Garden day

Since the weather was so nice today we decided today would be our garden day. Our day started early, at a bit after eight. We headed out to Lowes and picked up 8 bags of organic compost and a bag of sand. We mixed our soil, and used the sand for our melon rows(watermelon and canteloupe) and carrot bin so they would have good drainage and the proper soil. After a long day(about seven hours) of composting, mounding, and mulching here is what we have as a start to our garden!!

Some garden tips learned: for melons and other hot weather plants place a black ground cover over your mounds then cut slits and plant your plants, on top of the ground cover place a nice layer of mulch to help keep in heat and moisture.

Give beans or cucumbers something to grow up! Place dowels at each end of the row and one in the middle, string garden twine across the bottom, middle, and top of the dowels giving your plants a good structure to vine up. Also, place some twine diagonally so they can grow up to the next level of string easily. You dont want to try this for heavier vegi's such as squash or melons because they will break off!!

Need a simple gardening website? There are plenty out there but this one I like because it is so simple and straightforward.

we have sprouted

I woke up this morning disappointed that I did not have any new sprouts. I was at school and then at work until late tonight so I did not get home until almost 10pm and had no time to set the plants out for some sun today. I was feeling bad about this so I brought the plants upstairs to sit under our super hot floor lamp.(its one of those metal ones with three separate bulbs on adjustable things like a huge desk lamp) Well, there is a florescent bulb in one and then just plain bright white bulbs in the other ones. I thought that this would give it some good heat for today so I set them on the dresser and aimed the warm lights onto the plants. I took the lid off to allow them to get some air and what do you think?! New sprouts! The Carrots, Lima beans, Corn, Watermelon and Basil are all showing signs of sprouting. The only thing that shows no sprouts is the zucchini and tomatoes. I took a few pictures so you could see and hopefully be inspired to start your own seedlings!

Garden time!

Ah yes, it is that time of year again! For the past four years I have attempted to grow plants outside in containers which has not always worked that well. This year as I was shopping with my good friend Amanda we came to the conclusion that we should half the cost of supplies and grow a garden in her back yard! I cannot say how happy I am to have a friend that has volunteered her yard as a spot to garden! So, we headed to wal mart and picked up some jiffy mini greenhouses. They are plastic "greenhouses" that have sections in them to start your seeds. We purchased several seed packets each and have planted our seeds! So far this is what we have:

cucumbers
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon
cantaloupe
corn
basil
oregano
carrots
spinach
strawberries
potatoes
and lima beans

Yes, it is quite a lot, but we picked so many different plants so we will have a good variety even if some of them do not work out. Tonight Amanda and I went out and dug shallow trenches about five feet long and two feet apart. We are going to mix the dirt from these trenches with fertilizer and make mounds for our plants to grow on. This should give us plenty of walking space between our plants when they start to grow. Our goal is to keep the garden as organic as possible and we are going to try not to use any miracle grow or pesticides. Our garden may end up with miracle grow and simply be pesticide free (esp. considering that we did not buy organic seeds) but we will see how it goes. The tomatoes we are growing in their own row against the fence so they can vine up against it and the corn has its own section on the back of Amandas property. Hopefully our plants will start to grow soon and we can transplant them to the garden the week of Easter sometime. I will take pictures once we have the soil mixed and placed in our nice trenches. Oh, did I mention that Amanda had tons of rocks just sitting around so we took them and painted the names of each plant on them? Now we have cute little rock tags for our garden rows!