Organize My Garden Blog

SFG Wood Pile

Based on calculations we will need about 8 SFG (Square Foot Gardening) boxes. So today we bought most of the materials to make them: wood and screws.

We assembled them assembly-line fashion, drilling the screws just into all the ends at once. Then making each board set into a box and finishing the drilling to make eight 4 by 4 boxes. One box is 12 inches tall. The others are 6 inches tall. The tall one is for our root crops: carrots and peanuts. The screws we got were the hex head kind and they worked great. You can still strip them but it is much harder to do than a Phillips head. We highly recommend them.

SFG Boxes all lined up

We did follow Mel’s advice and had Lowe’s cut the boards all down to 4 feet so we did not have to do any cutting. Assembling the 8 boxes took about 45 minutes but if one is fresh it could go a little bit faster. It took two people to assemble them: one to hold the box from moving and the other to do the drilling.

Placement

We plan to place them between the fruit tree row in the back as diamonds. That means that the top tip of each diamond will be aligned with the fruit tree row and the rest of the diamond will be south of that line. We hope it will look really neat with everything growing this summer. Next up getting all the soil for the SFG boxes.

We’ve placed our first order for seeds & plants for our garden. We’re not ordering everything from the same place and it’s been quite a process to decide what to order from whom. We’re still working on it, but went ahead and submitted one order. This is what we bought from

Gurney’s (G); HenryField’s (H); Burpee (B); Raintree (R); Burgess (U)

Picture	Where	Code	Type	Name	Count
	G	82359	Zucchini	Gurney’s Pride II Hybrid	S
	G	66325	Winter Squash	Argonaut Butternut	S
	G	14917	Pumpkin	Lumina (White)	S
	G	14335	Carrot	Tendersweet	S
	G	76100	Snow Pea	Avalanche	S
	G	14842	Sugar Snap Pea	Ann	S
	G	14673	Peanut	Jumbo Virginia	S
	G	69959	Onion	Savannah Sweet	S
	G	14734	Artichoke	Green Globe	S
	G	15062	Tomato	Roma	S
	H	72502	Strawberry	Jewel	25
	H	13841	Strawberry	Earliglow	25
	H	71521	Corn	Sweet That's Delicious!	S
	H	83423	Sweet Pepper	Golden California Wonder	S
	H	81161	Tomato	Honey Bunch Hyb.	S
	H	12634	Sweet Basil		S
	H	12637	Cilantro		S
	H	75721	Artichoke	Imperial Star	S
	H	73888	Spinach	Vital Green	S
	U	7017	Hydrangea	3-N-1
	U	6607	Strawberry	Quinault	25
	U	7394	Bulb	Garden (Collection)	50
	U	6331	Peony	Giant Double
	U	5940	Kiwi	Small Fuzz-less Collection	3
	U	3274	Cranberry	American Pilgrim	2
	R	C840G	Sweet Cherry	Black Gold on Gisela 5	1
	R	C476	Apricot	Chinese Sweet Pit on Mar2624	1
	R	A240S	Apple	Dayton on M7	1
	R	A020S	Apple	Akane on M7	1
	R	L517	Lavender	Buena Vista	1
	R	E545	Blackberry	Wild Treasure	1
	R	E588	Blackberry	Triple Crown thornless	2
	R	E570	Blackberry	Prime Ark 45	1
	R	E320	Raspberry	Caroline	3
	R	E335	Raspberry	Autumn Britten	1
	R	E355	Raspberry	Anne (Golden)	1
	B	67260A	Watermelon	Snack Pack Hybrid
	B	67240A	Melon	Twice As Nice
	B	51016A	Carrot	Purple Dragon
	B	69501C	Lettuce	Summer-Long Collection
	B	63420A	Hot Pepper	False Alarm Jalapeno Hybrid
	B	56020A	Sweet Pepper	Costa Rican Sweet
	B	52340A	Sweet Pepper	Orange Belle II Hybrid
	B	51607A	Sweet Pepper	Gypsy Hybrid
	B	62307A	Sweet Pepper	Chocolate Belle Hybrid
	B	62006A	Summer Squash	Eight Ball Zucchini
	B	52936A	Tomato	Fourth Of July Hybrid
	B	51200A	Soy Bean	Be Sweet 292

In anticipation of our garden this spring, we’ve started composting our kitchen scraps. We scored a SoilSaver Classic Composter from Sam’s Club for a song. Despite Curtis’ injured arm (he slipped on the ice and fractured his elbow) he was able to get it set up. We keep a little trash bin under the sink and drop scraps in it – no meat products, no seeds; coffee grounds and filters okay. When the little bin is full, I walk it out to the composter and dump it in, then rinse the little bin and put it back under the sink. Easy! My only complaint is that the big black composter is visible from the road and is not particularly attractive. Curtis reminds me that we plan to put plants around it that will help conceal it some, though we have to remember to leave plenty of space around it to access the doors so we can reap the rewards!

One of great features that goes with owning a house is that one can own land for growing plants. My wife and I love growing plants and especially plants the produce food. Currently we do not have access to land as we have been in an apartment for a year (moved from Nashville to Huntsville). This will soon change as we are having a house build in the Huntsville/Monrovia area on about 1/3 of an acre that will be ours and the end of August 2010. Depending on where you are and what you are use to a 1/3 acre lot is either lots of land or very little. We both grow up in California (Bakersfield) where 1/5 of an acre was standard so this seem like a lot of land to us. Plus it on a wedge so it is mostly backyard (yea!).  Anyhow, we decided that if we are going to do all this work to decide, plan, plant, and grow food that we should blog about it for others to follow and to share ideas. Think of this as the start of a North Alabama gardening blog. The best part is this is from the beginning of our adventures!

Our Blog Charter: Report about how we organize, plant, and grow food in our home garden

Our Garden Challenge: To grow as lots of yummy food on our lot and to encourage and empower others to do so too.

Brinkmann Charcoal Smoke'N Grill

The reason…

I just found a sweet deal at Wal-mart for a Brinkmann charcoal smoker and grill at Wal-mart. They had it accidentally marked at $28.88 instead of their normal $37 (over $60 at Lowe’s on the same day, I checked). I have been wanting a replacement to our cheap $25 Wal-mart gril special from a few years ago and I still had money left from Christmas . After I took it home and assembled it and then did it curing process, I decided that I really need a wireless meat thermometer. I have been wanted one of those two for both indoor and outdoor useage and I still had Christmas money left.

Finding a Wireless Meat Thermometer

Finding a wireless meat thermometer is like anything, you have to start with the research first. I know, I’m buying it after buying the smoker without research but that was a deal. There are many choices out there and finding the right one is a manner of figuring out the most important features and then comparing them against those features.
The features I’m looking for in a wireless meat thermometer are:

• Wireless (I want to be able to be inside doing other things while the meat is smoking.)
• I want it to be reliable (temperature accurate)
• I want to monitor the temperature more than the time. (I can always set a timer, I cannot set a temperature especially with charcoal.)
• I want it the work indoors and in the grill
• I want it to have a large temperature range.
• I want it to be affordable (<$40)

I know with a feature list like that I’ll be luck to find one that even exists! I check America’s Test Kitchen to see what they recommended. America’s Test Kitchen is great. I like their experimental and no nonsense approach to cooking, plus their recipes so far have all come out great (But this is really a topic for another post). They suggested (Reviewed)

• Maverick RediChek Remote Wireless Smoke Thermometer
• Polder Dual Sensor Thermometer and Timer

According to America’s Test Kitchen the Polder one takes a long time to measure an accurate temperature so that one is out. At Amazon the Maverick that is the #1 in the BBQ remote thermometer is Maverick Remote-Check ET-7 Wireless Thermometer with 2 Probes. After reading the product description it appears to meet all of my feature list  and has two probes. However, I’m a little worried that the feedback on Amazon is semi bipolar. There are over 70, 4&5 stars, and over 40 1&2 stars. Seems that the two biggest problems are dead units (not surprising as I suspect people who get dead units comment as a higher percentage then those that do not, I would), and poor range. Well range is affected by many things so that o.k. by me. I would have been more worried about bad readings or units burning at temperature below the stated 500F degrees. So, I think I might get this unit. Oregon Scientific and Grill Alert have talking units but that seems like an overkill and pointless feature for me. There was also a Weber Style unit but the reviews were more bad than good. Accurately it seems that most units on Amazon have more bad the good reviews. It is not as big of field of products as I would have thought.

Well I did it.

I decided on the Maverick Remote-Check ET-7 Wireless Thermometer with 2 Probes and bought it. I’ll let you know how it works once I use it.