Temperature and Seed Germination

I am one of those people who like to see results as quickly as possible.  I guess I have gotten used to our modern world where everything is now now now!  We hate to wait.  This is especially true for me and my garden stuffs.  I want it to be as fabulous as possible and I want that fabulousness to be right away.  Sometimes it can be frustrating starting your garden from seed because it takes so much longer for it to get that full and thriving look.  The gratification is not as instant as putting in plants that are already developed.

If you are planting from seed and you want the fastest results possible, then I suggest that you pay attention to the temperatures that you sow your seeds.  Different plants have optimum temperatures that allows for faster germination as well as a greater likelihood for emergence.  I found the following chart at this website and I have found it quite useful when starting my seeds.

For each plant, the first number represents the percentage of seeds that successfully emerged.  So, looking at the first vegetable, asparagus, you can see that at 32 & 41 degrees, no plants emerged.  At 50 degrees 61% of the plants emerged.  The second number in parentheses represents the number of days it took the seeds to emerge.  So at 50 degrees it took 53 days for the plants to pop up.  Way too long, if you ask me.  For each plant one of the numbers in parentheses is red.  This represents the optimum temperature in terms of speed of emergence as well as the highest success rate of emergence.  Make sense?  So if I wanted to grow asparagus, my best bet for having quickly sprouting plants would be to keep them around 77 degrees, and about ten days later...pop!  I should be seeing some little plants poking their heads up.  I find this useful especially when putting my seeds in their jiffy seed starters.  I try to keep seeds with like temperatures together to so I can monitor how warm or cool they are.  So far, it's been working.  My plants that took the longest to sprout were my peppers.  Compared to how quickly everything else was popping up, waiting over a week for those little guys felt like forever.  But now my seeds have all sprouted and it is just a matter of time before I transition them into their forever homes - the garden boxes.

Starting from Seed

In the past, whenever I have planted my garden, I have always gone the easy route and bought seedlings from Home Depot or my local nursery.  However, the prices always seemed to quickly add up and soon I was having to justify to my husband (and myself) why I spent a month's worth of grocery money on plants that weren't even producing yet.  Last year was the first time I put some serious effort into having a majority of my garden planted from seed.  Not only would this help save on costs, but I found it also gave me more satisfaction.  Kind of like the difference you feel between making a cake from scratch or from the box.  Both taste good and will serve the purpose, but you just feel so much more accomplished when you put a little more oomph into it.  Plus, people are far more impressed when you say, "Yeah, I made that from scratch."  Not that I would ever be fishing for compliments or anything.

Anyhow, seeds.  One of the reasons why I shied away from them in the past was that they were wildly unsuccessful for me.  If I planted them straight in the ground then the birds would come by and eat many of them, and if I tried to start them indoors, I would just get frustrated with all the dirt spilling and my containers disintegrating and I would go out and buy plants anyway.  That is, until I discovered this beauty:

It is a mini greenhouse for starting off seeds.  While I am sure a real gardener could do just fine without this, let me list for you the reasons why I love it.

1) It is cheap - I buy mine for about $5 at Wal-Mart - cheaper than peat pots and seed starter mix.
2) It is complete - just add seeds.  I don't have to fuss with dirt or mix.  All I do is add water to the peat pellets, watch them while they puff up (which is more fun than you might think) and then press my seeds inside.
3) It is not messy - I pop the lid on and I can easily carry and move my 72 future plants without worrying about pots tipping or water leaking.
4) It takes the guesswork out of watering - the greenhouse lid holds in moisture so once the initial watering is done, you don't have to add anymore. 
5) It protects my seeds - the lid keeps birds and pests away from my seeds/seedlings so I don't have to.

This year I am starting my garden entirely by seed and I have three of these things sprouting away.  If you are planning on doing a smaller garden, they also offer smaller sizes as well so you aren't overwhelmed with plants.

It is so fun to watch your greenhouse go from this:

To this almost overnight (at least it feels that way to me).

How about you?  What are you secrets for starting seeds? 

Time for the Box Building

After all my research I decided on the size and type of raised bed I was going to build.  I planned my boxes to be 4' wide x 8' long x 12" deep and to be made out of treated lumber.  Now that my mind was made up, all I needed to do was go to Home Depot to pick up the supplies. 

For about $20 a pop, Home Depot sells boards that are 2x12x8 (meaning 2" thick, 12" wide, and 8' long).  For each box, I would need three boards.  The two side boards wouldn't need any kind of cuts, and I would only have to make one cut to cut the third board in half to make my 4' width. 

The last piece of lumber I needed was a 4x4 to act as the anchor for my sides.  An eight foot long 4x4 was about $10 and could be cut into eight 12" pieces - enough for two garden boxes. 

For those of you doing the math, that makes my raised beds about $65 for a 4x8.  Much better than any other prices out there.  Add on the cost of chicken wire, screws, and liner plastic (I'll explain how I used all that next) and the cost is probably closer to about $75 - 80 per box, but still, the price can't  be beat.    

With all my materials picked out, it was time to start cutting and building.  I am by no means a carpenter, or even close to it. I had never even operated a power saw prior to building the boxes. And, with the magic of Home Depot, I did not have to operate a saw while building the boxes.

Home Depot offers a cutting service right there in the store.  I was able to choose my lumber, find an associate, and tell them the length of cuts I wanted and they took care of it right there.  If you are planning on doing smaller boxes, you can buy a smaller piece of wood and have them cut it to your size.  There was a sign posted that said after the first five cuts there was an additional .10 charge per cut, but I was never charged.  However, I would have happily paid the extra .10 if it meant it would save me time and a finger or two and the cost of having to rent a saw.

Home I went with all my supplies and I set them up on the driveway.  The set-up of the boxes looked something like this:

 I just laid out all of the pieces, put in a 4x4 anchor in each corner and got to screwing my boards together.  I probably used too many screws, but I would rather be safe than sorry in having my boxes stay together, so each side got three screws into the support, and two screws into the neighboring board.  Make sure if you are using PT wood you buy hot-dipped galvanized screws so that they hold up.

Once all the sides are screwed together, you should have a garden box.  It's not much to look at, especially compared to what some real carpenters can do (as evidenced by my college roomate's herb box that her very talented father built her), but it is easy to make and will serve its purpose. 

   
Once your box is all together it is time to put on the screen to keep the gophers out.  You can use any kind of wire or mesh material, just make sure it will withstand pounds of wet, soggy dirt on top of it, and have small enough holes that gophers or other pests can't get through.  I used chicken wire just because we had some left over from building our chicken coop.  Cut it to size and staple it to the bottom of your box.  Now is also the time to add plastic to the sides of your box if you want to protect the wood from the soil (or in my case, protect my soil from my wood).  I just cut strips to size and stapled them all along the sides of the boxes wherever soil might touch wood..  Between the plastic and the chicken wire, it makes for an ugly mash of materials, but once the boxes are full of dirt and plants, they are pretty as can be. 

So, to sum it up, for 4x8 garden boxes you need:
3 4x8x12 boards
1 8' 4x4
power drill
screws
chicken wire (optional)
plastic liner (optional)

Of course, if you are better with the saw than I am, there are plenty of great designs out there.  Here are free plans for a few I found.  They are still simple, but more look more polished than mine.  Maybe one day when I am more learned in the ways of wood I will try my hand at something more aesthetically pleasing.  But for now, I am happy with what I've got.

Plan 1
Plan 2
Plan 3

What is your experience building garden beds?  Do you have a quick, easy way that looks great?

Garden Boxes

After much hemming and hawing and looking through all my options I decided my best bet for ridding myself of my gopher problem once and for all was to just let them be.  Any solution I looked into seemed temporary and I didn't want to go to a bunch of work just to have the gophers pop back up and ruin it all again.  So I talked my husband into the idea that we needed to have garden boxes.  Above ground gardening seems to be all the rage these days, and I am always one for hopping on the bandwagon.  Plus, I could line the bottom of my boxes with some sort of barrier to prevent the gophers from getting into my plants.  It seemed like a win-win.  A win that is, until I looked at the price of garden boxes.  Ooof!  There was no way I could justify spending $100+ dollars on a 4x4 box (sometimes even smaller).  Sure, they were pretty and classy and made of cedar, but sadly, they just weren't for a poor teacher like me.  If you're a baller, or are just planning on doing one or two boxes, premade raised garden box kits might be a great option.  This one from Sears below was the best deal I've found so far.  If there is something else out there that you know about, I'd love to hear it. 

(sears.com $142 for a 4x6)

Since I really had no idea where to start with making raised garden beds, I decided to troll the Internet for some information about making garden boxes i.e. ideal sizes, treated wood vs. non-treated wood, longevity, etc.  Here's what I found out:

Size:

If you are making your own, the size of your garden box is entirely up to you.  You can adjust it to your own needs and to to fit whatever space you have available.  One measurement to take into consideration is the width of your boxes.  Although it might be tempting to get into the "bigger is better" mindset, you want to remember that you should be able to comfortably reach all of the plants within the box.  For that reason, most sites suggested not exceeding 4' in width.  That way, you can easily and comfortably access all your veggies for pruning, weeding, and picking from both sides of the box.  Second, you want to make sure that you make your boxes sufficiently deep.  Your plants need to have enough soil to form a nice, deep root system.  While there are slight variations to the depth, 12" seems to be generally accepted as the best height to provide enough space for most vegetable plants.  Of course, you can always go deeper, but that also increases the cost of wood and soil needed to fill the boxes.   

Pressure-treated wood vs. Au natural wood:

This seems to be a rather touchy topic depending on who you talk to.  There are many different opinions out there.  Here's the summary of what I gathered.  If you are going for all-natural organic farming then you need to go the non-treated route.  You can buy straight pine (the least expensive option) and take your chances with rotting, or shell out more upfront for rot-resistant woods like cedar and redwood, and have your boxes around longer.  If you are interested in something even more long-term (and less expensive) than cedar, you can use pressure-treated wood.  Pressure-treated wood is wood that has been injected with chemical preservatives that decrease rot and insect infestation.  Although ACQ treated wood today is far better than the CCA of 20 years ago (see article here), there are still concerns with the chemicals leaching into the soil and being absorbed by your plants.  Tests have shown that the amount that plants absorb is so low it is virtually undetectable - but there still is absorption.  The choice is entirely up to you.  As for me, I went with the pressure-treated wood.  I wanted something that would stand the test of time and still be affordable.  And as one poster said in a forum I read on the topic, "I'd rather take my chances with pressure-treated wood than continue to eat veggies which have been doused with chemicals from day one."  On that, I wholeheartedly agree.  So I think whether you are using treated or non-treated wood, growing your own veggies is instantly a better way to go.       

Longevity:  

Untreated pine: 2-3 years (sometimes more)

Untreated cedar or redwood: 15-25 years

Treated wood: 40+ years

(source here)

The life of your garden boxes, no matter what type of wood you get, can be extended a couple of different ways.  Trying oiling the boxes with linseed oil, line the inside of your box with plastic to keep the wet soil from coming in contact with your wood (this is what I do and it also helps prevent chemicals from leaching into your soil if you are using PT wood), or use a regular wood stain or sealant. 

Alternative materials:

I haven't explored much into using alternative materials as garden beds, wood ones seemed to be the easiest and most  cost-effective route for me, but if you are interested in seeing what your other options are, here is an article that gives a couple ideas about how to recycle old items around the house into raised beds.  Have you ever made any garden beds out of something unique?

   

Garden: Attempt One

My first attempt at a garden in our new house was a rather pathetic one.  Along our side fence we had a retaining wall that was about 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep and ran the length of our entire backyard.  I thought this would provide the perfect raised garden bed without much work.  So I went about to weeding and tilling and fertilizing and planting.  I didn't know much about gardening (still working on that part) so I just grabbed some plants from Home Depot, stuck them in, and waited.  Here is what came out of it. 

It may not look like much, but I was thrilled!  I'd happily wander outside every evening after work and see what new goodies I could pick.  We'd have zucchini-based products for breakfast, lunch and dinner (since zucchini was the best grower and made me feel like a gardening champ).  But then, something tragic happened; my plants started to disappear.  One day there would be a gorgeous, thriving zucchini plant and the next the entire plant would be gone with only one or two leaves left above the soil.  There was a thief in my midst, a vegetable murderer: I had gophers.

 (image from earth-cards.com)

Evil demon creatures eating up my vegetables and hard work.  I couldn't figure out a way to get rid of them.  Poisoning was not an option because I didn't want to be responsible for some poor neighborhood cat eating a poisoned gopher.  Smoking them out wasn't feasible since I didn't want those chemicals soaking into my garden's soil, and setting traps wouldn't work since I am a sissy and I don't think I could handle removing a dead/mostly dead rodent from a trap.  My conundrum continued (and so did those rotten gophers) until my garden ended up looking like this: 

 

Look at that rodent-ridden barren wasteland.  I hated seeing my plants destroyed.  After all, I had raised them from seedlings.  I had watered and weeded and fed them.  We were pals (not in the sing my plants to sleep way, but in the open my windows in the morning look out at the beautiful vegetation and say, "Hello garden!" kind of  a way).  I decided that if I was going to give gardening another shot, I couldn't have my heart broken again.  I would have to find a way to outsmart the  tricky cratogeomys castanops - scientific speak for gopher.  My research began.

Have you ever dealt with gophers?  What did you do to get rid of them?  Or are you a better person than me and you have learned how to peacefully cohabitate with nature?

Take Me Back to the Start

Growing up my mother always had a summer garden. I remember her getting ready to cook dinner and she would just go out the back and come in with an armful of fresh produce. She likes to tell how when I was younger, I would refuse to eat a tomato if it wasn't homegrown. Our front yard was full of fruit trees and each summer we would help pick apples and plums and apricots to get ready for pies and jamming. All this bounty came from my parents' modestly sized lot. I learned early on that if you plan for it, you can have a beautiful garden without a lot of space.

When my husband and I first purchased our house a couple years ago, we did it knowing that it had a lot of potential.  Being first-time homebuyers we weren't looking to get anything grand or spectacular; we just wanted something we could call OURS.  Our modest l962 home fit the bill, but the part that got me really excited was the yard.  Just look at this beauty:

Dead grass and dirt as far as the eye can see!  Like I said, we bought for potential.  And from the beginning, I had dreams of transforming that dirt into something like this:

  (photo courtesy of bhg.com)

   

We had have a long way to go.