Something Fishy

Some of my tomatoes are failing to thrive. Purple stems, a purple cast to the leaves, and necrotic spots on leaves that progressively turn more yellow -- these symptoms seem consistent with phosphorous deficiency.

Back in April, I discovered that garden loam isn't good for gardening -- after having five cubic yards of it dumped next to my waiting raised-beds. It was mostly clay. Not so good for growing things. So I then found a place to deliver four cubic yards of compost. All the extra loam pushed me to add a few beds. I mixed the loam with the compost. But a couple of the beds are filled with about 95% of the sub-standard loam. The tomato pictured above is struggling to grow in one of those beds. I did mix a little fertilizer into the bed. But it probably wasn't enough.

I also found some grubs while I was digging up the sod for my beds. And there were some grubs in the loam. I squished any that I saw. However, last week, I pulled up an eggplant that just hadn't grown at all. There was hardly any root ball -- and a very lively grub was nestled in what was left of the roots -- very unhappy to be disturbed. I put an end to its unhappiness. So maybe more grubs are eating at the roots of some of my plants. If the roots are being eaten, then the plants will also have trouble absorbing water and nutrients.

One of the tomatoes that I planted in a pot with 100% sterile, pre-fertilized, store-bought garden soil is doing great. It's the control subject.

So I have saturated the soil with fish emulsion. I got a nice local brand, Neptune's Harvest. It's basically rotten fish syrup that gets mixed with water. It should start to get the nutrients in the soil up to where they should be. And a UPS truck should be bringing me a delivery of nematodes sometime today. I'll just have to wait for a wet day to get them into the soil. The nematodes are parasitic worms that will infect the grubs and eat them from the inside. Fish, worms: it's all circle of life here.

Hero Gardener

I got a new Hero3 camera for documenting both this garden blog and my rowing blog. I christened the camera by attaching it to the pickaxe while I broke up the sod and dug up stones around the perimeter of the garden. I need to dig a trench so that I can extend a rabbit-fence below ground and frustrate animals from digging under and into my garden. I got some dramatic footage.

On a less dramatic note, I now have a compost bin. 

 Brought to you by the state of Massachusetts (and $53.00 cash). Made locally in New Bedford by New England Plastics Corp. Unfortunately, the state no longer subsidizes these bins. I think they used to be offered for $10.00.

 Some of my seedlings have also been re-potted.

Clay

Last week I was talking to my brother on the phone about my gardening project. He built raised beds at his home in Texas about 20 years ago. He was telling me about how he ordered a truckload of topsoil to fill them. Big mistake. In central Texas, there isn't a lot of top soil. What he got was pretty much clay. Vegetables don't like clay. I laughed. My poor brother trying to grow vegetables in Texas. I had tried to grow vegetables down there when I was in grad school, and I'd given up.

Originally, I had wanted to fill my boxes with compost. I thought I'd mix in a little local topsoil to ensure good mineral content. Over a three week period, I casually called around looking for compost. I called the garden columnist at the local New Bedford Newspaper and sent her an email. No response. I called a garden center in Marion. And I did daily web searches. From those searches and several calls, I found several places that would sell me soil -- but not compost. They suggested loam and said this was perfect for my raised-bed vegetable gardening. The only compost that I could find locally was in bags. I would have had to spend $800.00 to fill my beds with bags of compost.

Loam. It sounds soft, doesn't it? Certainly it sounds softer than plain-old topsoil. Right? I decided that loam was the best I could do. And I could afford a few bags of manure and a good organic fertilizer to enrich the loam. Plus, weeks had gone by, and I needed to fill my boxes if I was going to get some cool weather crops in. 

So I had six yards of loam delivered and filled two boxes. I planted one with strawberries. Then I put a soaker hose on the second one. I pulled off the hose and raked the loam around a little. What I saw wasn't good.

When you push a rake into wet soil, at least a little water should squeeze out. None did. In fact, the soil just snapped back like Jello. I went back and checked the strawberry box. It had been drying for a day. I knocked on the soil. Hard as a brick and cracking. Turns out that "loam" is just the local word for topsoil. And the topsoil that I got wasn't any better than the topsoil that my brother had gotten in Texas.

I went to one last garden center. I hadn't been able to talk to them on the phone because it is a small family operation, and when they're working, they don't answer the phone. They just had bags of compost, too. But they suggested Sunny Nook Farms in Rochester. I called. And by 9 AM yesterday morning, I had compost being dumped in the yard.

You can see the difference in the color of the compost and the loam.

I dug out in between the strawberries and filled the holes with compost.

Then I dug out the other box that I'd filled with loam.

Then I filled that box and the one next to it and a little box with compost (mixed with a little topsoil) and planted my cabbages, kale, lettuce, and broccoli. And I wrapped chicken wire around the newly planted beds to keep the rabbits out until I can build my fence around the whole garden. Yesterday was exhausting. And I learned something about New England soil.