2008 Garden

The 2008 garden season is now under way. At least it is for us here in South-central California. We would likely be further along, if we didn’t live at 3400′ elevation. Either way, we are happy with our growing season.

This year, we are trying something different. We got sick of using peat pods and plastic pots. There was always transplant shock. Not to mention, we were just tired of using petrolium based product – not sustainable. This year we got a soil blocker. It is a little tool that makes soil blocks – fairly simple. I started with the smallest blocker. It makes 20 blocks that are 0.75″ by 0.75″, with a small indent on top to deposit a seed. After the germinate and get bigger, you can transplant them to a bigger soil block (2″ or 4″), which makes a small hole the size of the small block. As the season progresses, I’ll keep this updated.

Here’s how I did it.

Here I am mixing up my own soil mix for the blocks. It didn’t end up being as good as I would have liked, but live and learn.

The next step in the process is actually putting the soil into the block maker to form the little blocks. Not too difficult.

This is what the little look like; getting the flats filled up. Yes, the flats are plastic, just left over from a previous season and do not want to waste them.

Although the instruction for use stated so, I didn’t heed the neccessity of rinsing the blocker between uses. Learned the hard way. It helps.

Finally full, seeds planted, on the heating mat, and waiting for germination.

In the same space using peat pods, only 174 would fit in this space. With the soil blocker there are 600 starts in the same amount of space. I like it.