We’ve been about a month without a hard frost now, and the weather has been absolutely spring-like. Every other day brings rain and thunderstorms, and it couldn’t be a more ideal time for growing things.

Unfortunately, I messed up when I planted peppers and tomatoes 8 and 7 weeks before the last “predicted” frost date: My lights weren’t quite powerful enough, and all of my originally indoor-started plants are on death’s doorstep.

These Plants are Dead

These are also dead

 Furthermore, nothing was growing in the garden boxes, principally because my method of dumping water from a cup was completely washing out the seeds every time, and they eventually became burried again.

In order to solve these problems, I went to Lowes and bought a watering can, and some additional plants:  Two tomato plants, two pepper plants, six basil plants, and a bell pepper plant.  I’ll probably return to a local nursery this weekend and purchase some more tomatoes.  Despite giving in to the horrible, horrible plant companies, I made sure all the varieties I purchased where heirloom, and chauk this up to another lesson learned.  Next year, I’ll be more careful about my seed starting.

New plants:

Store bought, but tasty

Spring may be less than a week old, but it is decidedly arrived here in the Louisville area.  Although we are still expecting a number of frosts, and lots of cold nights yet, the weather is gradually breaking, and it’s almost time to direct sow hardier things, like Lettuce.

I plan on getting the lettuce in the garden boxes by the end of the week, but we’ll see how that goes.  The tomatoes and the peppers are growing inside, but they’re the only things that made it out of the seed box.  I’m starting to doubt the viability of the seeds I purchased a few years ago.  I’m not nearly out of seeds, but the plants just don’t grow vigorously.  I wasn’t thinking a thing about heirloom or organic varieties at that point, so I purchased whatever mass-market Burpee and Monsanto seeds were being offered at the time.  Next year, I plan on purchasing all-heirloom varieties, hopefully mostly from Baker Creek Seeds (http://rareseeds.com/).  Their catalog is by and far the most colorful one I received this year, and it is marked up on almost every page with some variety or another that I’d like to raise.

Today, I tilled up the garden boxes (an easy task with a hand trowel) and moistened soil which has remained dry and frozed for many months.  I also prepared a few 3 gallon containers that I picked up on craiglist for dirt cheap ($0.50 each!) for some flowers that hopefully won’t die.

Next week, I plan on swinging by Brightside Louisville at some point and picking up some compost.  The city of Louisville composts all the yard waste collected around the city each year, and sells it for a very reasonable price.

We’ll see how things go this year.  Here’s how things look outside.  I’ll update later with the way things are looking inside.

This year, I plan on supplementing my pantry with quite a bit of garden grown produce, so I’m getting an early start.  Right now, it looks about like this in Louisville:

Here’s my seed growing setup:

The pods are filled with those expandy peat pod things, which actually work pretty well in this case:

And now, a few weeks later, this is what I’ve got going:

I’ve got Lettuce, Kale, and Peppers started.  They apear a bit leggy at the moment, although I hope this is just my terrible gardening judgement.  The light I’ve got above them is a 15W flourescent, and another 20W flourescent in the clip on lamp.  I’m keeping the light on them for around 14 hours a day.  The seed pod gizmo has a microfiber mat that sucks up water and keeps the pods moist, so I don’t have to worry about drowning the little guys.

And so my 2009 year of gardening begins.  I’d like to have a number of lettuces and tomatoes, and hopefully I’ll yeild some peppers this year.  We’ll see how things go.  With luck, the heat of the summer won’t kill everything like it did last year.

Well, the plants are making pretty good progress. I’ve just now figured out everything that the birds have taken out, so a second round of seeds will be planted this weekend (along with the garden box construction). Not much to update about, but here’s a picture:

I noticed the other day that my bean plants have practically exploded out of the ground. I though I would set up my camera to make a stop-motion film, and maybe capture some interesting growth. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. You can, however, see the plants tracking the sun.

Well, once again, I have seedlings. This time, they’re out on the balcony, so they’re getting plenty of sunlight. The Lettuce and Basil have sprouted up first, and aside from any bird casualties (I’ll know what didn’t survive in a couple more days, I imagine), everything else is close behind. I plan on building garden boxes the weekend after next. The boxes will be a modification of the design I used last year. They will be 4 feet by 4 feet, and tiered so all plants receive roughly equal amounts of sun (so the plants in the front don’t obscure the plants in the back). Everything will also be completely modular, so I can add or remove parts at will, and so (most importantly!) I am able to move the garden boxes in my car. Here is a rough sketch:

Last year, I followed Mel Bartholomew’s “Square Foot Gardening” to the letter.  This year, I won’t be.  I like the advantages provided by the special soil mix, as well as the ease of accessing a 4′x4′ garden “frame.”  I don’t like the limitation of planting only in square numbers, however.

I’ll also have a separate 1′x4′ box for my peppers and a separate 1′x2′ box for my beans, which I’ll allow to climb a trellis of bamboo and twine.

Here are pictures of the lettuce sprouts:

This space is not only about Geeky Gardening, but Geeky sustainable living. I wouldn’t be trying to maintain a Garden in the middle of a city if I didn’t think it would contribute some good back into the world (and my stomach). So, I’ll try and use this site to promote the values I think necessarily contribute to Geeky Gardening, and Geeky sustainability: Local Living, a Sense of Place, A sense of Morality, and a willingness to change and learn.

I’ve been reading voraciously the past month. One book titled The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, another titled In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, a Third Farewell, My Subaru, and now I’m reading the Essays of Wendell Berry, a Henry County, Kentucky Agrarian, Intellectual, Author, Poet and Farmer. I’ve taken these readings to heart, and I’m trying to make some actual changes for the better in my life. I’m shopping at Farmers Markets, and working on my garden. I’m also making a concerted effort to patronize local business, and avoid the industrialized eating world.

Pollan makes the dangers of the industrial food chain all too obvious in his books, Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Not only has the industrial food chain sacrificed any meaning and morality attached to the plants and animals we exploit for calories, but it has so perverted these living organisms (in so many senses of the word) that the food is less nutritious and increasingly unhealthy.

Doug Fine takes the lessons taught by Pollan, and applies them in Farewell, My Subaru. This book, while light on substance, is a pretty good look at ways the average American can take steps to reduce his or her dependence on imported, hybridized, and perverted foodstuffs, and help the environment and the pocketbook at the same time. He provides sources for much of what he does, so further reading is near to hand.

The days of $2 a gallon gas are gone forever. The days of $3 a gallon gas are probably gone forever. Soon, we’ll look at $4 a gallon with memories of fondness. As energy costs continue to skyrocket, the need to live locally will increase exponentially. Already, Americans are hurting because of the increased costs associated with getting to work, getting to the grocery, and navigating the sprawl that is suburbia in general. The costs associated with transporting goods across the country have barely begun to affect the price of foodstuffs and other goods. Soon, Joe and Jane Soccermom are going to notice their grocery bills going up, while their paychecks are unlikely to get any bigger.

The solution? Local living. It costs a lot less to transport a carrot from Henry county, Kentucky into Louisville, Kentucky than it does to transport the same carrot from Chile. Additionally, because the farms of Henry county haven’t been exploited by profiteering corporations for decades, the Henry county carrot is probably more nutritious and tastier. Right now, this carrot is slightly more expensive than the imported carrot, simply due to issues of supply and demand. Soon, we’ll see that relationship change.

The Essays of Wendell Berry couldn’t do more to drive this point home. I disagree with Berry in his religious views, as well as his unfailing optimism for humanity. I don’t disagree with his assesment of the situation. He sees our eroding sense of place as the cause of most of our current problems. We continue to trust profit-minded governments and corporations with our priceless natural resources. We sit idly by as mining corporations destroy forests and ruin water sources. Because we have no connection to the land that is being destroyed, we say nothing.

Essentially, Berry argues that it is not enough to simple “be the change [we] want to see in the world,” but we must carry on by accepting the responsibility for the consequences of that change. We must seek not only to maximize the good we do in the world, but also minimize the bad. This is how we must save the world from our self. This is how we must recreate our ties to the land.

So, it is with that in mind that I go about gardening, and patronizing local stores, and visiting farmer’s markets. I find myself increasingly wishing that I had some land, to better utilize the resources at my disposal. As of now, I find plenty of sense of place here in my Old Louisville apartment, and with any luck, I’ll be able to supplement my eating quite handily with the fruits and veggies of my own labors.

Well, my last Garden was something of a bust. Around the middle of March, our lease ended, so I was forced to move everything. Evidently, during the cold moving process, and the subsequent lower light, all of my previous seedlings died. In the mean time, I’ve learned some lessons, and I’m ready to get started again. This time, on my little balcony in Old Louisville.

The planting plan is much the same as before, supplemented with some Beans this time around.

Unfortunately, I’ve already had a few setbacks:

Evidently the Birds thought that the beans were as good an idea as I did.

On the bright side, my lettuce is already sprouting, which is very exciting. The nearby farmers markets don’t yet have any spring greens that look like they’re worth buying. I’m afriad that it will heat up soon, though, and I’ll lose the lettuce. As soon as it nears maturity, I’ll have to transplant it into a container that gets a lot of shade.

Fortunately, It’s been a mild spring so far. I don’t feel really bad about delaying my planting as far as I have, since anything I planted probably would have died with the precarious weather up to this point. Subtle Change. .

Well, there’s about a foot of snow on the ground here in Louisville, but Thursday I managed to get out and buy some seed trays and get my seeds planted. This year, everything I’m planting came from The Thyme Garden in Oregon.

This year, I’ll be planting Chamomile (Roman and German), Sage, Hananero Peppers, Anaheim Peppers and Cayenne Peppers, Thyme, English Lavendar, Peppermint, Spearmint, Cilantro, Cinnamon Basil, Lemon Basil, Genovese Basil, Anise, Oregano, and Lettuce.

I’ve probably started a few of these a little bit early, but it’s not a huge deal. As long as we don’t get a major frost after Derby Day, we should be good.

Since I’m going to be moving into an apartment, the garden boxes I built last year will be useless to me. Fortunately, I have a nice south-facing balcony which should get a decent amount of sun. I’ll have to build new boxes, and figure out some way to position them, but we’ll worry about that after I move in.

This year’s gardening approach will be a little bit different than last years. Stay tuned.