How to grow tomatoes- Part 2

1. Once your cute little seedlings grow their second set of leaves, they need to be thinned out and transplanted into larger containers. 
2. First, let's discuss thinning out. Because you planted 1-3 seeds per container, (in our case, we may have planted more like 10 seeds per container...whoops, don't do that) there's a chance that all 3 seeds have sprouted (again, in our case, we had some containers with all 10 seeds sprouted...we may have underestimated our growing abilities). So you need to literally thin out the seedlings, aka, separate the sprouts from each other so they can grow individually and not crowd each other. Do this CAREFULLY as the roots are very delicate.  I found it was easiest to scoop everything out of the container and then gently pull each sprout with it's roots apart from it's neighbor.
3. Next, re-plant each individual sprout into a larger container with potting soil. If you were like us and a little too generous with how many seeds you initially planted, you'll end up with lots of containers... so you'll have to be creative about finding places to put them...

   4.  Same as before, give them lots of water and sunshine.

   5.  Once your seedlings grow their third set of leaves, (they will be roughly 5-6" in height), they are

        ready to join the big leagues in the garden!

Dirt Removal: Final Chapter

As you can see by the title of this post, our dirt removal woes have FINALLY ended. After the many disappointments and failures, Plan E proved to be stalwart. I can't express to you how accomplished we both felt and still feel, after finally ridding ourselves of over half a ton of old dirt.  Here's how it all happened:

It began with a night of, you guessed it, MORE digging. Yippee, my new favorite pastime.  We headed into the backyard, both of us having just finished jogging and thus full of endorphins and energy.  Our bags of dirt were not in the best shape after three days of heavy rainfall.  Nonetheless, we each took a stance over one of the lumpy, "unliftable" bags now covered in pools of swampy smelling water and mud, and began shoveling out small clumps of dirt which we then threw into new, freshly opened Hefty bags. Though it was dark at this point, our one motion-detecting light was able to provide visibility. Although... I learned a couple things about our motion-detecting light that night.  One, the light only shines brightly for about 30 seconds after detecting motion.  After this 30 seconds, the light becomes significantly dimmer.  This wouldn't be a problem at all if it weren't for the second thing I learned about this light:  It seems to be very picky about the types of movements it deems worthy enough to earn its light.  Thus, we found that the only acceptable movement involved jumping up and down and waving our arms all while positioned in one far corner of the patio, nowhere near to where all of the "unliftable" bags of dirt were in fact sitting.  So you can imagine how quickly our frustration developed when we were forced to stop digging every 30 seconds in order to walk over to that specific area of the backyard and "charm" our motion-detecting light with our frenetic movements. After doing this 14 or 15 times, we both decided it was less obnoxious to work in near darkness.  Remember when I said we were full or endorphins and energy? Yea, that lasted about 5 minutes, after which, we grew increasingly ornery. There we were, bundled up in 5 or 6 layers (because the Northeast winter finally decided to show up, 4 months late, which is especially cruel after that summer tease we had a few weeks ago) shoveling dirt from one open bag to another, all in the dark, at 10 at night, cursing anything in sight- stupid dirt, stupid shovel, stupid bag, stupid LIGHT- all the while, our bags felt as though they were cloning themselves.

It sucked.

And then we were miraculously done, save the 3 bags that we had initially left in the alleyway.  But, when we went to retrieve them, we instead encountered a large, pigeon-y looking bird sitting right next to the bags, almost as if it were standing guard...weird.  We slowly approached the bags and bird, growing more and more nervous, as this bird was not moving, but instead sitting there, staring at us. We whispered back and forth- What should we do?! This is creepy! Should we leave the bags?? No! We've come so far, we're almost done! Okay fine, should we move slowly?! I don't know! I'm scared! Should we just grab them and run? Why are we whispering? Is it even alive?!- I might also mention, that this seemingly pathetic fear of birds is ENTIRELY warranted due to a previous incident in which a bird broke into our apartment, completely unannounced, and proceeded to hide for several hours, and then pop out, scaring the living daylights out of us, and then fly around like a crazy person, completely at random, for several days before finally departing...but I won't get into that...back to the very suspenseful part of this story.  We continued to step closer, our eyes darting back and forth between the bags and the bird.  We were only a few feet away, furiously debating whether or not this bird was in fact alive, when, quite suddenly, it moved. I won't embarrass myself by narrating the next 10 seconds of my life, but let's just say, this effectively ended our work for that evening.

A few days later, the Polish men from Craigslist returned. Without a word, they began moving out the roughly 30 bags of dirt, including the few we had left in the alleyway, from our backyard to their truck out front.  20 minutes and $125 (TOTALLY worth it) later, we were dirt free.

It was, quite possibly, the best day of my life.

Fertilizing 101

Look at what has just arrived on our doorstep! Yes, that’s right, it’s every girl's dream…a box of organic fertilizers! Could this day BE any more exciting?? No it could not.

At least that was our initial reaction when this adorable miniature farmhouse of plant nutrients showed up at our apartment last weekend. Our enthusiasm lingered just long enough for us to rip open the package, remove the various colorful bottles,  and come to the unfortunate realization that we had absolutely NO idea what we were doing (in case you haven’t noticed, this seems to be a common theme). Here’s a glimpse of what we found inside:

16 oz BioThrive Grow

16 oz BioThrive Bloom

8 oz CaMg+

8 oz BioRoot

8 oz BioWeed

8 oz BioMud

8 oz BioMarine

8 oz Diamond Black

Umm…..what? Should we be totally ashamed to admit we were expecting one giant bottle that said something along the lines of “Organic Plant Fertilizer- use daily” ?? Apparently this was going to take even more research than we originally predicted.

Thankfully, the General Organics website appears to have been designed specifically with ignoramuses like us in mind. “Growing vegetables? In soil? Great! Follow this schedule without knowing a THING about plants and your veggies will grow big and strong and beautiful!”

Okay- seems simple enough, BUT, being the gigantic science nerd that I am I clearly wanted to know more about what was going on here. After all, I do have a Master’s degree in nutrition. I could explain to you the path of Vitamin A in the human body without a second thought, but I literally could not describe how photosynthesis works without a deep investigation into the pages of Wikipedia. I happen to find this rather embarrassing.

As it turns out, there are tons of resources through the USDA, state and local departments of agriculture, and local cooperative extensions that are just dying to teach us city-dwellers a thing or two about plants and how to grow them. This particular info on plant nutrition was mostly taken from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ website. The segment was actually entitled “KidsWorld: Plant Nutrition,” but hey, who am I to discriminate? Here’s a summary of the basics so you can sound super smart and informed the next time you happen to be hanging out with a hot group of organic farmers or botanists (you never know?):

Plants need 3 non-mineral nutrients and 13 mineral nutrients to survive. Non-mineral nutrients come from air and water: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. In photosynthesis, plants use energy from the sun to convert these into starches and sugar for food! Hooray!

The 13 mineral nutrients come from the soil. Soil doesn’t always have enough of these nutrients for plants to thrive, which is why we need these crazy organic fertilizers. The mineral nutrients are divided into macronutrients and micronutrients.

Primary macronutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium – plants need tons of these so they usually need to be added to the soil and are the main components of fertilizers. Our organic fertilizers source these from natural foods like seaweed and squid. Regular fertilizers add specific ratios of these nutrients, designated on the package in the form N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium). 

Secondary macronutrients: calcium, magnesium, sulfur – calcium and magnesium are usually added to the soil to make it more alkaline (more on this later), and sulfur comes from decomposing organic matter, like compost (more on this later, too).

Micronutrients: boron, copper, iron, chloride, manganese, molybdenum, zinc – again, compost is an excellent source of these minerals, but they can also be added into fertilizers.

There are lots of other factors that play into the nutrient composition of the soil, like texture, pH, temperature, etc…but this possibly exceeds the scope of Fertilizing 101... so you will have to stay tuned!

Dirt Removal: Chapter 4

Plan D, once it became a plan, made us smack our heads over our stupidity for not thinking of it WAY earlier. All this time we had been trying to figure out how we'd get this dirt out ourselves, but duh, we would pay someone to take away the dirt for us! And, upon searching Craig's List we found that there was quite a market for "backyard rubbish removal." So the next day, I called one of the listings, negotiated a price of $150 and made an appointment for that evening.

I waited in anticipation. When I finally got a knock on our front door, I opened it to see two giant men and one giant truck. All good signs. I happily lead them to our backyard and presented the haphazardly thrown bags. One of the men immediately stepped forward, moved to lift a bag, failed to lift the bag, and concluded, in a heavy Polish accent, that the bags were "unliftable." I mean, I knew they were "unliftable" by someone like me, but I assumed that for these men, the bags would somehow be "liftable." I guess not. They instructed me to redistribute the dirt amongst more bags, so they were lighter. And then, they left. It took only 3 minutes for Plan D to completely crumble.

And now it's today. I'm sitting in our backyard, smiling at our garden and then cringing at those bags, which are growing heavier by the day, I'm sure of it. They stare back, mocking me as I strategize on Plan E.

"body" bags

Dirt Removal: Chapter 3

Fast forward from the joy of breaking ground and getting started on our garden in the beautiful sunshine, to five days later, at night, when I glanced outside and saw to my horror that those bags of dirt were still sitting there! My anxiety levels at an all new high, I decided to execute our plan of throwing the dirt over the fence and into the empty lot, all in pure darkness. I carried out our ladder to the backyard and found some weird little container in which to scoop the dirt. Then I attempted to make a dent in the enormous mound of dirt in one bag, trying not to look at the other 19 bulging bags, including the first few we had left in the alleyway. Just one step at a time, gotta stay positive, keep your chin up, these were my thoughts as I scooped up the dirt, climbed the ladder and threw it over. Of course, while I was doing all this, I completely forgot about the trees that are sitting in our yard and the adjacent yard because it was PITCH BLACK OUTSIDE, and so my dirt ricocheted off the branches of those sneaky trees and came flying back at me before landing right back into our backyard. After a few more throws with the exact same unsuccessful result, I gave up, and began constructing a plan D.

Dirt Removal: Chapter 2

After spreading our dirt throughout the backyard, we decided to throw the rest of the dirt into the Hefty garbage bags we had purchased. Again, no plan here. I guess we just assumed that those garbage bags would miraculously transport themselves from the backyard to the front with little to no effort on our part. But, as we filled a couple bags, only halfway might I mention, and realized, even half full, they were so heavy we could only move them by dragging them, we called for a time-out and had a proper discussion on the dirt removal process. It was at this point that we had our first semblance of a plan. Upon inspection, we saw that the fence on one side of our backyard, by our alleyway, has a door that opens to the next yard over, which is also connected to the street. So, we decided that we'd drag all the bags to the alleyway, and then hope that the people next door would at some point allow us to drag all these bags through their yard and into the street. Whereupon, the car that neither one of us owns, would be sitting there waiting for us, in a parking spot which is normally not available, so we could easily load up the bags and drive to the dump that may or may not exist in our neighborhood. Easy peasy. Both of us agreed on what a great idea this was and began to drag the bags toward the alleyway.

(Bags abandoned in alleyway)

An hour or so later, we came up with what we thought to be an even better plan. So the back side of our backyard faces an empty lot- it's one of those lots that is basically all dirt and weeds, with a few scattered bushes and what not. So we thought, why not throw the dirt over the fence and into the lot? Sounded good to us. Of course...we didn't want to get caught doing it, so we decided we'd do it at NIGHT. Yup, that was our plan- be super sketchy and throw dirt into the empty lot next to us in the darkness. So for the time being, we decided to drag all the bags toward the back fence instead of the alleyway. Our process was as follows: Fill a bag with dirt (takes about 1 minute), take turns straining with the weight of the bag and dragging it toward the back fence (takes about 5 minutes), repeat. Soon we had a nice little trail of bags leading to the back fence. Once we finished digging out the garden, we were too tired to deal with the bags of dirt. We decided to figure it out another day...

Dirt Removal: Chapter 1

One problem we did not foresee upon starting our garden was how difficult it would prove to be to get rid of the old dirt. When we initially planned all this, we barely batted an eye at the so called "challenge" of dirt removal, even when our landlord, who is built like The Hulk, expressed some serious concern. So our backyard is completely blocked in on all four sides with no access to the street? No problem! We'll "figure it out." Those words are now haunting me as I stare at 20 Hefty bags filled with dirt, too heavy to be lifted, and scattered throughout our backyard, looking more like body bags in a scene from Dexter, than bags of dirt because honestly, WHO HAS 20 BAGS OF DIRT LYING AROUND??

But, let me explain how we got to our current situation. When we first started digging, a week ago today, we decided to scatter the old dirt throughout the rest of the backyard. Not a bad idea, even in retrospect. We threw some dirt over here, threw some dirt over there, no problem. We were previously warned that if we did this, we had to make sure the dirt levels weren't higher than the patio level, as a rain storm would cause a serious overflow of dirt and lead to a mud pit. So while Alyssa uprooted the shrubs, I handled the dirt dispersal. At first I just shoveled the dirt and chucked it into some nearby areas, barely having to move at all. But fairly quickly, in order to ensure that I didn't cause a "dirt overflow," I needed to travel a few steps from the garden pit so I could throw the dirt onto a new spot. And very soon after that, I seemed to have exhausted all easy to access spots and so, while tromping around, spinning this way and that in search of sparser areas, all the while holding my extended shovel, causing Alyssa to shrink back in fear, I happened to knock off the ears of every single porcelain garden rabbit that had been placed in the backyard by the previous tenant. Oops. All in all, our first attempt at dirt removal was relatively successful. Aside from the rabbit casualties, I was able to spread a good amount of the dirt throughout our yard and not cause any type of overflow. Of course, much to our chagrin, I had barely made a dent in the volume of dirt we still had to remove.