How Does Your Garden Grow? - Time to get dirty

How Does Your

Garden Grow?

How are we all feeling after last week? Hopefully anyone that decided to cut drainage holes or liberate the tops of plastic bottles from their bottoms made it through with all their fingers and I won’t have to read about any gardening accidents in the dispatch log section.

Or you can do what I did and slap a band-aid on that little star-shaped puncture mark you made with the drill and shake it off, because we’re getting our hands dirty again.

Let’s talk seeds. My new best friend, Katrina Becker of Cattail Organics, located in Athens, told me that it would actually be cheaper to purchase my own seedlings rather than start plants from seeds.

“If you want to do it for fun or spring therapy after a long winter this is a great option but if this is about saving money and time buying seedlings is definitely better for many plants,” Katrina said.

I’ve decided to commit to sprouting vegetables from seeds at the office and planting already sprouted seedlings at home. This will give me a real idea of which method I prefer so hopefully next year I’ll already have a plan in place before planting season. You do whichever you feel is best for you, no judgment.

I went to Fourmen’s Farm and Home because I needed a little inspiration and they’re running a sale. Our sales manager, Kelly, had the brilliant idea to plant some flowers in the boxes in front of our office to get my creative juices flowing and to bring a little color to the street at the same time, so while I was there I bought some flower seeds as well.

Arugula, kale, lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, radishes, and turnips do well in containers in our part of Wisconsin, which is zone 4. Plants that grow on a vine such as cucumbers, peas, melons and squash can do well in a container with the proper support. I bought iceberg lettuce, danvers half long carrots, sparkler white tip radishes, grand bell mix sweet peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, muncher cucumbers, and Kentucky wonder garden beans vegetable seeds, alpine strawberry seeds, and Lilliput mixed color zinnias and bachelor button blue boy flower seeds. Because of the sale, I only paid $7.90 for everything.

There is so much more I’d like to plant (to be honest I don’t even like some of the stuff I did buy) but I’m really trying to rein myself in. I don’t want to get overly ambitious and sign myself up for more than I can manage. If I don’t overdo it I might actually be successful this time.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac (almanac.com) will give you dates for planting specific to your zip code. They suggest that I start my peppers March 8-23, cucumbers April 27-May 4, lettuce April 6-20, tomatoes March 23-April 6 and strawberries March 31. They also suggest that I plant my other seeds directly into their permanent containers outdoors with my carrots going in April 20-May 4, green beans May 25-June 15, and radishes April 20-27. That means that next week we’ll be planting peppers together!

I have seeds, containers, and bottles, but I’m not going to get very far without dirt.

Last October, I interviewed Tom Schafer of Schafer Flower Farm. I was awed by Tom’s ability to grow the biggest, most colorful blooms right in his own backyard. He was adamant that the key was soil health. Katrina Becker also had some advice for me about soil. She told me that there is a difference between a soil mix for starting seeds and soil used in containers.

“A word to the wise,” Katrina said, “is to use a starting mix for starting plants because straight compost and straight ‘top soil’ are way too heavy.'

I’ll defer to the experts and look for a cheap soil for seeds next week. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about composting. There are so many benefits that it’s hard to talk myself out of it. It’s good for the environment; instead of throwing away food scraps that could end up in a landfill, they could be used to grow new food. It’s good for your plants; it provides them with nutrients and gives them access to microorganisms that help them thrive. It’s good for your bank account; you’re using items you probably already have at home rather than buying a bag of compost at the store.

Except not everyone has that kind of space. What if I was living in an apartment trying to sustain a little container garden on my balcony? You shouldn’t have to miss out on all the benefits of compost just because you don’t have access to a big outdoor area. In my vast and extensive research (google), I saw that people with limited space are using totes to compost indoors.

What a great idea! But so much could go wrong by keeping a box full of decaying organic matter in your house. What if it smells bad? What if you throw a banana peel in it and it breaks down and oozes out the bottom? What if you accidentally grow some sort of rare fungus that makes anyone who comes into contact with it sprout wads of ear and nose hair?

Well that’s where I come in, folks. Since my space at the Star News is limited and since I’m asking you to put your trust in me when I’ve killed more plants than I’ve actually kept alive it only seems fair that I test it out myself. I’d be an idiot to write a gardening column without composting anyway.

Mandee Ellis is a reporter at The Star News. Contact her at Mandee@centralwinews.com.

Our planter boxes are currently decorated for St. Patrick’s Day, but hopefully we’ll see some zinnia and bachelor button blue boy blooms popping up in the next several weeks.