Grow What You Eat: The Dirt

It seems that container gardening, especially, requires good dirt. So just like a new mom, I read all of the plant parenting books to make sure that I made the best possible home for my plant babies.

Ingredients for good container gardening soil include:

• Vermiculite or perlite
• A bit of coco peat or "coir" (to help retain moisture)
• Oyster shells
• Dolonitic or cacitic limestone
• Equal parts N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium)
• pH between 6.0 and 7.0
  
• A top layer of compost and peat moss or humus

And, as with most new parents, creating this perfect home became way too much work and I chucked it all for the following:

MiracleGro's Organic Choice Potting Mix...



And a top layer of compost from my composter.



Things I'll do differently next year:

• I might try looking in a specialty garden store for soil ingredients, as all of the convenient haunts, i.e. Lowes', Home Depot and Meijer, had not one of these items. The choices were potting soil or top soil. At least I knew enough not to get top soil...
• I will probably put the compost in a middle layer rather than the top layer. I had a lot of seeds in the composter that decided to sprout and I couldn't figure out which seedlings I had purposefully planted and which ones were impostors. On a happy note, I did get a volunteer tomato plant out of the deal.
  

Grow What You Eat: Cucumbers

I heart cucumbers. They are one of the easiest, most refreshing vegetables of the summer.


(Note: This picture was taken by my sis, of Photo Kitchen fame. You will easily be able to tell the difference between her pics and mine throughout this blog, as mine are very matter-of-fact and hers are magical.)

I picked up a cucumber plant at Raisin Rack on May 18 for approximately $4. It came with only a hand-written tag that said "AC Picking Cucumber", which, after a half-hearted Google search, I assume means this?



By June 9, I could see tiny cucumbers beginning to grow. Though there were 3 or 4 babies on the plant at a time, usually only one of them grew into a full-fledged cucumber. According to this article, the shriveled baby cucumbers are due to lack of pollination. Oops.



I harvested the first cucumber on June 23. It was beautiful.



Some of the cucumbers were a bit misshapen, but still just as tasty.

I realized a bit too late that the plant was yellowing because there was a cucumber hanging out of sight over the edge of the deck. I think if I would have noticed it and picked it sooner, the plant would have started to send its nutrients to the rest of its limbs.



But the real death of the plant came with a raccoon attack. The roots were dug up and exposed. Though I tried to replant it, it soon shriveled and died.



In the end, I was able to harvest 5 cucumbers throughout the summer.

Though this variety is meant for pickling, I was too lazy to learn how, so I just ate them in my staple summer salad consisting of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, red wine vinegar, olive oil and feta cheese.

Things I'll Do Differently Next Year:

• Try to keep the raccoons from digging up the plant (though I'm not quite sure how yet.)
• Buy more than one plant.
  
• Actually attempt to pollinate the plant by following these instructions.
  
• Try pickling?