Monday, April 18, 2016

Bananas & finally planted my raised beds

New Bananas: 4/16/16
 
It sounds amazing but some Cold Hardy Bananas will survive our winters here in Seattle. The Musa Basjoo supposedly can withstand -3F temperatures.

I love tropical plants, so I bought these 2 little guys which are probably about 6 inches tall upon arrival. Let's see how big I can grow them this year. (That's if I do not kill them)

Bananas Like:
  • Rich, dark, fertile soils.
  • Lots of mulch and organic matter. LOTS. Just keep piling it on.
  • Lots of nitrogen and potassium. (Chicken manure or Steer gro!)



Raised Beds:
Been so busy with the new fence and other things in my life that tilling and amending my 3 raised beds has been low on my priority list.  I finally managed to get them tilled last week. The original soil came from Carpinitos Top Soil delivery.  I'm not too happy with it. It compacts after one season and had very little organics in it.

This year I added broken down wood chips, perlite, steer gro, and compost to each bead and gave then a thorough tilling. The soil looks amazing now. It's soft fluffy and full of humus, the added woodchips is to encourage mycorrhizae to grow. I've read that you're not suppose to till your raised beds but in this case it needed it badly. Moving forward I'm treating it like my potted plants. I also added rock dust and 10-10-10 to really super charge the soil.

I even got the wifey involved this year I gave her one of the beds to plant whatever she wanted. She opted for the Kale, lettuce, zucchini, cabbage and beans. While this year I'm just going to focus on peppers and my giant pumpkin.

After planting them she really took over 2 beds, but I'm perfectly happy so as long as we're enjoying the garden together.

A happy wife is a happy life!











July 2016 Update:


The bare beds have been taken over by the squash


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