| Read to the end to find out what an expert says about how to plant carrots. We didn't get it 100% right the first time.
Step 1: Clear branches out of the way. Our carrots are going to want sunshine! Here's the tree we pruned to accomplish this:
Step 2: Place branches in a pile to cut up and add to the compost bin later.
Step 3: Admire nasty plastic stuff put down when the lawn (which no longer exists) was installed.
Step 4: Tear out the plastic and throw it away.
Step 5: Dig large hole. We figure our carrots are going to need to grow about 6 inches down, because we plan to make nice raised beds for them.
While we were digging, I noticed after a while we had found no bugs. None. Not one. Finally I found a worm. Then my boyfriend found a worm. At the end of the day, we had found a total of three worms and no other bugs. I'm no expert, but I don't think that's a sign of healthy, living soil. The first layer was soil that had probably been added when the house was built and the lawn was installed. Below that, there was a layer of reddish-brown clay. And there were a LOT of rocks. We figure that our carrots don't want rocks to get in the way of their growing, so we tossed the rocks aside into a pile. By our logic, we need to make it very easy for the carrots to grow straight down.
Step 6: Fill in the hole and make raised beds. (The carrot-garden-to-be is perpendicular to the shovel. There's still a little pile of extra dirt sitting around. I think we'll need some of that to sprinkle on top of the carrot seeds.)
First we added our own compost that we made ourselves. We began composting shortly after we began dating last July, and the entire bin pretty much looks like mud now. After filling the bottom with our compost, we mixed up bags of store-bought compost and soil with the soil we had removed from the hole. Then we put all of that back into the hole and shaped it into a raised bed.
Last, I added a few finishing touches: some water mixed with blackstrap molasses, to hopefully encourage bacterial growth, and a few extra worms out of our worm bin. I put the worms down in groups of two so that they wouldn't have to look too far to find a mate and make more worms for us. And I covered them with dirt so no birds would eat them.
At this point we took a little hiatus from gardening. One of my boyfriend's daughters got sick and we wanted the whole family there when we planted our carrots. Then it rained a lot, so that was no good. Finally, we had a good day where everyone was healthy to plant the carrots. Early in the day, my boyfriend and I went back out to work in the yard a bit. I looked into a pile of extra soil we had leftover and found hard clumps of clay that resembled rocks. Uh-oh.
At that point I packed the little one in the car for a trip to the "chicken place" (City Farmers Nursery, where I get all of my gardening supplies and advice). I asked Bill the owner what to do about the clay and he told us that we screwed up. We need to mix the clay soil with compost and gypsum (a mineral resembling a white powder). We already mixed in the compost so I bought some gypsam (he figured we needed 1/2 lb for our approximately 10 sq ft bed) and went back home to finish planting.
Back at home, we mixed the gypsum into the soil (thanks to the rain and our previous work this was VERY easy to to do). Then we made a few rows (marked with sticks), put some carrot seeds down, and lightly covered them. Here's a picture, although it doesn't look like much:
There! So that's our family's first foray into gardening. We've also planted a few fava bean plants (although one looks like it's dying) and today at the nursery I bought a few herbs. I picked out oregano and thyme, and my boyfriend's daughter (the candy lover) picked out one called Candy Mint. We also got a Christmas Tree seedling, so that we can grow our own tree for next year. It won't get very big since it's just in a pot for now, but maybe someday we can put it in the ground.
As for the carrots, now we have to do the hard part: wait. I will update everyone here as the seeds germinate and our plants grow into real carrots that we can eat! |
