Day 7- More fertilizer, seedlings and soil!

 Squeee! and Huh? The Easter Egg radishes have come up but nothing else.

Now at my fault am not keeping the soil consistently moist in that bed. I should have watered yesterday, the soil surface in the north bed was bone dry. The south bed is still bare and damp as well but it is in total shade all the time so I suspect as soon as the soil starts warming maybe the seeds will start coming up. Location, location, location!

The other neighbor beds I think have radishes as well as those seedlings look like these. I brought the fertilizer and dug around the tomato and added a bunch to the new fence bed. I threw some fertilizer on it and cultivated then watered a little then went back and threw a bunch more fertilizer on and worked that in then watered a lot more. Will try and remember to do a nutrient test this week.

It really is still just mud so am hoping next weekend I can get a bag of soil to put in and mix up. Also hoping to get some snail bait now that the radishes are up. My theory about the radishes is that is a more composty and slightly shady area that doesn't get as dry or hot. The other beds are either totally shade or totally sun. That's why the fence bed is going to be potatoes maybe something else, really want potatoes though and it'll take some work to get it ideal.

I mentioned the piece of pottery but never shared the pictures. Given the age of residents here, wouldn't be surprised if it was from someone in the past who broke something and just threw it in the garden for whatever reason.

Doing some sleuthing on the style, it's not corn, could be Calla Lily which is used a lot in Mexican pottery and painting. It's a style called Italian Majolica and it's entirely possible it's a cheap Asian knockoff but whatever.

Anyway back to the garden... exciting to have the radishes suddenly spring up like that and hope snails don't get to them. I dug in some fertilizer really well around the tomato so hoping that helps it along and maybe will see more progress on seedlings coming up elsewhere. Really need to keep up on the watering for sure.

I passed another resident lady on the way back from the garden and she asked 'what's in the garden? What's blooming today?' hmmph... nothing blooming, got a tomato and some radishes coming up. 'oh that's nice' and I continued on my way. Nice but ... I'm not a big talker about the garden unless I'm doing it like this or someone actually asks an intelligent question about how to do something. 

Thinking about soil and how much to get, don't remember if I touched on figuring area/volume. My new bed is a good example to do some figuring. Usually when they give directions of how much to use, they say so many inches on top per area dimensions. So I have a bed that is 2 x4 ft and for ease of math it's been cultivated 12 inches. What I need is the Kellog's Panting Compost that comes in a 1 1/2 cu ft bag.

 

 The instructions say "1.5 CF  Transplants 4-5 one gal; 2 five gal; or amends 10 sqft". My area is 2x4 = 8 sq ft. Now what it doesn't say is how deep it amends. So one bag for that area is a near perfect ratio. Wish I had a digging fork to work it in, that would be so much easier than the shovel but will make do with what I have. Might need to add a taller border due to increasing the volume by a bit. Unless I take out some of the dirt in that area and put it over on the compost heap. Hmmm.

Now unfortunately that size bag isn't available in my local HD (or anywhere in CA apparently), they only have the 3 cu ft and I will not be hauling that to the garden weighing in at about 50#. I need a cart for that. So they have Amend and Gro-Mulch  that might do but not fond of those for the garden and then there's the MG organic version for $2 more, nope not in my budget. 

 

Checking Lowe's they have their own brand Sta-Green but it's only in 1 cu ft bags and it says 4 bags will cover 24 sq ft to 2 inches. That's surface coverage not digging it in. The instructions also say to spread it over the ground and work it in to 6 inches. But... which one do I follow?

Judging from the images another customer posted, not sure I want to use that. It was growing micro fungus, which is okay but then another customer said that it looks like mulch so it's much too coarse for what I want to do. Sigh, might have to spend extra money to get the good stuff. I don't know what they were expecting but the first one likely had sat in the bag exposed to weather for too long and the other one.. well compost is variable and can be small and large pieces. I will likely spend money on the MG Performance Organics since it's only $10. 

So, will see what happens and day by day updates will be done.