Compost Confidential

Salvaging 110-year old wood - My Quest for a Twenty-five Dollar Organic Victory Garden

Freecycle.org comes through again. So far, it’s helped find a taker for my Nandina plants I needed to have removed to make room for my Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden, and someone else to come take away a truckload of gravel mulch. Today (finally) I found my source for free wood to contain my raised bed.

I live in North Carolina and I see old abandoned barns just about every day. They’re the kind of barns that have that really have that old weathered wood and you just want to go exploring it or at least take pictures because they always have so much character. Well today I received a Freecycle.org email notice of someone that had torn down one of these old barns and was offering the 110-year-old wood to any takers.

I emailed him immediately and within minutes he called me. An hour later I was rummaging through a pile of wood that looked like the remnants of a tornado’s direct path. I knew before I even left the house that the best pieces had already been picked through but I thought I might at least find a few good pieces. At this point I was willing to take the chance. My garden bed is ready and in immediate need of containment. And since I can’t afford to buy lumber on my twenty-five dollar budget, this was the best (and only) option I had.

As you can see from the picture above, I managed to recover a few garden-worthy pieces. It was quite an experience and I chuckled at the steps I’ve gone through already in pursuit of my Twenty-five Dollar Organic Victory Garden Challenge. Today was a great example of that as I carefully attempted to avoid the many exposed rusty nails and broken glass, along with the snakes, black widows and who knows what else. But in the end, I had my free wood and I’m one step closer to containing my soil in my new garden bed. So thanks again Freecycle.org. And just for the record, I’ve still only spent seven dollars so far.
JL

p.s. Earlier this evening, we had on heck of a downpour. And no, I have not removed the wood from my truck yet. I hope my garden hasn’t washed away yet. I’ll report on that later. By the way, wait till you see the video I shot today of my salvage efforts at this old barn.

First Look Outside – My Quest for a Twenty-five Dollar Organic Victory Garden

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

Behind the Scenes at GMA - My Quest for the Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden

Recently I had the great opportunity to talk about starting a vegetable garden for another GMA related segment in New York. And specifically, they gave me plenty of opportunity to talk about doing it for under twenty-five dollars. They even devoted six whole minutes to tell the story. Believe me, that's a lot of time for a national television segment so I was thrilled about that.

So now that I have my handy little video camera, I thought it would be fun to take you along for a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on to get ready for one of these segments. In hindsight, I should have started documenting all the prep work well before leaving for New York. Many of the items on the table that you see in the pictures and video were carefully packed in my suitcase and taken right onto the set. I wanted to be sure we had everything I needed to talk about. The cake topper and pizza box, even the seed starting mix traveled with me from North Carolina. And just to be safe, I even had a pizza in NYC the night before the segment so I could be sure to have the right box on set.

If you want to see the entire segment as it appeared on ABC,  click here.

I've already documented the outside garden reveal and I'll edit that piece next. Expect to see that video as the next post in a few more days. I hope you're enjoying these entries and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know by posting your comment below.

More Help from our Friends at GMA-Health - Promoting The Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden

 
It's been a very hectic travel schedule lately and some of that includes coveage of my Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden Challenge. This included another trip to NYC for my next chance to tout the virtues of starting and growing a vegetable garden on the cheap. Much to my happy surprise, this segment was given a whopping six minutes on national television! That's amazing since four minutes is just about the maximum any segment gets, no matter what the topic. The picture above was moments before doing the live segment, from my perspective as we faced the cameras. The interesting thing about this segment was that we did it outside of the studio, right on the corner of Time Square.

So here's my huge THANK YOU to ABC for the wonderful opportunity you're giving your audience to learn more about growing their own food, and especially for giving me the chance to share my story on how to do it on a very limited budget. If any of you reading this have a moment to drop ABC a note to let them know you too appreciate what they've done to promote growing your own food, I'd very much appreciate that and it lets them know we want more stories like that. Here's the link to send an email, and thanks!

This week I'm catching up on the family time and  it's been back to preparing the actual garden where I will grow all these plants. The seedlings are coming along nicely but they need a place to grow outside and I still have a lot of work to do there before the garden is ready. Yesterday, I had some people I met on freecycle.com come remove the gravel mulch (from previous owner) that has covered the area I need for my garden. I also had a taker for the plants that I'm removing from there also. The problem is, they had such deep roots, I was unable to remove them. Now it's on to plan "B" for extraction. The only problem is, I don't have a plan "B" yet. In the mean time, you can see video of the outside garden area and my unsuccessful attempts to remove these plants in my next post.

Episode Two; I've Got Mail! In Quest of my Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden

Well, the video editing backlog is starting to pile up. I taped this segment two weeks ago and finally pieced together enough time during my travels over the last week to get this posted. As you'll see from watching, I'm off to a great start, thanks to a little help from my virtual friends on Twitter. To date, I've planted many of the seeds that you see in the video and almost all of them have germinated. You can now watch these videos in a larger and clearer format on my YouTube channel at joegardenerTV. Just be sure to click on the HD button under the video to see it in HD.

I'll also post the video soon from my segement yesterday for GMA-Health. They devoted an amazing six-minute segment to this topic of growing your own food for cheap. They were happy to allow me to talk about what I'm doing to grow my own for under twenty-five dollars. I'll tell you more about this day and post that segment video, as well as my own pirated, behind-the-scenes video, hopefully tomorrow.

An Update from the Road

Hello all. We interrupt my quest for the Twenty-Five Dollar Victory Garden to let you know I'm on the road until the end of this week. Before I left I made sure everything was taken care of in regards to my emerging garden, currently in the stage of seeds and a few seedlings. As long as the cat stays away (big question mark), things should be alright until I get home. By then I expect to post another video or even two if I have time, since they've already been taped.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to address the Alabama Master Gardeners at their State Conference in Huntsville. They had a huge turnout and the event was outstanding. When I arrived on Friday afternoon, I had the pleasure of touring the Huntsville Botanical Garden with Harvey Cotten, Chief Operating Officer. Overall the garden was spectacular but the highlight was the most beautiful and grand dogwood I have ever experienced. She's a very famous lady and I was very fortunate to catch her in full bloom. It was truly a breathtaking sight. In this picture, note that Harvey is standing in front of her. He is six-feet tall.

This majestic dogwood is the native Cornus florida. She's well over 100 years old and was moved here in 1995 from an estate when the city was widening a road. She was standing dead in its proposed path. Fortunately, The HBG was ambitious enough to take on the challenge of saving and relocating her to the garden. An 18 foot rootball was dug and the 90,000 specimen was loaded onto a house moving trailer for the five mile ride to her new home. Rather than digging a large hole for her new place of honor, they simply placed the rootball on top of the existing berm and brought in massive amounts of soil to cover her roots. She's bloomed faithfully like this every year, and has great fall color and fruit. Put a trip to see her on your bucket list as this is a must-see!

Today I travel to Toronto to scout the site of a community garden I will design and oversee installation of in May for Fiskars Project Orange Thumb. Then it's on to New York City for another round with GMA-Health to talk about the health benefits of gardening and growing your own food. The bonus is we'll talk about the Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden as the basis for the six minute segment. I'm still a little foggy on the air times but I understand it will be on the 9th, possibly during the ABC News. I'll let you know more about this when I get more details.

Stand by for another video and more updates very soon.
JL

My First Video Blog - My Quest for the Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden

Ironically, as much time as I've spent over the last several years being involved in the TV business, I have NO experience shooting video myself. Sadly, my girls are 9 and 11 now and I don't have any video of them to speak of (bad dad!).  But there's no time like the present to start with a bang, so here's the first reveal of my Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden video.

Don't look for a Hollywood production here. These are just one-take (or in this case two-take) attempts to document in a raw, candid, organic way, what's going on with my garden efforts at the moment. I want you to be a part of this, just as if we were together talking about it. So, every couple of days or as it's warrented, I'll post a new one to two minute video to show you what's going on.

Please send me your comments and I'll be working on trying to get better quality out of the uploads in the mean time.