Converting a garage into a garden!

As mentioned in the last post, my wife and I bought a new house, and it now has garden space!  When I bought the house, there was an old garage.  I have to apologize in advance that this is a tangent from gardening, but I will try to keep some garden information in here.

Because my home loan was FHA, I had to tear down my garage, which HUD considered a hazard. 

Here is the garage from the side.  It looked pretty rough and had a lean.

A subcontractor for Archstone Group did a great job tearing down our garage.  After tearing down the garage, he broke up the garage pad (foundation) and left the pieces in place.  The concrete chunks averaged about 8 inches thick and about 2 feet by 2 feet in size.  I broke the chunks up into smaller chunks with a large sledgehammer, then moved them out of the area of the old garage.

I built a fence across the driveway to enclose the backyard.  Note the chunks of concrete in the background.

On the remaining pad, the contractor built a lifetime shed, to store garden utensils and bikes.

The finished fence, with the shed hiding behind it.

After removing all of the concrete block chunks, I piled them up in the corner of my yard.  I then sifted the dirt under the old pad with a sifter made out of an old frame and chicken wire.  I used the gravel I sifted out as the base for a path in the middle of my new garden.  I made the path of concrete chunks.  The job was made a lot easier by a couple wheelbarrow gifted to me by my friends, Brandon and Byron.

The finished garden

I filled in the garden with horse manure from the Salt Lake City Carriage for Hire and tilled the manure with the sifted soil from under the pad.  I borrowed the electric tiller from my good friend, Brit.  I gave her one of my gifted wheelbarrows as a way of saying "thanks" for her help.

The middle path is edged with pavers that I found in on the side of the garage.  The side paths are just chunks of foundation plunked down on top of the manure.

iI found an old piece of fence next to the garage that I converted into a trellis.

So far, I have already planted a ton of garlic and chives in the garden before winter hit.  Hopefully, it will show up in the spring.

Getting an Early Start

COOL SEASON CROPS

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Time to get some cool season crops growing!  Cool season crops can handle light frosts and low temperatures, especially if you use a hoop house or similar structure.  However, most cool season crops cannot handle high temperatures.

The following crops, according to ISU, are good cool season crops:

Broccoli 

Cabbage 

Cauliflower 

Chinese Cabbage   

Kale 

Kohlrabi 

Lettuce 

Mustard Greens 

Peas 

Radishes 

Rutabagas 

Spinach 

Turnips 

STARTING PLANTS INDOORS

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You can start most of the plants listed above indoors to help get an early start.  Root vegetables are usually better to sow directly, but I have known people to have success with everything indoors.

DigginFood has some good lists on plants that are good to sow versus plants that better planted as starts.  This website and this website also have pretty good discussions about planting seeds and planting starts.

I have started my leafy greens indoors:

Lettuce seedlings!  My friend and personal extension agent, Brit, recommended I thin the seedlings down to two or three plants per spot.

Spinach seedlings.  Some of them already have true leaves.

The kale seedlings are not germinating very well.  I think there will be enough to plant and harvest.

The Urban Organic Gardener says its better not to start the following indoors:

Beens
Beets
Carrots
Dill
Garlic
Onions
Peas
Radishes

WARM UP YOUR SOIL

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Cover your soil with a hoop house, greenhouse, or layer of plastic to get it warm and ready for your plants or seeds.

Here are some extremely good instructions on how to make a small garden tunnel.


PLANTING UNDER COVER

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Cool season crops, like spinach, still need reasonable temperatures to grow.  Here is a great picture from an excellent USU publication.  

It basically says spinach does best at 67 degrees F and can live between 36 and 84 degrees F.  Spinach grown above 75 degrees will have a bitter flavor. Early in the season, a crop cover, like a low tunnel can help you keep your early season crop in that optimum range.

This figure, from the same publication, shows that a low tunnel can add make the air temperature up to 20 degrees F warmer.

I put up my low tunnel last week.  All of the snow under it has melted and the soil is thawed.  As soon as my baby plants grow a little more, I will thin them out and harden them off, then replant them.

WHEN TO PUT THE STARTS/SEEDS IN THE GROUND

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Average temperatures for Salt Lake City from www.city-data.com. This year temperatures a re lower than shown on this chart.

Frost dates for Salt Lake City area from http://climate.usurf.usu.edu/reports/freezeDates.php

Station Name

Last spring freeze

First fall freeze

Freeze-free

Period

Years

Early

Avg

Median

Late

Early

Avg

Median

Late

Short

Avg

Median

Long

SALT LAKE CITY

19-Mar

13-Apr

13-Apr

02-May

11-Oct

31-Oct

31-Oct

21-Nov

175

202.7

204.5

233

1928-1954

26

SALT LAKE CITY E BENCH

31-Mar

27-Apr

29-Apr

13-May

18-Sep

18-Oct

22-Oct

03-Nov

139

173.6

173.5

216

1990-2005

10

SALT LAKE CITY INTL AP

11-Mar

25-Apr

26-Apr

28-May

17-Sep

18-Oct

19-Oct

14-Nov

125

177.3

179.5

237

1948-2012

64

SALT LAKE CITY SUB SEW

20-Apr

05-May

04-May

18-May

15-Sep

04-Oct

06-Oct

25-Oct

127

151.3

155.0

176

1967-1978

9

SALT LAKE TRIAD CTR

16-Feb

08-Apr

19-Apr

01-May

27-Oct

06-Nov

05-Nov

21-Nov

182

212.0

204.0

261

1985-2012

8

The University of Idaho has some good tips on starting plants early.

Wasatch Community Gardens is putting on a workshop on Year Round Gardening.

Mother Earth News has a good webpage about year-round gardening.

Starting Seeds

I started some seeds!  

I built a shelf last night (1/26/2013) in the basement next to the water heater and furnace to start seeds.  I put the shelf next to the appliances, because it is a warm area, which should help the seeds germinate.

I found a Burpee seed starting kit at Savers for $2.99.  It came with a self watering mat and a clear plastic cover.

Today (1/27/2013) I planted three rows of lettuce, four rows of kale, and five rows o f spinach (from left to right).

The automatic watering mat in action.

This picture was taken on 1/31/2012.  The lettuce (top) has grown the most.

This picture was taken on 1/31/2012.The spinach (foreground) is starting to pop up.

A time lapse of some container basil growing.

Awesome Geographic Tool - www.plantsmap.com

In last year's blog, I posted a USDA plant hardiness map.  Today, I found a map website that gives you all kinds of data for planning your garden schedule.

Plantmaps dot com has a variety of maps.  Plug in your zip code and try it out.

Seeds

THIS YEAR'S SEED ORDER

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I just ordered seeds from Mountain Valley Seeds, a local seed company, for the upcoming planting:

Bean, Pole - Blue Lake Pole FM1K

Beet - Detroit Dark Red

Cucumber - Marketmore 76

Cucumber, Pickling - Wisconsin SMR

Eggplant - Black Beauty

Kale - Lacinato (organic)

Onion - Utah Yellow Sweet Spanish

Pepper, Hot - Jalapeno (organic)

Radish - Champion

Spinach - Giant Noble

Squash, Winter - Waltham Butternut

I picked most of the varieties based on the recommended varieties for Salt Lake Valley from USU.  If you live in the area, Mountain Valley lets you pick up your seed orders at their location, 455 W 1700 S Salt Lake City.

I plan on buying tomato and bell pepper starts from the Wasatch Community Gardens spring plant sale on May 12.

SEED SWAPS

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Today there was a seed swap at the Sorensen Unity Center.  Wikipedia defines seed swaps as events where gardeners meet to exchange seeds.
Seed swaps are good opportunities to find different varieties of seeds.  We jumped the gun and ordered our seeds first, and I think we may have found most of what we needed at the seed swap.
The National Gardening Association has an online seed swap.

At the Salt Lake City food swap, cool things were going on:

Wasatch Community Gardens was giving away free seeds!!!!

Booth for Adam's Heirlooms CSA

Some of the seeds I scored from the Wasatch Community Garden booth.

Seed catalogs for perusing. 

Seed packets from Slow Food Utah Ark of Taste Program.  I intend to grow these and tell people how I think they taste.

I also had the opportunity to meet Kyle LaMalfa!

SEED COMPANY LIST

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Seed companies allow for you to buy exactly the varieties you want. Some of these came from a list provided by Mother Earth News.

• Mountain Valley Seed Company - a good local company to buy seeds
• Seed Savers - this one looks pretty cool; its a nonprofit devoted to preserving heirloom varieties (see below for some of the cool varieties they have)
• Kusa Seed Society
• Johnny's Selected Seeds 
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Seeds of Change
• High Mowing Seeds
• Fedco Seeds
• Territorial Seed Company
• Burpee Seeds
• D. Landreth Seed Co.
• Kitazawa Seed Co.

Purple Beauty Bell Peppers

Eggplant, Listada de Gandia OG

New House and Update (finally)!

I know it has been a looooong time since I posted, but I am getting back on the horse.   Last year, we were inspired by our garden-savvy friend to buy a house, so we went through an extremely rigorous process of selecting and purchasing a home.

One of the first things I did after getting the keys to the house is setting up my garden spaces.

One of the great things about our new house are two cherry trees.

I will add more about my new configuration in the near future, but first I will summarize my results from last year:

Our indoor garden did horribly.  It produced about a quart of green beans, ten flavorless tomatoes, and  two cucumbers.

However, our church garden did great!  It produced a ton of tomatoes, several pumpkins, and rosemary bushes.

Onions

Tomatoes

Peppers

Some of last fall's harvest.

Check out the overflowing tomato plants!

Zucchini!  How exciting!


A pumpkin pie that Brooke made from some of our home-grown pumpkins.


Pumpkins from our garden.

Ok, so look forward to more information about my new setup and my plans for it.  I also want to talk about canning, stonemasonary, and greenhouses!