Mulch is mulch, right?



As I work in the gardens, I discover more mistakes I've made that I can tell you about.  Lucky you. 
This particular mistake is regarding mulch.  All the great gardening books and magazines tell you to mulch your veggies once you have the transplants in the ground, or once the seeds have sprouted up to about 3" tall.  Fabulous idea- mulch is amazing.  It protects from heat and cold, helps retain water, keeps weeds at bay, and adds to the nutrition of the soil.  I mulched for the last two years, so you would think that would be good enough, right?  Wrong. 
See, it turns out that the TYPE of mulch you use is important.  The books and magazine articles all say to use "compost" mulch, or straw, something soft and organic like that.  However, when your wallet is running on empty from paying the water bill just to keep everything alive, "free"  sounds a lot better than "best."   News flash.  Free wasn't best.
The City of LaPorte, bless their hearts, has a fantastic program of recycling the brush they pick up in heavy trash into mulch, which they give out to their citizens for free.  They collect the brush, bring it back to Public Works, grind it up in the most massive grinding machine you've ever seen, and let it sit for a couple of months.  It "composts," or rots, for that time, and then they grind it again.  After a couple more months of "composting," they give it away to whomever feels the need to come get it (residing in the City of LaPorte is the only requirement for collection.) 
This mulch program is a truly fantastic way for the city to save money, save the planet, and help their citizens' flower beds look and perform better.  However, the enormous chunks of wood that don't break down within a year are not so great for veggie gardening.  This particular type of mulch is for folks who have nice big, pretty flower beds of perennial plants that need mulching once a year.  Not so much for tender, sensitive vegetable plants.  I had no idea, until this past year.  It really is sad how long it has taken me (and how many failures I've had to endure) to learn these lessons.  But that's why I'm on this blog, to help folks not make the mistakes I've made. 
As a result of this lesson I've learned, I'll be pursuing a different type of mulch this spring.  I will be using a true "compost" of rotting leaves, dirt, and veggie scraps from my compost bin, as well as straw.  I happen to have located a source for partly-rotted hay, so I'll be collecting that soon.  As with everything else I'm doing, I'll let you know how it works out.  (It helps to have, or make, some friends in the farming/animal raising business.) 
As you can see in the picture above, this garden was littered with large chunks of wood that were nothing but in the way.  After raking them off the top, we tilled the soil with my new tiller, and I'll be posting about that experience next.  Until next time, happy mulching!

Learning from my mistakes...



It's the middle of January, and we are reaching close to 80 degrees every day, mostly sunny. Let's face it, we're not having winter this year. If we do, it'll be in February. Just in case we don't get winter, I'm getting started on the gardens. I wasted a lot of time last spring and didn't get anything in the ground until the beginning of May. My reward for that was a harvest of fifteen tomatoes and about a gazillion okra.
Speaking of mistakes made last year, I'm going to run down the mistakes I've made, to hopefully help you avoid them. And to help me avoid them again.
I bought three and a half yards of dirt from Living Earth in League City for a raised bed on the south side of our house. It was "enriched compost," described to me as the most fertile garden soil they have, "great for gardens." Horse hockey. That soil is completely dead- devoid of all nutritional value. The dirt is a mix of sand and two-inch pieces of wood considered "compost." I planted eight tomatoes, six broccolis, about fifty lettuces, three green beans, a strawberry, and two squashes. Nothing grew. At all. The seedlings I planted in that dirt stayed the exact size they were when I planted them before they rotted away to nothing. Needless to say, I'll be changing the soil game this time around.
Speaking of soil, the biggest mistake I've made in the last two years is ignoring the chemical makeup of my soil.  Soil truly is key to growing vegetables.  I've learned this the hard way,  and I'll be testing this spring.  Soil is a complex medium that has to have certain nutrients in it for the plants to absorb as they grow.  The first step in gardening needs to be testing your soil and improving it in the areas it is lacking in.  I haven't learned nearly enough about it to explain the whole process, but you can learn alot more, as well as get your soil tested, HERE. 
The only other significant mistake I can come up with right now is not pinching off my flowering stems on my broccoli and lettuce plants.  As SOON as you see lettuce or broccoli sprouting a flower, pinch that sucker off, or else you won't get any more of what you want (leaves on lettuce, green heads on broccoli.)
Since I've made a full-time job out of trying to get rid of a head cold, I'll leave the mistakes in their own post today, and start with what I've done right next time.  Get ready, spring is coming!  It may only last three days, but it's coming!  :)