Day One – Earth Day Planting – Organic Tomatoes

Our Bee Wild family are huge advocates of growing at least some of your own food. Connecting with you food in a visceral way gives such appreciation of the blessings soil and plants bring. So, I started an Earth Day Planting of Tomatoes today, after I decided to move the location of our tomatoes to the front flower garden.

Everyone can grow something. Even if you live in a small apartment, you can grow herbs on your window sill, using upcycled containers you find in a garage sale or thrift store. The main thing with upcycled containers is that plants who don’t like to stand in water should be in containers with drainage holes uncovered. You can often use a drill and duck tape to drill your own holes. There is plenty of information on how to drill holes in a container without breaking it on the Internet.

The Decision to Grow Vegetables in Our Flower Beds

We live in a very wooded area, and even though we have about 3/4 of an acre of land, most of it is in the shade. Most vegetables like at least 6-8 hours of sunlight, so this has been an issue, since the only sunny space on our property is in the front of the house. This is where we traditionally have grown annual and perennial flowers.

When you grow veggies in containers, please realize that every few years you are going to have to renew the soil. It’s sort of a pain to lug the containers down a flight of stairs from the deck and dump the soil into the compost area, lug them back up the stairs, and refill the container with new soil and compost. Since last year, our tomatoes were giving us signs that the soil needed to be refreshed, I decided to clear an annual flower bed and move the tomato plants to the front garden. Over time, I’ll be either writing about or photo documenting this move. So, you might want to check the blog daily, when activity is heavy (like for the next 5 or so days).

Prepping QueenBee

Believe it or not, I don’t like many bugs, and I think chigger bites are the pits. So, I do two things that take care of the problem of ground to body biting insects. I take about 1 tbsp of almond oil and mix 4-6 drops of tea tree oil in my hand. Then, I rub my hands together and brush the oil on my feet, the socks I put on my feet, and about 2-3 inches from the hem of my jeans up my pant leg.

The second thing I do is take a sage wand, light it, and smoke the area where I’ll be working. The smoke and the sage smell actually clear most insects out of the bed for hours. (See the Photo, Sage Wand and Matches.)

I garden either bare footed or sock footed, if the soil is a bit cold like today (Georgia’s soil isn’t very warm until early May.). I also wear a pair of thing gardening gloves so that I can feel the soil as I’m working it. The feel of the soil in your hands as well as under your feet is going to give you as good an idea of what to do to condition your soil as any testing. How do I know this? When I was a kid, no one had test kits, as most of our Dad’s had fairly low-paying jobs at the time. So, we used all of our senses to interact with the soil, and that’s how we knew what to do/add when.

Soil Preparation

If your soil is good and full of life (Plenty of earth worms are a good sign of this.), it will give nutrients to your plants. Good soil usually crumbles fairly easily in your hand and digs down to about 12 inches with a hand spade. Yes, I want you to dig with a hand spade or hand shovel and your hands. Handling the soil is the old-fashioned way to know what state your  soil is in.

If your soil is rocky, take the stones out. Every year your bed will cough up more stones, and you can remove them. If you are redoing a bed, move plants you want to transplant and pull the others out of the soil as you are working it. If your soil is full of clay (You won’t be able to easily dig with a hand spade/shovel and the clumps won’t break up very easily.), you will need to add some organic matter (homemade compost, organic mushroom compost, small amounts of rotted organic chicken manure) and a small bit of sand. Clay soil doesn’t drain well, and most plants don’t like having wet feet. So, that’s the treatment for clay soil. If your soil is sandy (You will see many grains of sand.), it will drain too quickly and plants won’t get enough water. In this case, add organic soil and organic compost.

Your ideal soil should be a mixture of crumbly soil, organic compost, sand, and clay. When you water a bit of soil, it should drain well but remain wet. You should be able to pick the soil up, form a ball, and easily crumble the soil. As you can see in the Photo, Adding Organic Soil, my bed had some clay one one end and had no earth worms. So, I’m amending the soil by adding organic soil and composts.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about picking your plants, if you haven’t already started your own plants with heirloom seeds.