Update:

My indoor seeds are doing OK, but I am going to plant them in a different way next year. I went ahead and bought some plants at Lowes and Home Depot. I purchased Brocolli, Cabbage, Strawberries, onions. and lettuce. I also planted seeds directly into the boxes, they haven't come up yet...but they should. Those are Turnips, Spinach, Sugar Snap Peas. This week going to plant radishes, beets, more lettuce.

(Update on this update..haha. Turnip sprouts have arrived! Woohoo!)- March 30th

Photos are of the plants I purchased. I still need to finish the garden, weed cloth still showing. Should finish it this week :)

photo update

Garden area not done yet, but I can start planting. Will be planting early spring plants today; peas, parsley, lettuce, spinach (< from seed). cabbage, brocolli (< plants that I started from seed indoors)





added the special soil mix on Saturday (fourth box going to another area in yard, will show when complete)



Made the grids Yesterday, need to work on grass and add pretty rocks, the border, a water feature, pretty windchimes....I'm sure I'll think of lots to do.




Maddie relaxing

Starting my seeds indoors

UPDATE: March 2010. Don't start seeds this way. Peat Pods are a waste. This year I used bigger jiffy pots with seed starting soil. See photos from March 2010.

I started my seeds indoors today. Not sure how it will turn out. I bought two windowsill plastic greenhouse boxes. UPDATE: this is how NOT to start seeds. I failed big time doing this, and a waste of money.

I will be storing the binder in a large ziplock bag and place in the freezer for storage.

UPDATE: I now store my seeds in a platic box in the freezer. I place the seed packages in quart sized ziplock bags and place the bag in the box and seal tight. This is so you can use your seeds for a few years. Saves money.

Building the boxes

View from the deck.
Boxes are 4 x 4 feet
Look how big they are!

My grass will look great in a few weeks, still winter grass :)
and when the trees fill in, this is gonna look great!


This weekend we shopped for all the supplies and then Sunday afternoon Doug built the boxes (While I mowed the lawn for the first time this year). So far we have the boxes with the hardware cloth stapled to the bottom to keep critters from stealing my carrots. Next we need to remove the grass, lay the weedcloth, place the boxes, add the border (so I won't need to weed-eat around each box hopefully, then fill the boxes with a special soil mix, then add the grid on top of the boxes..........then plant. We spent about $75 - $100/box, that includes everything, the seeds too. I think we'll get that back this year with all the vegetables I won't be buying. We shall see.

The garden is in the dog run that we don't use. The owners before had this dog run, I think it's a great place for a garden to keep the dogs out, plus it gets the best all day sunlight.

That's it for now. Will finish up next weekend.

I went to the library and got "The Way We Garden Now".
Cute book with some great ideas. I got the trellis idea from this book. I found the twigs while out with one of my clients, Wookie the dog. We have MANY trees here, so perfect trellis twigs were very easy to find.

I have one plant already in the tall pot, can't remember what it is called right now, but it will climb. Should look pretty. It is a fast early spring grower, so shouldn't take long. It's already coming up even with the snow we just had. I'll take pictures when it fills out. The other pot I'll need to plant something, maybe sweet peas. I won't do that until after the last frost date, which I think is the end of April here.


Wookie

My first post

I thought I'd blog about my garden. This will be my first year gardening. I have tried tomatoes in containers, but that is about it. I also helped out a neighbor with his row garden and it was a LOT of work. I just about gave up on the idea of gardening until I found this book, www.squarefootgardening.com

I am so excited to try this. It is early March. We still have several inches of snow on the ground, but this weekend it will hit 70 for the high so I'm hoping I can start building the garden boxes and get them into place.


-Jill