Planting a Peck of Pickled Peppers...Well, Just a Few, Really

It was a beautiful day, so I decided it was time to plant the pepper seedlings: 9 California Wonder sweet peppers and 6 Chinese Giant heirloom peppers. They've been seedlings long enough, in my view, and I think they will grow faster out in the regular garden. Now that the rabbit fence completely surrounds the garden, I think it's safe to put them out.

David conveniently mowed the yard today, leaving me a couple of bags of grass clippings to use for mulch. After hoeing up the weeds in the empty section of garden (tough work!), I planted the peppers and mulched around them, using leftover rain water to water each individual pepper plant. We'll see how many survive the transplant. I'm not even certain I'm planting peppers at the right time--most gardeners probably have had their peppers in for a month or more and may even be harvesting at this point. Unfortunately, I only have so much energy, and have to put things out when I can.

After the planting, I went inside to rest up a bit and shredded my next batch of newspaper for mulching between plant rows. As you can see from the picture, the onion/shallot/bean section of the garden is weed-ridden, and I will need to weed first, then lay down the shredded newspaper base, followed by grass clippings. I did that previously with the tomatoes, and I am happy to report that I still have no weeds growing in that section of the garden, and the tomatoes are happily growing in the moisture-retaining mulch. But I won't get to the weeding and mulching of this section until tomorrow.

Creative Gardening Tools: Newspaper as Mulch

Do you have newspapers piled high in a box or bin somewhere in your house or garage that you'd like to get rid of? Here's a tip: instead of sending it off to recycling, shred it and use it as mulch in your garden or around your flowers and shrubs. You'll want to then top it off with grass clippings, hay, chipped tree mulch, or something similar (otherwise, the newspaper will just blow away and look like hell), but you'll gain lots of benefits from using shredded newspaper as an underblanket. I've used grass clippings--shown in the picture--to cover up the newspaper.

[Note to self: Next time, pick a wind-less day for mulching. The shredded newspaper won't blow all over the yard and I won't get grass clippings in my mouth.]

Using shredded newspaper not only gives you a use for those newspapers that might instead clutter up the landfill, but it also works as compost for the soil, helps retain moisture around your plants, and prevents weeds from taking over. Newspapers are safe for mulching since the newspaper industry has switched over to soy-based inks.

Shredded newspaper mulch doesn't stop all weeds; let me be clear about that. But it significantly reduces the number of them that will sneak through, particularly if you lay the mulch down thickly. If you want extra weed protection without chemicals, tear up some food-grade or corrugated cardboard and lay that down first, then the shredded newspaper, and finally, whatever you've chosen as your topside mulch. Ultimately, the cardboard and newspaper will all break down and become part of the soil that the little beasties feed on; additionally, you won't have the leachate that you would get if you lay down plastic. (Plastic is bad, very bad, and should never be used around food.)

Gardening Is a (Painfully) Great Workout

I'm in sad shape for being nearly 43. (Yes, that's my real age.) When I got home from work today, my roommate informed me that he had tilled the garden plot for me. (I would say "Bless his pea-pickin' heart," but we don't have peas to pick yet.)

Unfortunately, we have clay for soil, so the tilled portion doesn't go down very far. I decided to use some of the compost and organic soil I had on hand in the trunk of my car to plant green beans in just one section of the garden. The Empress and Ideal Market green beans looked ready, so I sectioned off a part of the garden with some fence I bought at KMart last year for next to nothing, added the compost and soil, and planted the beans (9 Empress plants and 10 Ideal Market). The soup beans look like they'll be next--they're getting pretty tall.

I was delighted to see the earthworms making their way up from down below into the fresh compost and soil, but disturbed by the news that in the U.K., New Zealand flatworms are liquefying earthworms! This is not good news for gardeners. Let's hope the earthworms don't get imported to North America.

While I was outside, I raked some leaves (which I can't do for very long). Unfortunately, I didn't even make a dent. I gave up on the raking and put some shredded paper and mulch around the snap peas to minimize erosion and retain moisture.

I feel productive for having gotten more planting done. If I do a little every day (weather permitting), I should have a pretty awesome garden in no time!