Lettuce and pictures!

Due to the lack of photos in this blog, I'd thought I'd show you what the deck farm looks like after today's activities, which involved transplanting 36 lettuce. I have moved them from a 40 cell germination tray to the 10cm pots. This is my 235 pot plants consisting of lettuce, parsley, spring onions, garlic, and spinach:

I refer to this part of the deck as the main harvesting area - it's where the plants are put to wait for harvest really. In the germination area, I have the germination trays and buckets. Speaking of the germination trays, here are the blasted things:

The one on the left is actually two emptied ones stacked. It's really annoying because these things are USELESS. Not to mention that I've apparently been transplanting everything wrong because I have been moving only the plants, not the contents of each cell, leading to transplant shock. They're just impossible to remove, and the plastic is very flimsy. They're my #1 worst purchase and sucked up $30 of the $192 I've spent on total on this garden.

This is the germination area, with my awesome germination buckets(Seen before in the entry about Parsley) - my avocado plants also chill with the buckets. It's amazing how many pot plants I actually have used - I've only got 29 of the 10cm ones left! I can't wait for the 150 13cm ones to arrive.

Speaking of which, I purchased lavender, beetroot, and broccoli seeds. All are things we use so I figured I may as well get some sort of good harvest going here. This brought the total spent to $200. Speaking of good harvest, check out my spinach! (Yeah, it looks so small in the photo above, but that's a bad representation.)


Despite the lack of tomatoes and cucumbers, I could probably make a mean salad out of all of these leafy greens. Especially my champion spinach plant, located in the big pots. If you start from the top most left corner in the big buckets, then move down one, that's it! The spinach and garlic are earmarked for my Saag curry recipes though. Here's a shot of the entire used portion of the deck as it stands now, however this is only half of the deck(The rest is in shade however). All told it's probably around 20-30 square metres. I'm looking at my first harvest in about 4 weeks I think.

Parsley!

I decided to transplant a bucket of my parsley into more of the pot plants. Sadly enough, I only managed to fit about 4/5ths of a single bucket into 48 pots. I am estimating there to be 100-120 parsley plants here. Fortunately parsley can be frozen and eaten long after harvest.

I am seriously considering going to the local organics market and selling some there for ridiculous prices. I also ordered 150 13cm pots(The 10cm ones were just way too small) for a wallet cost of $40. And got another 80L of potting mix, bringing the grand total to $192.

Yikes.

This is an expensive hobby! However I have been enjoying the exercise, sunshine, and the soothing nature of the work. My spinach plants are flourishing, some have gained their true leaves. Spinach plants send up two simple leaves when they sprout, to begin gathering sunlight(I presume) to fund the next expansion - a pair of complex leaves. This is termed their "True leaves".

Total transplanted plant count:
95x spinach plants
147x spring onions
7x garlic
48x parsley

I have decided to leave the chives to do their thing, they shouldn't need much room at all. Same with the second bucket of spring onions. The second bucket of parsley I may transplant tomorrow, only time will tell. I've got about 60-70 of the 10cm pots left, and won't receive my 13cm pots until about Wednesday or Thursday next week!

I acquired 2 30L bins for my vermiposting setup. I shall post detailed instructions once I get the worms. Vermipost is the perfect fertilizer, producing an all natural kind which is able to aid any kind of plant. It'll also get rid of kitchen wastes.

I love spring onions!

So I've identified which is the chives and which is the spring onions - the spring onions had already got their little white bump on the base where it meets the ground. I decided to put three in each 10cm pot, and because I had an odd number of pots, I had them in a 7x7 arrangement. This meant I had 147 of these suckers!

I had to water a buttload of plants and acquired two avocado pot plants for my little garden. One was fighting with parsley which had to go, under which I found two snails! I threw them off my deck and banished them from my realm forever.

The parsley was in it's second year, where it's bitter and inedible and produces seeds. Parsley is a biannual plant but for harvesting purposes is an annual.

So anyway, I planted one of the buckets of spring onions only and left the other intact - that's 147 of the suckers in ONE of the buckets! I also noticed a lot of the lettuce sprouts were fighting for a cell. This was because I double seeded each cell, in case one of the seeds didn't germinate and I wasted a space. I then pulled out the extra lettuce leaving the biggest, and didn't know where to put it, so I put them in the empty spring onion bucket. If they survive, great(I didn't exactly plant them very well, just chucked bundles of them into five spots), I can use them to replace dying plants or whatever.

This was a good three hours of work so I decided to call it a day.

It begins in earnest...

So I got the pots on Monday, and have now decided to do the mass transplanting required. The spring onions are mostly currently a big tuft of green centered in one of the buckets which is really worrying me, they'll definitely need to be transplanted soon or their roots will become tangled and break when I try and transplant them later. What looks like fifty spring onions share a 4cm by 8cm spot in one of the bucket. I suck at this whole planting thing.

On a different note though, the lettuce has sprouted(I have yet to see anything from the onions though). The garlic sprouted over the weekend, and everything's growing merrily. The spinach must be transplanted now or it's gonna be stunted and useless for the rest of it's life.

I purchased 80L of potting mix($14) on Tuesday. Bringing the total up to $150 for the garden, yikes.

So I transplanted 80 spinaches into 80 of the 249 10cm pots, including 39 from the 40 cell germination tray(one runty one died. *cry*). I was one short but as they were ~10-11c each I didn't complain really, much better than the $1.30 I was paying for the 15cm pots. Trademe is definitely the way to go. I perfected a production line technique which went something like:

1. Full up about 20-30 pots with potting soil
2. Soak with water to drop the level a cm or two, also it wets the soil all the way through and makes it easier to get the seedlings in
3. Move four over to the bucket
4. Slowly dig out the seedlings by digging underneath them then breaking the soil apart gently until I just had the plant in my hand. I only held them by the leaf, I think that's what you're supposed to do.
   
5. I use my other forefinger to stab a hole in the pot plant
6. Put the seedling in and gently! close the wet mix around it's roots. It should be snug around the leaves.
7. Move that four over to the designated spinach area.
8. Repeat steps 3-7 until you have used up the lot, then repeat steps 1-8.

Simple easy guide. Using this you can do about 20 in 5 minutes. It's handy as heck. I now have a proud field of 95 spinach plants and seven garlic plants.

The garlic was pretty amazing. While it had like a 2cm little nubbin coming out of the ground, it had a huuuuge network of roots underneath which had a very typical garlic smell. I felt criminal transplanting it into the 10cm pot, but it had to be done. The root bundle reached about 10cm down and 10 cm across.

I am intending to set up a vermiposting bin to create super high nutritious fertilizer, the idea being that if I can get enough nutrients and water to the plants they won't need as much space. Kinda like hydroponics.

Take the heat

That's it, this spinach is getting out of hand. It's bloody growing like a weed. I got off school early today and was sitting around doing nothing, so again nipped off to Bunnings and purchased a $10 germination tray for the spinach. I had to fork out $1 for one of those fancy carry bags because I was on a bike and lets face it, it'd just be awkward otherwise. This brings the total expenses to $106 for this planting cycle. Sigh.

I did my first bulk transplanting. I've finally learned to get rid of all the dirt on the seedlings' roots, poke a hole in the tray, and stick the roots in and close dirt over it. Since I had to do this forty times(as opposed to 5 or 10 times before), I became quite fast at it. It really has been straining my neck and back muscles though. Not even sure I'm doing this right but the success rate will let me know!

Looking at the instructions that came with the tray though, it turns out that the awesome stand that came with it is actually a cover which can be used to trap the moisture in. Make it kind of like a greenhouse. I was wondering why they bothered to include that, but hey, ya live, ya learn.

So I've thinned out the spinach significantly. The chives and spring onions are another story though, they've sprouted like crazy and are now up to 5cm tall! I also spotted some parsley sprouts.

I ordered 250 10cm pots for $30 via Trademe, I figured this was a steal. I'm going to need more potting soil though, my 40L bag is nearly decimated and my bag of bark is gone.

More transplanting!

So it looks like I really over planted these poor spinach. To make it worse, I obviously moved along some extra shoots into the 15cm pots I bought two days ago and they sprouted too. I count up to seven spinach shoots in one of the 15cm plants. Pop-eye would be proud!

I went and bought ten more of the 15cm pots to take the worst off the spinach, as this is getting ridiculous. It was just one seed packet! And I'm worried about the other three seed packets that I bought - I emptied them into the buckets as well. I think that I am going to have a lot of food here. At least it's starting to make some sort of financial sense(Now at $95 total expenditure for the entire food garden.)

I skipped the drainage trays here - it's outside, and I just wash the dirt off the deck. Surely I don't need them? Plus they're 70c or so each so it was an easy way to save $7 or so.

All the well laid plans of mice and men...

Today, I received news that someone I knew had committed suicide. I spent the day moping and not at school, so I decided to do some planting to take my mind off of this. I nipped down to Bunnings Warehouse, grabbed 2 40 cell germination trays($10 each, $20 total), plus lettuce and onion seeds($5), and because my spinaches were getting so big, I caved in and bought five 15cm pots with the drainage plates for an exorbitant $10.

This brings the total spending to a hefty $87. Saw someone from school at the line, I was sitting there in my gardening clothes. Very awkward moment but I pretended that I was totally cool with short shorts and an old tshirt on, with old sandals. Totally.

I came home and filled in the germination trays with potting mix and attempted to place exactly two seeds in each cell. Alas, everything was wet so this was a bit harder, but I managed. I also transplanted about six or seven spinach plants into the 15cm pots. I'm sure I'm going to have 50 or so spinach plants, but we can always give them to friends.

The plants, they're germinating!

So I've got four more buckets - two more mystery plants germinating. They're very spiky, and are like little loops of green string growing out of the ground. I suspect these are the spring onions and chives but who knows? Last time I checked spring onions aren't circular. Well, not in two dimensions at least.

The rain has eased off a bit, thank god, I can handle watering the plants myself thank you! The spinach is starting to worry me, it's like it's on steroids and another three dozen or so have sprouted. In the two buckets. I think I might need to transplant them because I can't let any of my plants die. I could possibly have over planted the spinach but we'll see.

Houston, we have germination!

So in four short days the spinach germinated. I have about two dozen spinach plants up so far, and am watching the other eight buckets like a hawk. At least, I think they're spinach, as I didn't label the buckets and completely forgot what is where. I've been watering them like anything though.

Well, at least, they're getting watered like anything. It's been raining really really hard here, for days on end. The buckets are draining right through(The drainage holes worked! Excellent!), I was worrying like anything. This rain fortunately thoroughly wetted the soil right through to the bottom, I didn't know this was what you were supposed to do until I read the potting mix bag a day or so ago. Go figure. I have been pondering adding more to my little collection however I'd need to add buckets and it's 89c per bucket but they require 9L of material(About $2) and seeds. It's pretty expensive. I think I'll wait until I find a cheaper option.

First post!

The first post of my blog, woo! So the basic premise is I'm in a rental home, right? Definitely can't do any large scale food farming by tearing up the lawn. At least, that's what everyone tells me. But I've got this large deck with about 15 square metres of space.

I'm a complete amateur when it comes to growing things however, but I shall certainly attempt it. I'm intending this blog to be a learning experience for a pot plant farmer intending to grow food to save money in a rental property with added health benefits. Today I decided to start it off with chives, parsley, spinach, garlic, and spring onions - all staples of our diet and stuff we purchase from the shops on a regular basis.

We spent $30.00 on ten drainage bases(For putting under the pot plants) and I used 10 old buckets I had laying around, I punched a hole in the base of each one for drainage. In went a couple of litres of bark(Drainage) and a couple of litres of potting mix. This cost me $14. I then put in the seeds($8). Total cost: $52(Rounded up). I emptied the seed packets into the buckets(Two buckets per packet) and put half a dozen pieces of garlic into the two garlic buckets.

That's all for today folks, I'll update in a few days time and hope something actually happens.