Alright, I’ve been at this for a little over a month, we’re coming off a rainy week in Livermore, and there’s a lot to take away from several of my gardening attempts so far. Fails: Outdoor lettuce in coconut coir: I think the most epic fail this month was seeding lettuce outside in a think…
Category: Vegetable Gardening
The casualties are becoming unacceptable. Defending the garden from critters unknown.
My morning garden walkthrough turned up some annoying developments. Something is marauding the garden, nibbling on small leaves or straight up pulling out seedlings and then dropping them. My hog wire dog deterrence system is working for the dogs, but doesn’t seem to be doing much to protect against whatever is pulling out my radish…
Planting cabbage seeds in a January heatwave.
We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in Livermore this fine January. It’s warm enough that I’ve had trouble keeping my kid in her clothes and out of water. Who am I kidding? I totally haven’t even tried. A couple days ago, I got my pea inoculant from Papaw’s Garden (though Amazon) and…
Why I’m intentionally over-seeding my beds. Hint: microgreens!
Oops, I guess that was more of a spoiler than a hint. I’ve had a few concepts circulating around me that have resulted in my decision to overseed. The first one is that I just learned that pea shoots are food. Did you know that? I didn’t! I can’t wait to try these! Pea shoots…
How not to thin seeds, apparently.
My very first self started plant test, just before getting started on Outdoor Hedonist was to plant a little seed tray together with my toddler. She wanted either flowers or grass for her doll to play on. She got chia. The chia sprouted quickly and densely. We let it grow for a couple weeks, and…
Testing pea planting methods: sprouted, direct sewn, innoculated
The trouble with reading gardening books for fun is that there will always be some new idea that I wish I had known about before. I learned from Golden Gate Gardening that sprouted peas don’t grow better than peas planted in the soil – although I’ve read elsewhere that you can get a head-start by…
What are ‘compostable’ grow bags and do they actually degrade in a compost pile?
Grow bags are little loose-weave fabric baggies for starting plant seeds in. Folks like them because you can pack a lot of them onto a seed tray, and plant roots will grow right through the fabric , so you don’t have to worry about damaging plants by transplanting them. I’m middling conscious about my use…
Making seed meal from excess winter wheat. Is it a great fertilizer?
I’m reading a few gardening books concurrently right now, and in one of them I came across a list of fertilizers that includes “seed meal.” It was either Golden Gate Gardening or my first edition of Square Foot Gardening. OMG. The All New Square Foot Gardening is good, but the first edition is like the…
Why are only half of my seeds sprouting? The microclimates edition.
I’m so excited this week to see my daikon radishes coming up! These are old seeds. I bought these a few years ago and forgot them “stored” them in a closet after they didn’t produce any radishes. Planting these this time around was basically just something to do while I waited for more seeds to…
Lettuce patch! Dig vs. No-dig; 100% compost vs. 50% compost.
I got my lettuce seeds in the ground! I wanted to run a couple of little tests today, so I made up some wheat berry meal to use as slow release fertilizer and prepped four garden squares for lettuce seeds. I spread a little coconut coir on each of the squares after prepping them to…
Outdoor Hedonist 