A barrel of rain and a corn conundrum

I was greeted this humid, summery, sunny morning by a beautiful bucketful of rain, laced with apple blossom petals from next door:

It was actually brimming over when I first came out, so it would be nice to find a larger barrel. That bucket holds about three watering cans worth of water, and right now I use about one full watering can per day on my seedlings. Ideally, I would have a large barrel, or two or three, mounted about 4 or 5 feet above the ground, and a hose with a valve coming out the bottom. But I'm not sure it's wise for me to invest that much time and effort into this rented property that I might leave as early as this fall. But it's fun to think about it. It's actually very feasible. The hardest part I think would be finding the old wooden wine barrels.

I realized today that my Indian blue corn is ready to be transplanted (it grows very quickly), so I had to quickly come up with a plan to use up as many corn seedlings as I could manage. I maxed out at 4. (I sowed maybe 20, and unfortunately they're all doing quite well.) Corn needs 15" spacing, according to HtGMV, which left me with few options. I left a spot in the backyard bed for growing pole beans next to the chard (which are companions), and I remembered that corn and beans are also companions (two of the three sisters). So I figured out the arrangement that would use as much corn as possible while also making optimal use of space by filling in the rest with beans:

The circles represent the average amount of space needed by the corresponding plant. The beans I only sowed yesterday, so the corn will have a chance to get a little established before getting taken over by beans. And there I was wondering what kind of pole structure I'd need to design for the beans to climb on...

But what to do with the other 15 or so corn seedlings? I also have quite a few hulless Arabian blue barley shoots that look eager to move out:

Yasi's Place around the corner has a couple raised beds which they call the Wallace Community Garden. I'm definitely going to offer some of my surplus seedlings to them, as well as to my friend Kelly who lives a block farther. But somehow I think I'll still have some extras hanging around.

So I'm thinking of possibly doing a little guerrilla gardening. I live next to some train tracks which are surrounded by what appears to be mostly neglected but sun-soaked land. It looks neglected because it's abominably littered with trash. I might look around there for a spot that's far enough from road/pedestrian traffic but close enough to me that I can still keep an eye on it and do regular maintenance. I expect that at some point they'll want to mow around the tracks, so I should look for a spot that they wouldn't bother with (if I can find a little fence enclave perhaps).

Life of a double-digger

I prepared my first raised bed yesterday by double-digging an existing 18-square-foot bed in the front yard. Double-digging is one of the essential features of the biointensive method. It originates in French intensive gardening, which was developed for people with narrow backyards in France to enable higher yields for a given area. The idea is to loosen the soil two feet deep without completely disturbing the natural soil profile, so that roots can easily delve deep rather than spread out.

HtGMV describes several different bed preparation procedures you can choose from, depending on whether you're double-digging it for the first time, preparing last year's biointensive bed, starting a bed in poor soil, and so on. I followed the "Initial Double-Dig" procedure, since even though I was preparing it from an existing garden bed, the bed hadn't previously been worked biointensively. Here's the simplified version:

1. Loosen the top 12 inches of soil with a spading fork (I highly recommend the beautiful, stainless-steel Lee Valley tools) and remove any weeds, roots, or stones you came across.
2. Spread a 1-inch layer of compost over the entire area.
3. Using a flat-edge spade, remove the soil from the upper part of the first trench (a couple feet wide) and place it in a soil storage area for use in making compost and flat soil.
4. Loosen the soil in the first trench an additional 12 inches using the spading fork.
5. Dig out the upper part of the second trench and move it into the first trench. The first trench is complete.
6. Loosen the lower part of the second trench.
7. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you've reached the end of the bed.
8. Shape the bed into a mound by raking it.
   

Result:

Ain't that somethin'?

Next, I planted carrots, radishes, sunflowers and edible flowers. Carrots and radishes both like to be planted next to lettuce. They are companion plants, which is another essential feature of biointensive gardening. Companion planting is a not-totally-understood phenomenon that some species of plants thrive better when grown next to certain other "companion" species. There are also some plant species that will inhibit the growth of certain other species ("antagonist" plants). The de-facto book on the subject is Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte.

So back to the carrots, radishes and lettuce. Carrots and radishes like lettuce, so since I'll be expecting lettuce seedlings in a couple weeks, I left some room for lettuce to be planted nearby when the time comes. Carrots and radishes also make good companions themselves if they are interplanted amongst each other, as carrots take longer to mature than radishes, as this diagram illustrates:

I came up with a pretty ridiculous pattern for interplanting my radishes and carrots, based on the fact that carrots should be spaced about 3" apart and radishes 1" apart:

Please do not let this frighten you. Interplanting is completely optional. I just think it's super fun. (Remember, I was a math major.)

So then I poked holes where the seeds should go, popped the seeds in, covered the holes up, and gave the bed a healthy spray with the hose. I hope something grows out of it.