Humble Garden

See that little black speck to the right of center? That little guy is eating little holes in some of my tomatoes and also in some of the other seedlings.

I looked on the internet and have found that it is called a Flea Beetle. When you go to pick them off the leaf you have to be careful because they will jump away like a flea. They are very easy to kill tho, very unlike a flea.

Since this is an organic garden, I want to deal with this problem with no chemicals.

The internet says to:

• Use covers (not an option because these guys likely came with the dirt)
• Use a trap crop like radishes
• Use a pesticide
• Use onion or garlic or pepper spray

Its this last one that I will be trying today. I am going to get some garlic and make a solution of it and then swab it onto my affected plants. I am going to start it off at a relatively (as it seems to me) concentration.

I am also having another issue.

My transplanted pimento peppers (Bonnie from Walmart) are growing some gnarly looking leaves since their transplantation. Is this a fertilizer issue? A too much water issue? A pH issue? If you know, drop me a note!

Ed is working on the fifth bed today, 6th soon and then a large 8×8 herb garden.

We got some Mary Washington asparagus (with a bonus extra pack), 40 in all. Now we are deciding where we will put these guys. As you may know, eating these wont happen until like 3 years from now. They take up a lot of space vertically so they do not want to be IN the garden…

I am still working on the 4th garden in terms of seed placement, almost there. I am also working on seeding in the companion crops to help deal with bugs and get some synergistic benefits.

This guy is growing like a weed but we are not going to weed him.

The driveway and the greenery.

Here is a panorama of the driveway.

Well, we are on our own now with the carpentry. It will be fine and it will be SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper. Here is a shot of the raised beds. Right one has been planted, middle is waiting, left is being built and the 4th is in the queue.

Here are a few panoramas around the house.

Today is Tuesday and the first day in a while that work can get done because its been raining cats and dogs here.

Fill and top soil – loam continues to come although today the dump truck got stuck in our soft lawn, no more until tomorrow.

Here are a few shots of how the raised beds are coming along today.

There is some interpersonal “excitement” going on right now with the construction team, its possible we may have to finish the other two beds and the whole chicken house ourselves.

Gotta butch up for that (making grunty lumberjack noises).

Yesterday and today, the first of six raised beds has been built. They will be lined at the bottom with wire mesh to keep out the burrowing rodentia. They are lined on the sides to keep the wood from leaching chemicals into our food. On top of the wire mesh are radiant flooring heating tubing which will heat the beds in the winter. The tubing will be filled with polypropylene glycol (PPG) that circulates into a heat exchange manifold associated with the biomass generator/boiler.

Here is the raised bed from our back door.

Here is the raised bed from slightly above.

You can see a closer shot of the interior here.

A really close up shot of the tubing and how it is tied down.

What it looks like if you were laying down inside (as if!)

We are having to bring in fill to create a level surface in our backyard for the raised beds. We learned that this fill, which is palm sized smooth rocks and black earth, is the scrape from a nearby dairy farm that has been sold and is being torn down for a subdivision. Crimes!We will benefit from this because this fill has loads of cow manure and, oddly enough, cow bones (think calcium). The story is that when a cow has passed away, the farmer takes the carcass out into the pasture and lets nature re-assimilate it. The bones we come across look pretty old and moldy, well taken care of by the elements.

We may have the greenest yard/garden for miles.

The truck is seen here, backing up our driveway and up past our house and hopefully missing the wellhead.

As seen from inside the house, truck makes the house look small. Notice our grill. We are very low tech. It would be awesome to have a deck that wraps around our house and in the backyard. It would be awesome to have a gas grill or just a much more butch charcoal one. We tend to be utilitarian so we do not have those sorta of amenities.

The truck is tearing up the side yard. It will come through here some 8 times today to get the amount of fill we need.

Dumping the fill.