Charlie-3 Gardening

My transplants have grown too big and I'd wanted to plant them long before today, but it was cooler this year than last and, on top of that, I was anxious to get the garden in because we're going on an all-summer vacation to New England and the Canadian Maritimes.

This year's garden will mostly consist of an integration of several techniques of gardening I've researched on the internet with a touch of my own ingenuity.  I've used variations of vertical gardening, container gardening, and gutter gardening.  Last year, I started with a modification of Max and Grant Buster's "global buckets" and migrated to "gutter gardening" as outlined by Larry Hall.  While doing that, I had some small trees to which I wanted to keep watered so I ran a mop string to them from the gutters and they worked great as a wick.  Over the winter, I experimented with various wicks and soil preparations.  So far, the best wick I've run across was the a rayon mop head from Wal-Mart and the best soil mixture so far seems to be a mixture similar to Ray Newstead's container soil.  I call it 22-11 mix.  It includes 2 parts peat moss, 2 parts pine bark fines, 1 part compost, and 1 part perlite.  The 22-11 mix is amended with 1 cup ag lime and 1 cup worm castings from my own worms.  I mixed and filled the buckets.  We'll see how things grow.

With the wicks, I can control the flow of water with the amount of wicks put into the gutters.  When it gets hot, I'll throw some brown and green shrubs and small trees into my shredder then toss on top of buckets as top mulch.  Anyway, that's the idea of it all and I'll document until our trip begins.

I call my new technique "Charlie-3 Gardening" or "C3 Gardening" cause my name is Charles and I'm combining 3 techniques (sorta).  It's cheesy, but it's my idea I'm sharing so I get to name it.  Here are some containers with my somewhat straggly tomatoes I put in today.  Here are the types of tomatoes I have planted:

Amana Orange, Arkansas Traveler, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Barlow Jap, Barnes Mountain Orange, Beefsteak, Black from Tula, Blonde Boar, Brandywine (Suddith), Cherokee Purple, Chocolate Stripes, Cowlick Brandywine, Coyote, Depp’s Pink Firefly, Grandma Viney's Yellow and Pink, Dester Amish, Frank’s Large Red, German Johnson, Hege German Pink, KBX, Madison County Pink, Marlowe Charleston, Mexico Midget, Mortgage Lifter, NAR, Omar’s Lebanese, Paul Robeson, Pike County Pink, Pineapple, Purple Dog Creek, Rebecca Sebastian’s Bull Bag, Strawberry, Sun Gold, and Valencia.

Is that too many?  

French Drain - Part 1, The Ditch

This is part 1 of my french drain.  Whenever it rains hard, I get some pretty severe flooding in my back yard just behind the deck.  After 8 years, I finally decided to do something about it.  My french drain will consist of a ditch with felt put in followed by rock, pipe, more rock, cover with the felt, and top lightly with dirt.  Any Google or YouTube will give you the basics of a French Drain.  I marked the largest flow of water with yellow tent stakes and nylon line across the whole property and one of our milder rains about a month ago.  Then I dug the ditch you see in the video with a spade.  I moved the dirt to my new garden as I dug along.  Hard labor let me tell you, but finished what you see in less time that you might think and saved a few hundred dollars in renting equipment.  I like working with my hands and got a good workout.  I'll update more soon.  Enjoy the video.

Edit:  Added 2 photos.

Garden Update

The weather needs to warm up soon!  I've got to get these tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant into the ground.  They are overgrowing indoors.

BBQ Grill Shelf

I used to have a shelf that pulled out from the bay of Voyager.  It worked well, but I had to unload the chairs first so I could turn the BBQ grill sideways.  Really, not a big deal, but thought I could do better and open up the bay for other storage that I don't have to jockey around.  Enter another creation of mine.  I made a shelf that first pulls out, then rotates on a lazy Susan.  If you want to see the previous shelf, look at the beginning of 2010 in this blog.  I haven't tested it yet, but will mid-April when we go to Maumelle Park again to start the camping season.  Previously, I added a longer, direct-connect to the RV propane.  Also, the awning covers it in the event of rain.  Pretty cool if I say so myself.  Take a look: