Garden Update

Note, first, that all five barrels are covered in yellow enamel ("rust fighting") paint.  Yes, it's the same paint I complained energetically about in an earlier blog entry.  But, in the end, the thought of buying new paint and going through all that palaver was too much so I just suffered through the original plan.  I still think it's too garish but it'll soon be hidden behind plants (one hopes) so it won't matter.  And maybe in Winter when there is nothing alive in the backyard it will look cheerful. Yesterday I reattached the spigots on the bottom of each barrel.  When it isn't ungodly hot out I will reset each of the barrels so that each is .5" lower than the barrel to its left so as each one fills up the surplus water moves on to the next barrel.  Then I can finally attach the hoses and wait for rain--which is predicted to arrive next Wednesday.  Given that we actually haven't had a drought in Flint in the past 20 years (nothing like when we first moved here), I'm not sure anymore why I even bothered creating such a set up.  But it seemed important at the time.

See the blueberries planted in their own private raised bed right in front of the barrels.  So for none have lost either flowers or baby berries from the trauma of being knocked loose from the buckets they have been in for going on 10 years at least. I loaded the soil up with cedar chips and will just have to hope that that makes the soil acidic enough.  

Note, too, the potato bags are filling up.  Each time the plant grows a few inches taller I pile more dirt in. YouTube experts claim that that forces the plant to put more energy into tubers rather than leaves. Believe that if you want. I'm only 4" from the top at this point and once we get to that point the leaves will be left to do their thing while the roots and tubers do theirs out of sight but not out of mind. At the right edge of the photo in the middle you can see the raised beds with arches have been planted out.  I'll take a better photo when they've grown a bit.  I bought an eclectic mix of pumpkins, watermelon, beans and zucchini since everyone claims they are all extremely easy to grow in Michigan and result in dramatically large vines with loads of food.  I actually do not like zucchini and I don't believe anyone does, but everyone grows it here because otherwise it's just too horrible to have a garden be an utter failure.

Most importantly note the Lettuce Grow hydroponics set up.  It is one of two (the other is still in our dining room) and I grow lettuce in it in the winter.  It worked fantastically when I first got it but slowly it's produced less and less fantastic results (leaves drying up, Romaine lettuce tasting bitter).  I wondered if I had just become annoyed with it and was aiming those feelings at the lettuce but decided to give one of the towers one last burst of love.  I took it apart, cleaned all the pieces which is not fun as each section is larger than it looks and JUST BIG ENOUGH to not fit in our kitchen sink. Mud and water sprayed everywhere, but Simon wasn't home so no one is the wiser of how badly it went.  The worst part was schlepping the bottom (shaped like a chemist's beaker) out to the backyard so I could dump out all the brackish water that was sloshing around.  Once I could see all the rotten root pieces and old, funky water that was inside, it became pretty obvious why nothing was growing well or tasted right. The directions clearly state it must be completely cleaned once a year (between winter and spring cycles is recommended).  But I never have as it is, as I just wrote, a really big pain in the ass and bigger pain in the lower back.  Since I went through all the work of cleaning it, moving it, setting it back up, filling it with clean water (which is WAY easier when you have a garden hose to do it rather than using a one gallon pitcher of water filled at the kitchen sink) and fertilizer, I put strawberry plant plugs in each of the plant ports.  Unlike greens, strawberries need to be fertilized and so, since the thing is outside, I decided to take advantage of the willing pollinators in our backyard and grow something that can't grow in our dining room.

You can see a smallish (5" across) circular port hole in the lower half in front. That's a small window you use to top up more water and fertilizer.  Also, that cord coming out is the electric cord that has a timer on it (about 10' from the tower) and plugs into the outlet on the outside of our garage just next to the left most water barrel.  I've tried explaining this before but apparently I didn't do a good job so I'll try again: in the bottom of the tower is a small water pump, the sort you see in fish tanks.  That has a water intake on the side and an output on the top.  Stuck into the pump output hole is a 1" diameter pvc pipe that runs from the top of the pump, up inside the tower, to the very top of the tower--so about 5' up.  At the top of the pipe--INSIDE THE TOWER (and that fact is key)--is a tiny plastic "hat" that stops the water from spouting upward and instead forces the water to spray out, 360 degrees, to the side.  That water then hits the top inside of the tower (the widest part) and then drips down, wiggling down the curvy sides, until it gets back to the bottom of the tower. WHILE it is trailing down the curvy sides, the water runs THROUGH the bundles of plant roots, which grow inside the tower, behind the little port holes--the plant leaves outside the tower getting sunshine and the roots all tucked inside the tower getting water and fertilizer.  Why does the water stick to the curvy sides and not just fall straight down, missing the roots?  I have no idea, but it really does stick to the sides.  With the pump only running for 10 mins every 6 hours in every 24 hour period, why don't the roots dry out and the plants die? Because the plants are growing in a tiny dirt "plug" that fills up the porthole so very little air gets inside the tower--but some air gets in, and that is good because otherwise the plant roots would get soggy and rot, and the plants would be oxygen deprived and die.  Amazing, isn't it?  If only it wasn't so damned annoying to clean. Or, if only it wouldn't freeze solid in winter so that we could leave it outside all year and clean it quickly and easily using a garden hose.  Well, if wishes were horses....

Here is a fig tree I bought for pennies on the dollar at the end of last summer when it was dramatically marked down for clearance. I have no idea what possessed me to do that as figs cannot survive outside in Michigan.  Last winter it was tiny (about 1' tall and 1' wide) and lived in a tiny pot. I brought it inside in October and all the leaves fell off within a few hours. I was certain it was dead and sort of forgot about it.  But then it sprung to life in January, when we have extremely cold but extremely sunny days and the fig branches felt the sunshine, thought it was summer and went to work, growing and leafing out very early--way too early to be put outside. Once I did move it outside I had no idea what to do with it. Finally, yesterday, I resigned myself to the fact that it needed a larger (therefore heavier and harder to move in October) pot.  Figs don't like the kind of soil we have here--too wet and heavy--so it also needed a special mix of cedar mulch, coconut hair (the latest thing which works like peat but is environmentally beneficial because hairy coconut shells populate the Earth in fantastic numbers) and potting soil. Sheesh. In THEORY, the plan is that I let it do its thing all summer and then cut it off at its knees in November, stick it in a dark corner of the basement until April, then put it in the sunroom to warm up in May, and then move it outside in June.  And in THEORY it will get bigger and bigger faster and faster every year until it grows 20' tall and is covered with figs every summer. Seems hard to credit, but that's what other people in Michigan claim.  And I believe them because they have YouTube channels. [The little yellow thing in the middle of the bottom of the picture is a glass shaped mushroom that glows at night because it is wired to a teeny weeny solar panel. It actually looks kind of cool and Simon noted that, not long after I got several of them, the neighbor lady behind us suddenly had her own set of glow in the dark shapes in her backyard.]