Today was MY official first day of spring.

Everyone has certain things that trigger very specific memories. The kind of memories that are still so real to you it is almost hard to describe exactly the feelings or emotions it evokes because it is such a personal experience. Oddly enough, the first bulbs to bloom in the spring are one of my most powerful memory triggers. It reminds me of my early childhood. Of the flower beds in front of my Grandmas home with those bulbs blooming on days that you still needed to wear a windbreaker type of coat or jacket and yet the air, compared to the long days of winter, felt impossibly warmer than what was read on the temperature gauges. Every spring I go on walks in search of capturing these specific memories and today I found them however, so briefly.

My wife and son and I went on a walk around our neighborhood this afternoon and the bulbs were indeed coming up. It inspired me to get back in my own garden. I had actually spent about 45 minutes this morning raking out some leaves from my beds onto a blue tarp lent to me by my neighbor Chris. The tarp was key. No more bending over to pick up one rake full of leaves at a time and guide them into a lawn bag to carry them across the yard. I was able to get 4 times the amount of leaves raked and put into my leaf pile in about the same amount of time. Just pack it up, slide it across the lawn, and dump it on the pile. Simple. I took a break during my sons nap to take a moment to read and relax myself.

After his nap, we went for a walk complete with a stop at our local neighborhood Biggby Coffee. After our walk, it was back to it. I cleared out about half of the beds and then used a garden fork to break up the soil and till under some of the deteriorating leaves. I was able to glimpse a large amount of worms working in the soil and tried to take care breaking up the soil without completely up heaving it and disrupting the tiny unseen ecosystem at work.

The best part of all of this work is that my family was right there with me. My wife Maggie cleaned and organized the garage where all things garden and grill are kept. And it looks fantastic after serving as a winter storage area. Jacks Grandma Cathie brought him some Easter presents yesterday including some small child size garden tools including a shovel. And Jack put them to good use today.

He probably played in that one spot for a good 30 minutes. Such a good little gardener already. It really does make my heart smile knowing that my love of gardening was passed down to me by my parents and family and that now I am getting to share my passion and love with my children. It is a great feeling.

Other news and notes:
I used some of my extra landscaping bricks (seen pictured above) to put one every four feet or so. This serves as a stepping stone that will help cut down on walking and compacting soil in the garden and are spaced so that I can reach most of the area surrounding with only stepping in the one location. It is important to keep the soil light and fluffy especially when dealing with the area that is getting ready to take on root vegetables.

Some publications will call for this week to be the first week that planting spinach and peas are an option. I've decided to wait as this coming week is calling for freezing temperatures for 3-4 days in a row. Better a little late than a little early when dealing with crops in the spring.

Does anyone else have a spring related or any other memory triggers? If so, what are they? 

Oh right. The leaves. We're gonna need a bigger tarp.

I just went out to my garden area with plans to clear away the leaf mulch and open up the dirt to warmth and birds looking to eat up any pests in the soil.

I came back in 30 minutes later feeling a bit less optimistic.

I ended up raking back an area of about 10X5. I wasn't sure how I was going to transfer the leaves over to the compost area since it is about a 30 foot distance, depending on where you stand in the garden area. I ended up going with filling the old leaf/lawn bags that I had saved from the fall. This sounds like a good idea until you realize that the leaves now weigh about triple what they did in the fall because, unlike in the fall, they are all very wet and compacted. So after filling up two of those bags and carrying them across the yard, I became discouraged that I might finish this project by the summer if I work at it for about 6 hours a day. I need a tarp.

30 minutes of work. A patch of dirt. Impressed?

Enter my good neighbor Chris. I have texted him on the status of borrowing a tarp to rake the leaves onto and then dragging them over to my compost area. We shall see!

Other news and notes:

In the fall when my dad and I were expanding the beds and turning over some dirt, I kept seeing these grey, papery and very old looking bulbs. We discarded as many as possible but just thought they might be old relics of humans past. I think we were wrong about the ancient looking part. After lifting some of the leaves in the area where we found the majority of these bulbs, I have discovered they are very much alive and very much sprouting up through the dirt. I pulled as many as I could see. Add that to the check list of things to do.

A positive note! I was able to check my PH levels in a few different areas of my garden and they all read right around 7. While that is slightly alkaline, it is well within the range of most plants growing conditions. Most plants usually thrive in the 6 to 7 range with only acid loving plants going below the 6.

While I am feeling a little overwhelmed at this point, I know that with some hard work, I'll be able to get it done in the next couple of weeks.

The Sweet and The Spicy

This past weekend was the time to start my pepper seeds indoors. I've tried to set up Saturday's as my seed starting day for each week but this Saturday I was quite busy. My family and I ventured down to Farmington Hills (about an hour drive from Lansing) to visit my friend from childhood and school, Mr. Steve Pyrc and his beautiful family. It was a day spent visiting, watching basketball, and eating. Our daughter and his two daughters seemed to play wonderfully together (even if they got a little tired of Jack trying to enter and disrupt their play space). The day was a success and saw us getting home much later than the kids normal bed time. After their one moment of over tired crying (our 6 year old while still half asleep from the car started crying claiming she didn't get to do everything she wanted. This must have included sleeping on the couch because that is exactly what she did as soon as we entered the house), they went to bed shortly after we got home.

Speaking of watching basketball and March Madness, I believe I have a different kind of March Madness. The urge to plant more things than I should before it is time. As I got out my pepper seeds, I found myself getting out all kinds of different seeds thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could get away with planting them. So, on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, I attempted to get my madness under control and rechecked the planting and starting dates for all of the other seeds I had in front of me. All except for the peppers needed to wait (which I knew but momentarily lacked the self control to execute). So on Sunday I put in cayenne pepper seeds as well as Red Knight bell pepper seeds. I grew the cayenne's last year and they were wonderfully spicy. I still have some dried in my spice cabinet. The Red Knight bell peppers are a new strain I am trying that are good early as green peppers or for letting them ripen to red peppers.

I won't bore you with the pictures of just plain dirt that the seeds are in. Peppers are notorious for slow germination but as soon as they come up, pictures will go up. Until then I'll continue to keep an eye on my sprouts that I already have and on this weather. You know, the weather that stubbornly is staying around 30 degrees and refusing to warm up. Soon enough I suppose :)

Happy First Day of Spring

Spring is officially here and yet looking outside it still has that powdery white wintery sheen. It lends to the kind of confusion expressed yesterday by my 6 year old step daughter. Here is the conversation I had with her yesterday

Her: I can't wait for tomorrow.
Me: Why is that?
Her: Because it is the first day of spring! And then it will be warm and sunny.
Me: Hahahhaha. That isn't exactly how it works kid. It's still going to be cold tomorrow.
Her: But.... it will be spring. That means it is supposed to be warm.
Me: It means it will START to get warmer as the days go on but it doesn't mean it is going to be warm exactly on the first day of spring.
Her: Oh....

Classic.

A few days ago, Saturday to be exact, I observed the first sprouts from the Mini Red Purplette onions coming up. And this is what they look like today, a mere 4 days later.

The Lisbon bunching green onions have yet to sprout. I'm not sure if this is due to different germination times or if the seed just isn't as viable since it is about 2 years old. Depending on what happens the next week or so I may try another batch to see if any of those sprout.

Also, today I discovered my first Lavender sprout.

It is tiny but there!

And finally just a few pictures of the rest of the seedlings and their progression.

I've been rotating the seeds daily so they don't develop a permanent slant towards the sun. Need them to get well rounded exposure to the sun in order to be healthy transplants! I also snipped out a couple seedlings today in order to prevent over crowding. It wasn't as painful as I imagined it would be.

My next steps and thoughts are when I should do a first round of diluted fertilizer for the seedlings to keep them growing strong. Also, keeping an eye on the weather and temps to know when I should start to harden them off before I put them out in the garden. The good news about the garden window is that on the lower level the window opens up which may help with the hardening off process by exposing them to some cooler temperatures and some breeze.

This coming weekend will be another big planting weekend as I have a few different kinds of seeds going into the dirt. Stay tuned!

Tis the season...

Common Weed Identification
A few of my common nemesis are in here. Bindweed, I'm looking at you. What weeds do you annually have problems with in your garden/yard??

Thinking Green

I've spent a good part of this Saturday morning of St. Patrick's Day Eve listening to Celtic and Irish music thanks to my friend Elizabeth who, through a Facebook email, sent me on a wild goose chase to track down an instrumental Irish song of which neither of us knew the name and only one of us knew the song by ear. It was eventually found and left me with the want to continue to listen to the music to further the spirit of the holiday. Thanks Liz!

Speaking of St. Patrick's Day, it has always been one of my favorites because of what it symbolizes for me. Green. The turning of the seasons not being far around the corner. The first new green growth of the up and coming spring. Now today in Michigan we have about an inch of snow on the ground but my hopes shall not be dashed! I have my own bit of spring in my garden window that is green and growing nicely. Here are some updated pictures. These are all seeds I had planted a week ago today and include the broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce. The onions, rosemary, and lavender have all yet to sprout but that is to be expected as they take a bit longer.

Right now my biggest worry for these seedlings is hoping they get enough light so they don't stretch and become "leggy" and the eventual heart break of thinning them before they get too big. I know they are just small leaflets but it's always an emotional process killing them off to make more room for the others.

I should also mention that on Thursday I went and picked up 4 55 gallon barrels. They cost me $15 dollars a piece for a grand total of $60 dollars. I have to thank my neighbors/friends Chris for letting me use his truck to go pick up the barrels. There was no way they were going to fit in an Impala or a Mini Van. (Your payment of beer is still coming, no worries). Also to Jon for a future thank you as he is taking me under his wing in the next few weeks and helping me get all the supplies and set up required to re-purpose them into actual rain barrels. No gardener or farmer was ever successful without a little help from others and the same goes for myself.

There they are. My bright blue barrels. I'll take another picture in a few weeks when they are all set up and ready to go.

I was thinking of starting my red bell peppers and cayenne pepper seeds today but I think I will hold off until next week as the weather is suppose to be cold (20's and 30's) for the next week or so and these plants are best germinated at higher soil temps into the 80's. If the daytime highs are into the 40's then that is achievable from the heat generated in the garden window (I checked soil temps this past week when it was in the 40's) but I fear before that I would just be wasting and possibly rotting away my seeds anyway. One more week won't kill me :) Patience, right?

Sprouts!

I will start off this post with an admission of errors. In one of my earlier posts when I mentioned what seeds I had started on March 9th, I forgot about my Di Cicco Broccoli, Mixed Color Cauliflower, and White Snow Crown Cauliflower that I had planted. I have since updated that post (you can even go check!) to show the correct information.

Now with that said, I had to update that because this morning when I went to check on my seeds, TADA! I discovered some sprouts. The broccoli, one of the cauliflowers, and one of the Cos lettuce had some sprouts growing. I took the soil temperature this morning and it read around 55-60 degrees F which tells me that during the day with the sun shining in the window it is probably hitting around 65 degrees (I'll double check that today) but certainly warm enough to induce sprouting in these cool weather crops. 5 days isn't bad at all to see sprouting. In fact, I am inclined to believe that is pretty decent.

I took some close up pictures in the hopes that you may be able to see some of this seasons first growth. I will be the first to admit that I do not have a super high tech expensive camera so you may have trouble making out the small seedlings. That is ok. I can only hope they will grow soon enough to be much more visible :)

Here are the broccoli

 Two on the bottom part of the picture. The flash made them appear more whitish but they are there

This sprout is visible on the left part of the container

Here is two cauliflower sprouts located in the north and south part of the picture

And this is the lettuce sprout located on the left side of the picture. 

This was a pleasant surprise this morning. Now comes the hard part. Keeping them alive and healthy!

Some tips for rain barrels

Today I am going to be picking up 4 of the 55 gallon food grade blue barrels to re-purpose them into rain barrels. This will be my first experience with rain barrels so I am always on the look out for tips and hints. Here are a few I found today:

Want to know how to keep rainwater from growing algae? Here are some simple tips:
- Clean your barrels thoroughly with vinegar and check whether any algae is growing on the sides regularly
- Keep barrels covered and out of the sun as much as possible
- Clean roof surfaces and guttering regularly
- Stop organic matter like leaves being swept down into the barrels using mesh around your guttering down pipe entrances

Just a few pictures for an idea of what the main beds look like out back. Covered with leaves over winter for good free mulch protection!

Getting started

For the past few weeks my spring fever has reached new heights after lying in wait all winter. I've been out and about looking at all things garden and garden centers. Most are meager pickings as I'm sure they don't anticipate a whole bunch of people coming in at the beginning of March demanding to know what they have in stock for vertical growing. But I have found some things. I've picked up some 6 foot tall bamboo poles of varying thickness. I purchased some chicken wire fencing for a few different projects. I've also picked out a few seed packets that were forgotten about in my original order of seeds from companies like Johnny Seeds and Seed Saver Exchange.

On Saturday, I planted the first seeds of the season in containers to go into the garden window where I have previously sprouted all of my other seeds. The seeds that are now started include:

2 different kinds of onions (Green bunching onion and a Mini Red Purplette onion)
True Lavender
Rosemary
Parris Island Cos Lettuce
Di Cicco Brocolli
Multi Colored Cauliflower packet mix
White Snow Crown Cauliflower

This is what they look like on an overcast rainy/snowy day. Doesn't instill much confidence in the sun they'll need to get but I promise this has worked before on much more sun loving plants.

Every week I'll be either putting something into the garden or into starters and I'll upload a picture or two for your amusement/critique.

What seeds have you started already? Or, if you haven't started yet, what seeds are you looking to start first?

Welcome to Gerich Gardens

At the prompting of my wife and a few friends, I have decided to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard would be more appropriate) and start documenting my adventures as an organic urban gardener. When we first bought our home in Lansing Michigan, I discovered a border along half of our backyard of somewhat abandoned raised beds. Having always wanted my own yard to grow things in, I attempted to put some plants down in the spring of 2011.

A few things were working against me here. 1) Looking back, I was woefully unaware of exactly how gardening worked other than you put seeds in the ground and they grow. Simply put, I had not done my research. Prompt set up for failure. And 2) We had a tree in our backyard whose canopy was rapidly expanding and saw fit that most of our back yard was shaded from all but about 25% of the sun from May until October. I started getting a hint that may be a problem when the grass refused to grow due to lack of sun and quickly turned into a mud pit. 

Now, after my failure and disappointment, I set out to do some reading and research to see what I had done wrong. Answer? Nearly everything. So I set out to learn some more. By the next year (2012) I vowed to plant tomatoes, cayenne pepper and basil. It worked and I harvested large amounts of all three. Now looking back on even less then a year later I feel like I was somewhat in the dark still. I've spent so much time reading and researching that  feel like I am going into this year with an entirely new view point (and I'm sure I'll feel the same way next year about this years growing season). For instance, last year I didn't properly plan on trellising or staking the tomatoes so I was caught completely off guard when they grew and sprawled 8 feet long, running over the puny tomato cages I had set out. Despite that, I still managed to harvest plenty of tomatoes that, when processed and frozen, stayed with us well into December and January.

As I've mentioned, I've spent this past fall and winter reading up, studying, acting like I was going to take a huge test (which, lets face it, I kind of am and my grade will be decided by the amount of produce I... well, produce).

So throughout the season, I will be posting about the different steps and where I am at in all of it with my garden. I hope anyone out there reading will feel encouraged to try some things for themselves, to ask questions, and to share. Because, for me, that is what a lot of this is all about. Sharing knowledge, experience, and the literal fruits of labor and love.

Here are a few pictures from the Garden last summer (2012)