March 31, 2013 - Soil Sampling

The Penn State Agricultural Extension is conveniently located in the same building where I work, and a few weeks back I stopped in to see what services they offer for the backyard gardener.  One service I wanted to check out was the soil testing.  It's something I wanted to do at the barn but never got around to it.  Now that I've seen the results, I wanted to share what the process is and what you get for the $9 fee.

The office is located on the third floor of the Government Services Center in West Chester.  It seems they offer a number of services, and even a number of different soil testing depending on what you're growing and what capacity - for example a backyard vegetable garden like myself, or acres of pasture, or even commercial farming. 

After paying the fee you get the kit in the picture above.  It consists of a small soil sample bag, some forms to fill out to indicate what type of analysis you are requesting, and a plastic envelope to mail the sample.  There are direction as to where the samples should be taken from - how deep and at what interval. You then take the soil and dry it out over night.  

The results arrived in about a week or so- the below pictures are what the report comes back as.  I was surprised at the level of detail and the interpretation gave meaning to what .  It was nice to have specific and personalized actionable information.  I was expecting a list of numbers  about pH and phosphate levels that I would have to spend time googleing their meaning and then come up with solutions. 

Take a look at my results.  There are a number of key ares that need improvement.  Luckily this is just my base soil.  With building the raised beds I was able to bring in optimized gardening soil for the top 10-11 inches.  One $30 load of soil from a local mulching business got me 2/3 of the beds filled.  Enough for the time being to get started, although another load will be needed before the first week of May.  Thanks to a good neighbor I was able to get around the delivery fee.

March 31, 2013 - First Planting

Just a quick update: Broccoli and Cauliflower are now in. 9 plants of each. They are the first plants of the new garden. Feels good!

Downingtown has their own farmers market starting May 2nd. It's the first year of them doing it, and I hope its a success. If they have plants for sale I will likely buy a bunch there.

Other than that I'd still like to do peas, but they may have to wait until best year.

March 20, 2013 - Reboot for the First Spring Day

Today is the first day of Spring 2013 and so I felt it was a good time to reboot the garden blog. Here are a couple of highlights since I last posted:

I last posted in July last year. Since then we have moved to Downingtown, Pennsylvania which geographically is not too far from the old barn but worlds apart in terms of  gardening conditions. Compared to the barn we are now in a much more urban environment and being more urban it will in some ways be more challenging: less sun, poor dirt, new animal pests, and others I'm sure I'll run into soon enough - not to mention a new dog roaming the back yard.

Our new back yard is modest but more than sufficient to set up a large vegetable garden.  It is about 2,500 square feet fenced in yard with a large pine tree in the northeast corner. Other than that there is no landscaping to speak of out back - a blank pallet to build on. The vegetable garden this time around will not be a row in the field away from the house, but instead it will be integrated into the larger landscape design.  This larger plan will be executed over the course of a few years, but immediately the focus is getting raised beds in place that can support this summer's garden needs.

In anticipation of the garden last fall I constructed a compost bin made of shipping pallets.  I was able to acquire several pallets from work and improvised a crude but effective compost bin.  It has a base, three walls, and a hinged door.  During this past fall there was plenty of leaves and grass clippings around.  I had the foresight to throw together the bin with the hope I'd have some quality compost for the spring. Turns out it didn't cook enough and the winter was too cold.  But I have hopes that while it may not be ready for my first plantings it will be for the summer.

More recently I read many website on how to build raised beds and eventually sketched up a plan that fit our space. I went with two 4'x12' beds mad using 2"x12"lumber. As of today I have finished one of the beds and I hope to be able to complete the second and get it in place this weekend. once completed I will post the details on the bed and the steps I took to build it.  I hope someone finds it useful.

I also visited the local Penn State Agricultural Cooperative in West Chester to do a proper soil analysis.  It was only $9 and after a week's wait today I got the results.  The soil where I'm planting superficially looked surprisingly good. Once I go over the results of its chemistry and figure out what I need to do I'll post the details.