiful. When I came out this morning, they were covered with little brown spots. Now comes the learning part. What are the alternatives to fungicide? Is the disease a crop killer, or does it simply reduce the harvest size? As a home gardener, I could put up with crop reduction if I had to, but I could not abide by a total loss. Perhaps the wisest thing for me to do is to find organic gardeners in my locale and meet with them.

I have grown corn for two years now. Both years saw the wind flatten the entire bed. I've had to stake and string up the corn so it won't fall over. Why am I having to do this? I thought it might be that I wasn't planting the seed deep enough, but I know I followed the packet instructions. I was reading the other day that some Indians planted their corn quite deep at 12 inches. I need to investigate this further. That seems like it couldn't possibly work. In Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening" he mentions that it is ok to plant seeds much deeper because the soil mix you make is very friable and lose. I should do a test and plant a few seeds at 3 and 5 inches to see if they come up.

My other great experiment resulted from a refusal to pay big bucks to construct a compost bin out of steel bar and cinder blocks or to build an eyesore out of discarded pallets. I remember piles of organic waste at a facility in Germany. It wasn't contained in walls of cement or wood. I am trying to see if I can do the same thing on a small scale. In fact, I should be turning the pile right now and wetting it down a bit. We'll see how it works.

I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. I will sit and reflect on this as I sip a beer and look out over my farm (after I turn the compost pile).