The Outside Reveal – My Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden from Joe Lamp'l on Vimeo.
Finally, it only took four video episodes to reveal the actual place where my Twenty-five Dollar Organic Victory Garden will live. Why so long? No real reason except that I was so focused on showing you what I was doing inside the house to get my seeds started, I just didn’t feel the sense of urgency to get outside too soon. After all, once we do move outdoors, that’s about all you’re going to see, so I don’t think it hurt any to put that off until now.
So where are we with all of this? So far, I’m still at only seven dollars spent. I have many seedlings started and plan on direct sowing, possibly as early as tomorrow. My only expense to date is two bags of organic seed starting mix. I actually did intend to spring for another four dollars at this point and buy some organic container mix to bump up my seedlings. But now that it is the last week of April, I need to get those plants outside and in the ground, so I’ll be skipping this normal intermediate step.
Last week, I failed to tell you how much time I spent just clearing the site for my new garden. As this video will explain, I had five large Nandina domestica that, try as I might, I could not get them out of the ground with shovels and even a pick ax. So, once I figured out plan B, I was finally able to extract them. And just in case you’re wondering, “plan B” was a large chain wrapped around the root balls and my truck pulling them out of the ground. The plan worked like a charm.
Once the plants and gravel mulch were out of there, thanks to members of Freecycle.org, I had a clean slate to start my garden. On Saturday, I loaded my truck with two full beds of leaf compost. The mixed blessing was that my relatively new tiller stopped working before I could incorporate the compost into my new garden so I was forced to turn it in with a spading fork. And although it was painstaking work, it was the best thing that could have happened. By turning the compost in manually, I was able to infuse it further down into the soil and break through the hardpan layer; something I would have been unable to do with only a tiller.
At this point, the garden is ready for sowing. I hope to begin that process tomorrow. However, I’ll have to wait until my girls get home from school and do their homework. But the good news is, they’ve both expressed a strong interest in helping me plant the garden. In fact they seem rather excited about it. So, I’d say it’s worth the wait until then. And you can be sure it will make an upcoming episode of the video series. I can only imagine what I’m in store for. It sounds cute now but just wait.
And one last note; I have lots of video already recorded of the making of my outside garden. I plan on posting a new video just about everyday until I catch up so please check back often. I can already tell you, it will be worth the visit!
JL
About Joe Lamp'l
Joe Lamp'l is the Host and Executive Producer of the award winning PBS television series Growing A Greener World. Off camera, Joe dedicates his time to promoting sustainability through his popular books, blog, podcast series, and nationally syndicated newspaper columns. Follow Joe on Twitter
Hi Dee. Glad you liked the video. And I’m especially glad it made you chuckle. Freecycle girl was great. I just sat her down and asked her to tell her story. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it at the time but I think it worked out well. Thanks for checking in.
Hi Joe, this video made me chuckle. Yes, you’re more famous than you know. 🙂 Glad to see your project taking shape.~~Dee
Hey TC. Good to see you back here. You’re not alone in your thinking about what’s going to happen to my budget once summer gets here. I’m planning on being VERY proactive and have a few home brew pest remedies on standby if necessary.
Regarding the acoustic guitar music, I still had it in this latest video for the first scene. Did you hear it? I changed the style for the second scene since it seemed to be a better fit for the story. But, I’d love to have you send me some music. You have my email. Do you need anything else? Let’s use some of your tunes for sure and thanks for the offer!
JL
Hi Amy. I love my digging fork. It’s the only thing I really have that lets me know I’m getting deep into the soil.
Regarding the compost, here in my small town of Mount Airy, NC, it really is simply aged, composted leaf debris for the most part. Definitely not any sewage. But, I do find crushed plastic water bottles and other misc. scraps for those are easy to remove. I’m very happy with the fact that I’ve completely filled my garden bed with free compost mixed in with my native soil. It’s looking great and I’ll show that in an upcoming video very soon. Thanks for checking in.
JL
I’ve not stopped in for a while Joe and my! I have to say it looks like you’ve been busy. I’m beginning to think you just might be able to have a $25 VG after all. But the skeptic in me (or is it that little devil sitting on my shoulder?) says, “Just wait till that garden gets hit with some type of bug or pest, he’ll have to shell out some cash then!” ;~P
(What happened to the nice sounds of an acoustic guitar? I’m still ready to do a piece for you, just ask.)
So great that you used a digging fork instead of a tiller to turn in the leaf compost—not everyone has access to a tiller, but plenty of people can get hold of a digging fork, either for free or for very little money!
I am curious, though, where the leaf compost came from. Where I live, the county makes something called “bioblend” that has leaves in it, but that also contains a bunch of other waste-ingredients (including sewage). It is free, but it isn’t for use on food gardens.
I am really enjoying this series. Thanks for sharing!
-Amy
This was my favorite video so far! Your “Freecycle” person was so fun to watch-great story. I posted this on my blog for my readers to watch.
I’m rooting for you but you only have $18. left and the whole summer ahead. Will you make it?
Shirley