I'd like to say a quick word about manure. Yes, manure. The smelly bovine byproduct that I have recently become an advocate of.
Prior to planting anything this spring, my father laid some sage advice on me, "A smart gardner spends 90 cents of every dollar on the soil, and 10 cents on the seed."
The previous owners of my house had a funny way of laying mulch. They must have figured that if 2" was good, 8" MUST be better. (This is a bad way of thinking, by the way) So I tilled all this mulch under last fall, and following my old man's advice went searching for the cheapest effective way to amend my soil. I don't have a pickup truck, so my options were a bit limited, but I ended up finding bagged manure at Meijer. I figured, hey, all those farmers can't just be using it because they enjoy the smell. They had a whole skid of 40 lb. bags, and there were weeds growing out of holes in the bag - which I took as a good sign.
I bought about 600 lbs. of the stuff, which made for a comical scene in the parking lot. There was this older gent sitting in a truck parked next to me, wearing a Navy ballcap and chewing on a toothpick. He seemed fairly amused to see a long haired individual like myself packing bags of manure into a Honda Civic. It's good to find amusement in things.
I set about the spreading and tilling of all this manure into my planting beds, much to the chagrin of my downwind neighbors. When I was done it looked promising - I had somewhere in the range of 6"-8" of fluffed up soil to work with, and into that went all the seedlings I had started a few weeks earlier.
In our part of Ohio we've had massive rain shortfall and all through May it was unseasonably warm. With the help of my wife and son we kept on a pretty strict watering schedule, and now I've got an agricultural overflow going on the southside of my house. It's like a jungle of vegetables, and it's the most success I've had growing anything, ever.
Here's some pictures.
This is my son standing next to some sunflowers he planted. He had no idea what 'planting seeds' was all about. He does now.
The tomatoes. I have rarely been as excited about a plant.
These are cantaloupe. My son really wanted to plant them, I'm surprised how well they're doing. There's a handful of little melons on these vines, and it's also taking over my yard.
The Squash Monster. I've never seen anything grow so fast. If I see a squash in the morning it'll be ready to pick that evening. Crazy.
