Product Placement

I've been talking a lot about the organic liquid fertilizer we use whenever we plant so I thought I'd give it some props here.

It is called John's Recipe and is distributed by The Lady Bug Brand, a division of The Natural Gardener. It contains a blend of seaweed, humic acid, molasses and fish emulsion. So far it's been working pretty well. We dilute 1 Tbs in 1 gallon of water whenever we plant so it goes a long way.

There is a drawback, however. It is our intention to farm organically and, many organic farmers, use animal manure as fertilizer. However, since at least one of us is vegetarian, we shy away from animal manure-intensive farming.

Taking a cue from the Indians, who put a whole fish in the ground with their corn seeds, we thought we'd try this product to start our plants growing because it gets its nitrogen primarily from fish emulsion. Fish emulsion is made by taking the waste products from the fish industry, grinding them up and mixing them with water. Since it is a by-product of the industry, the industry itself does not profit from its use.

And, unlike cow/horse/pig/chicken manure, it does not contain the many antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals that course through factory farmed animals every day of their lives.

It does, perhaps, contain mercury. And other heavy metals.

That is a concern for us.

We've been looking into it and, from what we can tell, it contains negligible amounts of mercury, if any at all. The term "negligible" is cold comfort but we take what we can get.

In a previous garden, in a somewhat more progressive city, we used a vegan fertilizer that worked wonders. We are on the lookout for a similar product here in the great city of Little Rock. Living in a small apartment with no backyard, we obviously cannot keep a compost or worm bin. So in the meantime....

We do what we can. And, as I've said before, this farm plot of ours is an experiment. A dry run for the future farm of our dreams.

We will see what works and what doesn't work.

We may change our mind about what we support and what we rebuff.

For those of you who are looking for the "perfect" fertilizer, check out these websites when doing your research:

Washington State Pesticide and Fertilizer Information Page
Extremely Green's Organic Fertilizer Guide
Wikipedia's page on Nitrogen-Fixing Plants

First Planting!

While Adam worked on re-tilling our rows, I set about preparing the "round mounds" that would be the home for our squashes, melons and cucumbers. The soil may look hard and cake-y on the top but it is so soft that working it with a shovel and hoe is no problem.

First of all, I broke up the ground surrounding our previously formed mounds. I took this dirt and added it to the mounds. (We have 4 mounds in each section x 4 sections = 16 mounds.)


After forming the mounds, I then sifted through the dirt by hand and pulled out the grass weeds. This sounds a little crazy, but it was actually a lot of fun! I always loved to play in dirt when I was a kid and not much has changed since those days. Plus, I got a good look at all the little bugs and critters living in our dirt.

At the end of the day, I had a bucket o' weeds.





Before I continue, I should say that I'm not a crazy weeder. It isn't something that I necessarily enjoy and it isn't something I think is always important. Overall, I don't think weeds are "bad" and Adam shares this sentiment so I can't see us spending a lot of time weeding. However, our little zucchini and melon plants were raised from seedlings and weren't doing too well....so I wanted to give them the best chance possible.

All that being said, this garden is, in many ways, an experiment for us. We certainly don't know everything there is to know and we hope to learn a lot along the way. By mid-summer we could be reformed anti-weeders with an arsenal of Round-Up at our disposal.

But I doubt it.

After preparing our "mounds" with a compost/peat mixture, I gingerly put our little plants in the mounds. As I said before, these had been raised from seedlings but had started to get weak and spindly in recent days, despite being put out in the sun for a good part of the day. I planted them pretty deep so that their weak bits were under the dirt. A storm was coming in a day and I didn't want them to be torn to shreds.

We made little zucchini "volcanoes" in the middle of the mounds and watered them with a mixture of liquid fertilizer (organic) and water.

Then we wished them luck and headed home.



Next up: Potatoes and Onions!