So all this nice warm weather and rain gets us all in the mood to garden, but what about all that old, compacted soil in our containers?  Your containers will not be productive if you don’t refresh the soil.  Let’s talk about 3 different ways to do this:

1. Throw out the old (on the compost pile or on garden beds maybe), bring in the new.  Nice idea, but expensive and doesn’t work for balcony and other small gardens with nowhere to dump the old soil.  I have used my old soil in my small landscaped islands.  It still has the moisture crystals in it and of course, my islands are “builder sand” so any little bit of organic matter helps.

2. Dump the old into a container, mix 50/50 with compost (mushroom and earthworm castings preferred).  This method works great for plants that need repotting and for empty pots.  I use a medium size Rubbermaid container for mixing my soil and for holding extra soil at the end of the season.  The lid keeps the soil from getting too soggy if it rains.

3. Poke holes in the surface with a dibble or hand rake to loosen the soil.  Add container re-booster product from your favorite gardening supply store.  This is a great solution for large plants you don’t want to repot every year (like fruit cocktail trees!). You could also add earthworm castings instead.

There is a fourth method yet to be perfected for container gardens and that is the no-till method of growing 5 or more cover crops together while over-wintering.  This is a new-old method of farming may or may not work for our containers, but the biochemistry is undeniably successful on larger gardens and fields. 

Don’t forget to start your seeds now for summer vegetables.  You can find out more about that here:

http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/carolinas/blog_01_summary/P24/

I’ve already got mine going for the year and have already transplanted tomatoes, eggplants and artichokes into larger pots.  Love these new seed starting containers, the biodomes, as they allow me to ventilate my seedlings while keeping the cat at bay!

The mini-ponics system has FINALLY started growing nitrites…which means we are on our way to completing the nitrogen cycle and adding fish…more about that next week.  Thanks so much for dropping by, don’t forget to fertilize and deadhead your bulbs if you haven’t already and start checking your asparagus plants for those delicious little stalks!

Hope this day finds you well.  I have been running my desktop aquaponics system for 2 weeks now and I wanted to share with you how to set up an small aquaponic system.

For my mini-ponics system I used:

3 gallon aquarium

Standard aquarium power filter (doesn’t need an air pump)

Styrofoam (the kind they use for takeout trays)

Net pots from a hydroponic or pond supply house

Old panty hose

Vermiculite

Seamagic seaweed emulsion

Aquarium test kit

Tools used:

razor knife, pencil, circle template

I trimmed the foam to fit the top of my aquarium, then I cut out the area for the filter to sit. Check this carefully: I forgot to check this and had to trim two holes I thought I could use once I put the filter in place.

Then I measured the pot my circle template and used my pencil to trace the correct size circle onto my foam lid.  You want the circle to be slightly smaller than the top of your pots.  Cut out the foam with your razor knife. 

The holes in my net pots were too large for my vermiculite, so I used panty hose.  Tie a knot in the end and pull the knot through the bottom of the pot.  This creates a wick while holding all the vermiculite in place.

Next, place the filter, then place the foam lid on top.  Fill the pots and place those in the holes in the lid, fill the aquarium with water, plug in the filter (don’t forget to add water inside the filter to help start the siphon) and place your seedlings in the pots…voila…now we feed and wait for the bacteria:

Carefully add a small amount of pure ammonia and a nice dose of seaweed emulsion (for the plants). The picture above shows my system after two weeks.

Next time we talk about aquaponics, I’ll walk you through the nitrogen cycle, the next step in setting up an aquaponic system.  For the next 6-8 weeks, we test the ammonia levels with our test kit, daily.  We also test for nitrites.  Once nitreates start to appear in our tests, we will also test for nitrates.  Add the seaweed emulsion every other day using half a capful or so to keep the plants going until the nitrogen cycle is complete.  If your ammonia levels fall, you will want to carefully add a bit more of that too until the nitrites appear. 

Things to do in your garden this week:  Prune roses, fertlize winter blooming bulbs, start harvesting asparagus and start your summer seedlings indoors and check out the latest Carolina Gardener magazine for my article on growing Salad in the South!

Also, I plan to teach a gardening class at My Favorite Things shop in Irmo this spring.  I'm giving away a free pack of zinnia seeds (one of my favorites) for the best idea for that class.   Post a comment here or on my facebook page: Sharon Self Johnson this week.

Don’t you wish you could just stick a seed in the ground, any seed, and it would sprout and grow?  I knew a woman like that…my grandmother.  She grew roses and tomatoes in whiskey barrels and grew fruit trees from the grocery store produce seeds by sticking the seeds in houseplant pots WITH the houseplants.  I had a client once who called this method of dream planting “stick planting”.  She would buy things and just stick them in the ground and hoped they grew. My grandmother stuck seeds in her pots and knew they would grow and grow they did.

Well I participated in a little stick planting of my own this past summer at the height of cherry season, you know…when they were on sale in the supermarkets.  I tucked a few seeds into my office plant and voila…here in January I noticed some funny looking weeds growing in my container…surely they are cherry trees in the making. 

Of course, they need to be repotted.  So this beautiful weather prompted a repotting session for the cherry trees.  I carefully removed them from the pots with my handy dandy bonsai tools (a great buy from ebay!)

Fascinating to see the seedlings still sporting their cotyledon, which feeds the seedlings until they get their first root (the radical) and stem (the hypocotyl) going.  

Once they cherry trees were at home in their new pot (complete with a good dose of worm castings), I pruned the other plants and placed them back in their pots, who knows what fun babies they might nurse this next growing season!