I thought this year’s vegetable garden would be less work once I did the initial {hard} work on replacing the top 7 inches of soil. Yeah, I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. However, they’ve so far been easy mistakes to correct, so I am hoping it won’t impact the garden to negatively. There are three mistakes I want to touch on in this post.
1. Not fertilizing.
According to the Square Foot Gardening book I read, the soil mixture you mix together should not need fertilizing. It consists of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 blended compost. The blended compost is supposed to come from 5 different sources. If I had my own compost bin, this would be covered. However, I don’t {yet}. So I bought and mixed cow manure compost and mushroom compost together for the compost part – just 2 sources.
I need fertilizer. I noticed the leaves on my broccoli plants were turning a faint purple color and then dying off.
The catnip I’d planted in a container using the same mixture was also turning a faint purple color and didn’t look “healthy” to me. After a little research online, I discovered it was most likely a nutrient deficiency. At the time, I had some all-purpose Miracle-Gro plant food in my stash from last year, so I used that up before buying more. What a difference! The lettuce that was slowly growing took off! The broccoli leaves and catnip leaves are no longer turning that purplish color, and both plants are growing like crazy now. For now, I am using Miracle-Gro’s tomato plant food fertilizer until one I’ve ordered online arrives. Needless to say, I’m rather disappointed I will have to fertilize the garden, but I will be more than happy to do so if things continue to grow the way they are {garden progress post coming soon!}.
2. Using my pesticide too late.
Another thing you supposedly don’t have to do with square foot gardening is use pesticides, but the way to prevent pests and insects is by using row covers to keep the insects from laying eggs on the plants. I vouched not to cover two 5-foot by 10-foot beds with row covers, so I had already planned on using Sevin dust at least once in the garden. A friend recommended it and said she never had issues with insects in her garden, so it’s my first time trying it. It seems to be working so far. Whatever was eating on my broccoli plants (never could find the buggers) and spinach plants has stopped.
I just wish I’d used it a little sooner than I had. You are supposed to apply it at the first signs on an issue, and something had been slowly munching on my spinach well before the broccoli. That is when I should have applied the Sevin dust, and I’m not sure why I didn’t. If I had applied it then, I would have been able to harvest and eat the veggies I had to cut back earlier this week.
Now it is prime harvesting time, and I am having to wait out the preharvest intervals (number of days between last application and harvest). For kale, lettuce, spinach, and my herbs, that’s 14 days. I applied the Sevin dust on May 4th and finally cut back my basil on the 5th. The basil also went crazy after fertilizing. I brought the basil in, washed it off, and let it sit on the counter, and then I realized that night I couldn’t keep this basil because I’d used the Sevin dust the day before. I wish I’d thought to cut back and harvest what I could before applying the Sevin dust. So I had to throw the basil away. Ouch…
A week after applying the Sevin dust, I realized I had to cut some of the leaves off my spinach and lettuce plants {earlier this week} because they were getting out of control (yay for fertilizer!). This is what killed me! I was actually doing side salads for dinner on this night, and I had to throw away all of my cuttings rather than use any for my salad. 🙁 A really big ouch… I mean, look at my lettuce before I cut it!!
Words can’t express how giddy I am that the lettuce is doing so well. This is my first attempt at lettuce, and with all the issues I’ve had in the past, I was devastated that I couldn’t use my first harvest of lettuce. Lesson learned for the fall crop I’ll plant. Below is a picture that shows the lettuce that I had to throw out (sooooo much!) as well as the kale I couldn’t use, along with some dill and parsley I snipped off to keep the plants in shape. I just hope the lettuce and spinach plants don’t bolt before I am able to harvest some to actually eat (May 19th can’t get here fast enough).
All the spinach I had to toss. 🙁 There were quite a few leaves that were half eaten though.
3. The third mistake was using the wrong mulch.
Wood mulch is NOT the mulch I should have used. This is one thing I didn’t even think to research first. So I bought brown wood mulch – yes, the kind that has the dye in it. What was I thinking?? After researching, I found that it will also make the soil more acidic (could this be causing my original low-nitrogen issue?), and it takes way to long to break down in the soil. Thank goodness I have not mulched the entire garden beds yet. I will be switching to a straw mulch today or tomorrow, depending on time. We have a nearby nursery that I hope will carry alfalfa straw (first choice), but at the least, regular wheat straw. When I remove this brown mulch, I will just put it around the base of the garden beds to help with weeds a little.
Again, I don’t think these are huge garden mistakes {at least I hope not} since they have been easily corrected thus far. For the fall plants I grow, I will make sure to fertilize earlier in the season, use the Sevin dust as soon as I see a pest problem, and use straw as my mulch. Next spring, I am also hoping to have my own compost as I want to build my own compost bin this summer.