Amherst WoodWorks

Well, we have been most impressed by the success of the garden so far. It is growing like mad and we’ve already harvested some vegetables (snap peas, green beans, escarole, Swiss chard, and cauliflower). Everything tastes so good!

When we harvested the cauliflower, we took out the entire plant because the leaves were just so big. We then rearranged some of the smaller plants that were being overtaken by the larger ones (“They say the oaks are just too lofty and they grab up all the light…” – Neil Peart).

The tomatoes will probably all come in at the same time, so pretty soon we’ll have more than we know what to do with. We’d love to get into canning, but may wait until next year for that.

Here are some photos from June 27, 2009:

Here’s a photo of the “traditional” garden showing tomatoes, corn, and a loan strawberry plant. It’s truly amazing how different the two gardens are in terms of weeds. This one has so many weeds in it and I spend a lot of time pulling them out. On the other hand, the square foot garden literally takes NO TIME to weed since there are virtually none in there! I really can’t believe the difference!

Next year, we’ll have to do better planning for the snap peas. They taste so good and we’ll probably plant a few more. However, we’ll need to find a way to prop them up – maybe we’ll grow them along the netting.

Here’s a photo of the pumpkins. I hope we have a good harvest. The kids will be so excited to be pick out their own pumpkins this year!

The cauliflower was so good! Mary made it into soup (along with some freshly picked green beans, tomatoes, oil, garlic, onions, salt, pepper, and grated parmesan cheese – mmm…it was SO good!).

It’s amazing how the vines “know” how to hang on tightly to the fence. How do they know that?

Anthony loves working in the garden too. He’s learning all about gardening. I hope when he grows up he remembers back to these days. Maybe he’ll carry on the tradition and have a garden of his own. Gardening is a great way to teach life lessons to children. We are all learning so much from the garden, including the need to plan ahead, the importance of daily nurturing, and the benefits of reaping what you sow.

Happy Gardening!

The garden is doing extremely well. It seems like it grows by inches every day.

Cilantro
The cilantro is growing too well. It seems more like a weed than something you want growing in your garden. Actually, I think it “bolted.” I guess that means it grew too fast and went to seed. When this happens, the plant tastes bitter and is no good. We pulled it out, chopped it up, and put it in the compost. Maybe we’ll try again some other time.

Everything Else
Everything else seems to be going very well. The tomatoes, zucchini, cauliflower, corn, peppers, and beans are all doing very well. Oh yeah, the peas are doing great too. When the plants were small, I probably spent about 5 – 10 minutes a day tending to it, pulling out weeds, etc. Then, I would spend about 15 minutes watering and that was it.

Now that the plants are so large, it’s not really necessary to weed anymore because I don’t think the weeds have a chance to even start. Every couple of days or so I just try to teach the vine plants to grow up the nylon netting.

Here are some recent photos::

Next, I’ll probably put some decorative corners on the boxes to finish them off a bit. I was thinking of painting the outside too – probably white. I also have one more net to put up, but I’m not sure if I’m going to do that one.

Here, in Western New York, we have a short growing season. In fact, just last night, it was a balmy 42 degrees Fahrenheit on May 30! Even so, our Square Foot Garden is growing strong. Here are some recent photos. We had to put chicken wire around the garden to keep some rabbits from eating the escarole (they got one entire plant before we put the wire fence up. We’d like to do something more aesthetically pleasing with the garden, but we’ll get to that in time. For now, it’s function over form.

Oh yeah, one more thing, we still have some more building to do. We need two more climbing fences built on the the two remaining north sides so the climbing plants have somewhere to go. The 7” nylon netting we ordered from the Square Foot Gardening Foundation just arrived and we tied it to the conduit. We’ll probably get to the other two climbing fences next weekend.

We have a total of 6 2 X 8 beds. We’re growing everything from Swiss chard to tomatoes, to green beans and green peppers, and peas, and watermelon.

Original garden from last year – a “traditional” approach. We’re growing corn and tomatoes this year. I wonder which garden will do better?

Last year (2008), we had our first garden. We started out as complete novices, but yet had a great harvest and learned a great deal. This year (2009) we started our first Square Foot Garden. If you don’t know what a Square Foot Garden is, check out Squarefootgardening.com.

After doing some planning and some more research, we were ready to build our first Square Foot Garden.

Planning

Planning started out as some simple drawings. I sketched out a version of our backyard and began putting some ideas down.

We formalized our plans in Excel and, based on budget, experience (or lack of in our case!), and need, we settled on the following:

• Build 6 Square Foot Boxes
• Use last year’s garden as a comparison

Next, we created a list of materials, using Mel’s Square Foot Gardening book as a guide. We needed:

• Vermiculite
• Peat Moss
• 5 Flavors of Compost
• 15 2 X 6’s
• 1 roll of landscape fabric
• 1 box of deck screws
• A bunch of wood lathe

The hardest part of locating the vermiculite. Wal-Mart didn’t carry it because “it contains asbestos.” Pleading and arguing didn’t help, so we moved on. Ended up calling a local nursery (Menne on Niagara Falls Blvd.) who had some in stock.

Building the Boxes

We started out by building 6 basic boxes. Each box was created 2’ X 8’ and contained no bottoms. We stapled landscaped fabric to the bottoms of each box to keep the grass and weeds from growing up through our garden. Each box was screwed together with deck screws and placed in an area of the yard that receives the most sun (> 8 hours). Plenty of room was left between the boxes so we could get in between and work when the plants are in full bloom.

Next post, we’ll go into creating Mel’s Mix and some of the ups and downs we had with planting from seeds.

So, scientists are moving towards being able to selectively remove old memories. Just imagine it: You want to erase some old memory that still haunts you in some way. Maybe some tragedy from your childhood or maybe some negative experience at work. You just pop in a pill and poof! memory gone.

Read more about this here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15025-eternal-sunshine-drug-selectively-erases-memories.html

But, what about all the other memories you’ve created BECAUSE of that original memory? Think about how memories build on one another over time. Your past experiences – your memories – are culminations that do not exist in isolation of one another. Instead, they build upon one another over time. In some ways, tragic memories mold future memories. If we’re not careful, we could be messing ourselves up in fundamental ways. We should take a more holistic approach in these areas. As usual, just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

This past year, Mary and I grew a vegetable garden - the first for both of us. Neither of us knew what we were doing, so we just dove in head first. We purchased about 5 yards of top soil, a few bags of humus, and about a dozen different vegetable starters. Mary’s brother Joe and my Mom helped with layout and some basics about how to plant and garden, etc. Believe it or not, we had a ton of success! Over the weeks that followed, we had an abundance of food from which to choose. I’ll never forget that first green bean I pulled and ate - right from our garden! What a great feeling it was to know we had grown it ourselves.

While we were waiting to harvest, I thought back to how folks must have struggled over the years. How they had to be good planners. How they really had to think ahead. In this world of 24 hour supermarkets, we don’t have to be such good planners. While we were waiting to harvest, we could just drive out to Niagara County Produce and pick up what we needed. Years ago, folks couldn’t do that. What did they eat in the winter?

I mentioned this to my boss, who is also a farmer, and he said you had to plan to grow enough to be able to can some for the winter. I remembered my own great-grandmother doing that when I was young.

My boss also mentioned a form of gardening that his wife used called “Square Foot Gardening.” He told me the basics about it, but I had to learn more. After Googling it a bit, I found Mel Bartholomew’s web site. After reading through it to understand the basics, I shot over to Amazon and bought the “All New Square Foot Gardening” book.

Having read the book twice now, I am so amazed at the technique and eager to employ his methods. So, I am starting the planning process now.

The first thing we did was come up with a list of things we wanted to grow. Then, we figured out how much of each type of vegetable to grow. If we grow enough, we’ll have enough to give away to our friends and family, and maybe even sell some on the side of the road.

Next, we surveyed the property for some suitable locations for the gardens. It looks like we have enough room to have at least 10 8′ X 2′ sections. Since each section will contain 16 square foot sections, we’ll end up with a total of 160 squares in which to plant.

Corn

One entire section will be devoted to corn. This past year, each stalk of corn yielded about 3 ears of corn. We only grew enough for one meal.

But, with the square foot gardening method, each square can hold 4 stalks. That means:

4 stalks X 16 squares = 64 stalks of corn

64 stalks X 3 ears per stalk = 192 ears of corn!

At a typical dinner, we’ll eat about 12 ears of corn. So, that means we’ll have enough corn for about 16 meals. That would last us about 2 months. Not bad.

So, as this year winds down, we are beginning the planning process for our foray into Square Foot Gardening. I’ll probably post some more on the topic later as we solidify our plans.

In the mean time, check out www.squarefootgardening.com

Happy Gardening!

As the fall approaches, it is time to get the shop ready for winter. This is an exciting time. I usually clean the entire shop, vacuum all the corners, and tune up all the tools. This winter will be filled with many new scroll saw projects.