Problems and this week

So it seems to me that my little plants seem to be less well off now that I have put compost down. It is kind of discouraging. I am not sure however, if my plants are unhappy or i am just impatient. One of the possibilities was that I am not watering them enough. i am hoping to see if they will be happier after the large amount of rain we are supposed to get. If they do turn up I may need to water them more than I have been.
I also found a weed that sprang up really quickly. I followed it's root down and I seems to be pretty old as the main root went at least 6 inches down. I am now wondering if weeds that had laid dormant under all of the bricks are going to pop up again, with a vengeance.
I am going to go out to the CSA in dryden sometime this week, hopefully when it is not pouring rain. I am nervous to see what they have as I am afraid that I may be doing things wrong. However I guess seeing what I am doing is wrong could be good in the long run.

Checking some things off the to do list

My plants seem to be doing okay and are enjoying the sun. I placed a bunch of compost round each little mound where there are seedlings. I am a little worried about the amount of soil there is for the plants as they grow. I might buy some more soil and when the seedlings are strong enough i may pull the, up and lay for topsoil to ensure they have enough room to grow. Also the compost seems to be coming along well and I plan to add some of the old compost to the new compost to help it along.

2 Week Plan

Here is my plan for the next two weeks:

-Continue Building Compost (In progress, some old compost has been transfered to new compost to help with the beginning processes of composting.)
-Talk to Mr. Creagan or another teacher about gardening or local gardening
-Grow plants and separate them once there are healthy plants, they are clumped in groups now (This may take longer than two weeks.)
-Spread existing compost on garden (Done)
-Interview someone
-Go to Organic CSA in Dryden

Plants

It's such a beautiful day I knew I had to get out and do some work. I planted my tomato seedlings and my pepper seedlings. My lettuce and spinach seem to be doing really well and are very happy with the weather. I want to plant some seeds straight in the soil to see how the two differ and see if having seedlings in the house changes how the two plants grow.
My compost is going well. I have three different houses contributing food scraps and some brush. I am excited to get it going, it looks like it is going to turn out really well.

Regional Planting

This is a regional guide to planting vegetables in the northeast area, in the month of May. All of my plants, except for spinach which I know is a hardy vegetable, are on this list to either transplant in or directly sow in. I was unsure about whether they would survive but hopefully they will.



For some reason my citation isn't showing up. This info came from motherearthnews.com. I'll post a citation later.

Strawberries

-Allstar and Honeoye are some of the largest varieties
-They can be planted as soon as the soil is workable, but not if the soil is wet. I'll have to wait till later in the week.
-When first flowers appear, pick them off as it promotes long runners, and a large crop, the next season
-Should not be planted where peppers or tomatoes have been planted
-Most widely grown fruit in home gardens
-Strawberries have tons of pests and diseases

I may not plant strawberries, even though they are delicious and seem sort of resistant. I may wait a year to see how this crop goes and rearrange my plants to see if I can get better results, if need be.



"Growing Strawberries - Strawberries and More - University of Illinois Extension." University of Illinois Extension-Urban Programs Resource Network - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. University of Illinois. Web. 03 May 2011. .

Compost Fair

I drove down the street behind cooperative extension and saw a huge mass of people walking down the street, and I thought to myself, "Are all of these people going to the compost fair?" While most of them were only walking down the road to follow the rubber ducks they had set free further upstream, a few of them stuck around.
There were a good 100 people there while I was there. Some were petting a huge rabbit, others were listening to the strange folk music being played across the parking lot. I quickly got the sense that this event was not only geared toward compost but children as well. There were games a plenty and a small petting zoo complete with ducks, chicks, and rabbits.
I began to walk around to the booths and found that a lot of things they had to offer were things I had already learned from the lecture, a couple weeks ago. The largest tent was being run by the people who gave the lecture. I found this was to be less of learning experience in the sense of compost and more of a learning about my community through this common thing.
When I was driving there I had assumed 30 or 40 people would be there but came to find that even with people coming and going, there were about 100 people there constantly. This gave me the opportunity to realize how much work our community is doing/ wants to do to contribute to helping to save our environment. I had always known that we were, "That Hippie Town", but this gave me a physical representation of what a bunch of hippies really want to get done. It gave me a sense of uplifting to see that some many people realized that even doing just a little can add to the cause so much.
So while I answered their four question quiz on compost building without a hitch, I learned that the compost has grown into something much larger than me in my backyard but has taken our whole community by storm.