Well, the flea beetles have been vanquished. Not sure if it was the wood ash or the non-stop rain but my eggplants are flourishing now and look to be my best eggplants so far. I can't wait to see them.

My first attempt at tomatillos is turning out to be a success so far as well. If it ever stops raining long enough for me to get the camera out of the bag I will post some updated pics.

My organic pest control book has been and invaluable resource over the years. Check it out from the library if you get the chance! Check out a preview here.

I will definitely get some updated pics of the garden up this weekend! Until then... Happy Gardening!

Just added a new compost page. It's kind of bare bones right now but there is a great link to a site with a lot of composter plans.

Check it out here.

I saw a lot of info on layering your compost. I've never done that myself and have always had good luck with the mix method. I do layer fresh grass on top and leave it there till the next mowing when I bury the old and put the fresh cut grass on top. This helps keep down the smell as well and the bug factor. Other than that I keep it pretty mixed up.

Whatever your method composting is a free way to  keep your garden soil strong.

Happy Gardening!

Want to build your own raised bed. I took a few videos from youtube and some DIY building instructions and put them all together on one site. You can see the link on the right.
If you want to skip the whole building process and buy some easy to install beds check out the raised beds here.

Otherwise... Happy Gardening!

Bloodroot

An early spring wildflower that blooms March to April. The flower bud, on a seperate stalk but completely enclosed by the developing leaf, pushes upward through the leaves as one of the first plants of spring.

The root contains sanguinarine, which gives the root the bloodlike color of it's moniker. Sanguinarine has shown antiseptic, anesthetic and anticancer activity. American Indians used the root for rheumatism, asthma, bronchitis, lung ailments, laryngitis and fevers. The red-orange juice from the root was applied to warts, used as a dye and a decorative skin stain. It is toxic if taken internally so DO NOT INGEST this plant.

Bloodroot works great for the shade or woodland gardener. The early white flowers are a welcome sign that spring is on the way and the bold, green leaves will persist through the growing season.

Take $20 off purchases of $40 or more at Gardens Alive!

Well last weekend we finally got our raised beds built. Check em out.

Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Eggplant, Peppers, Sage, Cherry Tomatoes and Marigolds populate the beds.

We planted everything May 3rd and so far so good except we may have a case of flea beetles on the eggplant. I tried wood ash before to rid myself of the pesky little beasts but to no avail. Time to consult my guide to organic pest control to see what other methods they come up with.

We have one more bed to build this weekend. Not sure what exactly we are going to put it in yet but we are thinking cukes or zukes or a bunch of herbs.

Kind of fun to tinker with and to keep track of your plants and harvest and garden log.

It's called Plangarden. Here's the link

This is a Lenten Rose from my Grandmother's spring garden. Southwestern Lower Michigan, depressed.

For all intents and purposes I grew up in that garden. It was sad to see it in such dismay. My grandmother is getting up there and not able to work as much in the garden. And my aunt who normally takes care of the grounds has had some weird kind of temporary blindness that, after a year or more is finally subsiding but her absence from the garden for that period of time is highly noticeable. My wife and I helped as much as we could in the short time we were there. I remember raking the first evening, dusk light, brisk air setting in, kids running a playing tag with the dog. It was bliss. It was home. For a few fleeting moments I knew that's where we should be.


Day 2. We hit the town. What town? Downtown South Bend, Indiana. Saturday night. Nothing. Privately owned restaurants are few and far between and the overwhelming mediocrity that are chain restaurants line the retail corridor. A far cry from here in Asheville, NC where sometimes the dining choices are so varied that sometimes, albeit a very rare occasion, I actually get overloaded and end up staying in.

Even worse my hometown Niles, MI. (shares a state line with South Bend mentioned above). We went to the only downtown bar open on Saturday afternoon about 4 and while the facade had been subject to a beautiful makeover, there were just denizens of the droll scattered about the bar. Quiet. Drunk. One of them swearing softly at his laptop occasionally. I think we were supposed to believe he was playing the market. An Oscar is not in his future. The bartender / owner had moved into the apartment upstairs recently and while it was cool that someone was actually living downtown he didn't seem to jovial. Even less jovial than usual for an owner who still has been a full time bartender for as long as I can remember. Most of the businesses downtown have similar stories. It's sad really. Downtown Niles has some really beautiful buildings and some dedicated people trying to fill them. I think it's the public that is keeping the city down. They just aren't ready to pay that %10 extra to go to a local business. You can blame Walmart all you want but it's the people who decide to shop there instead of going downtown.

Anywho.... I digress. After wandering around the county for a couple days the cons far outweighed the pros and I couldn't get back to Asheville soon enough.

Bottom line is I love my family and would love to retire to my grandmothers property one day if it's still there but for now... I belong here. It's paradise... No really.. it is.

A "Wonder Years" moment.

Do you start small and stage up such as peat pods > pots > ground? Or do you just start your seeds in a big enough pot to hold them until planting time? We stage up. We use peat starting pods then move up to larger pots then into the garden. I've read that the theory behind this is is that if you start seeds into too big of a pot that the extra dirt stays too moist. Any theories?

Well we're off to a nice start. Plenty of Marigolds to go around. We might try setting up at a farmer's market to unload what we don't use for pest control.

The cherry tomatoes are looking really healthy too.

I think we may have started the cukes a little too early though. They are taking off way to fast. We may end up transplanting them next weekend because they are just getting too big already.

An updated shot of the shelves.

On the hydroponic front... We went to Fifth Season Gardening here in Asheville and checked out some of the lighting. I left feeling very optimistic about being able to sell some of our produce off season to help offset some of the costs of growing.

I think we decided to go with a 600 watt halide to go with our Verti-Gro system that was given to us by a friend. It should be plenty of light to reach to the bottom of the system and even more if we decided to expand a bit.

Now the decision to make is what to grow. Something that we love to eat but that is also easy to unload if we decide to go that route.

Alright the shelves are up. The lights are hung. The seeds will be started this weekend.

Here is a pic of my setup. Pretty basic. The fluorescent fixtures only cost $8 a pop and the bulbs were $6 a pair. I am using one 3500 k and one 6000k bulb in each fixture. If you want a more professional light setup those are available as well. These look pretty decent: Goliath Table Top Plant Light

The seed trays were recycled from a garden store who just threw them out, however they are available for purchase online or at your local garden store. If you absolutely must, they are also available at Lowe's and Home Depot. Please try to stay local though. We purchased the Humidity Domesonline

Okay, I admit it. I am a gardening catalog addict. I sometimes think about converting to digital only for environmental reasons but none of my catalogs ever leave the house so I don't really add to the landfills at all.

So here are some of the seeds I was looking at today in my Park Seeds catalog. I haven't quite decided yet but will be ordering on Monday. If anyone has any experience with anything listed I would appreciate any comments you have on them.

• 
  
  Tomato MoneyMaker Organic Park Seed




Eggplant Fairy Tale Hybrid


• 
  
  Organic Pepper Early Jalapeno

There are a few other options in Park but overall they have a pretty limited organic selection. I am going to keep browsing and see what else I can dig up in some of these other catalogs.

Tomorrow I plan on setting up the shelves and getting the lights hung up so everything is ready to go for planting this week. My wife has already started some black eyed susans and some marigolds. The black eyed susans are for the hill in the yard and the marigoldswe put out around our raised beds to keep pests away. It worked pretty good last year. We even planted a few in the bed with the tomatoes and it looked really nice.

This was originally going to be a site dedicated to green news in Asheville. There will still be some of that but mainly this space will be dedicated to my gardening endeavors.

I am kicking things off now because I've got the bug and there isn't a whole lot I can do at the moment. We've got a pretty good mulch pile going so far and it should be enough to take care of our 2 existing raised beds. We used raised beds. because we have limited space and certain restrictions to the property.

We also got some new shelving and a couple more flourescent fixtures like these. Simple but effective. I will put some pics up next weekend after we plant. We will probably start off again with Peppers and Tomatoes, our old standbys. We are adding 2 more beds this year and plan on maybe a couple eggplant and some squash. I will also be taking a stab at hydroponic tomatillos. I have done zero research on growing tomatillos hydroponically so it should be an adventure.