Garden Updates

Per Grandpa Art's request, I thought I'd get some updated photos of our plant life up on the blog. ;) Things overall are going pretty well with the garden. Unfortunately, I just don't think my beans are going to make it (something keeps eating at the leaves, and they just don't look great), carrots aren't doing much, and today I noticed some of my potted tomato plants have leaves that are turning white (I have no clue what that means!), but, other than those everything else is growing right along.

I added some pink flowers to the porch over the weekend:

And replaced the peas & lettuce that just weren't growing with flowers:

Herbs are doing well. Will have to get another cilantro plant though:

I lined up all my tomato containers on the side of the house. Some of them are getting too tall for me to handle:

The celery is almost ready to harvest:

And potatoes are getting close, too:

The tomato plants haven't produced much fruit yet, but they'll get there:

And Eric's making progress on the rain barrel. We have a hole in the back to plug and we have to secure mesh on the top:

And since we have no mesh right now, and because there was still wine residue, we have some interesting particles floating in the rain water:

My first canning class of the summer is this Wednesday night (it's on freezing and drying fruits and veggies)! Looking forward to learning about that and seeing what all the garden does the rest of the summer.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Here's a look at things around the garden lately. I just harvested our first round of strawberries today, which was exciting!

Garden in the Making

We have been busy busy busy the past several weekends getting ready for the spring gardening season, and I'm so excited. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll be ready to start planting!

We started out with building a fence so that Macy & Lily wouldn't be able to dig through and eat up everything. Eric spent a few weekends planning it out and putting it together.

Then it was time to build a few beds, and surprisingly, 6' boards fit in the little Civic.

We used untreated wood on the beds since treated wood can leak chemicals into the soil. The wood we bought may rot quicker though so we're going to have to keep a close eye on it over the next few years.

My strawberry plants were shipped a week early, so I was frantically trying to figure out how we were going to fill the two beds we had already built. Thankfully, we were able to get a load of soil delivered on Friday, and boy was it a LOT of soil!

I spent Friday afternoon in rainboots and a rain jacket filling up as much as I could. It was definitely some heavy lifting and hard work.

Eric then finished the last bed today and we have everything all ready for plants.

And boy did it wear him out!

I think we're both going to sleep great tonight and stay tuned for seedling progress and planting!

Garden Planning, Part 1

 We are deep into garden planning now that spring is just around the corner. Eric has been working hard on building a fence to keep doggies out and I've been busy starting seeds. Here's a look at what we're planning...I have high hopes for this thing! Hopefully it doesn't disappoint too much...

I've been using smartgardener.com to tweak and finalize our bed layouts:

And here's the breakdown of what we're going to be growing:

HERBS

• Rosemary
• Spearmint
• Chives
• Lavender
• Oregano
• Parsley
• Paprika
• Thyme

VEGGIES

• Bell Peppers
• Tomatoes - lots for canning salsa, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, you name it!
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Celery
• Snap Peas
• Beans
• Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Broccoli

FRUITS

• Strawberries
• Oranges 
• Lemons
• Apples

Yes, you read the last three correct. Stark Bro's is a Missouri company that has several fruit trees, several of which you can grow in POTS! Lemons and oranges will be in pots (and will hopefully yield lots of good fruits for jucing), and we're going to attempt planting an apple tree...although doggies very well may ruin that plan.

So, on top of learning how to garden for the first time, there will also be a lot of learning on canning, juicing, and new recipes! Here's to a busy spring and summer!

Getting Started on Gardening

For the past few months, Eric & I have been learning to compost after I took a short class from one of the City's programs. After hearing on the news awhile back about how great compost is for growing plants, I was curious, and now I'm hooked. We plan on having a big garden in the spring, so we are starting to prep and research in hopes of great crops! My goal is to have at least 50% of our food come from our garden - I have plans for lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and much more, and I plan to learn how to can and freeze at the same time. I didn't have much luck with containers the past two years, but I'm aiming to improve those odds as well. (Everyone says containers are harder anyways, right?!)

I'm still in the beginning stages of getting things planned out (library books have been borrowed for studying during the drive for Thanksgiving!), but I've learned a lot so far. I've been bookmarking websites left and right (thanks to Pinterest, who loves to take up at least an hour of my day), and just last week discovered smartgardener.com Can you say AWESOME?! So here's our yard space right now that we'll be working with (I still have to check into how much sunlight this side of the house gets though). You can see our compost bin back there, too!

And here's part of what I've been working on through Smart Gardener:

You lay out your garden (we're doing raised beds since our ground is mostly clay), and then it calculates how many people you want to feed and your location and gives you recommended plants, recommended placement of plants, a to-do list by week on when to plant, and more. I was super impressed.

So between now and about the end of February, we'll be working on plans to follow through with this...stay tuned!