It looks like my lettuce is coming to an end. I’m seeing signs of bolting already, due to the temperature getting up into the 80s most afternoons now. Lettuce is a cool weather crop, and we have about 4 days of spring between too cold to plant with overnight freezes to too hot for lettuce…
I’m going to work in the veggies today, pruning, weeding, tweaking, and I’m hoping to finish the last two brick planters.
We have a stunningly beautiful morning here, and I’m looking forward to working outside for several sessions.
Lettuce and SpinachLettuce, Spinach, and TomatoesLook closely. There are a couple of green tomatoes beside the top of the stick. I spent a lot of time pinching off suckers, cutting off extraneous branches, adding support to the plants. TomatoesAgain, beside the stick are a couple of teeny, tiny, green tomatoes.
I fertilized everything. Looking good so far. We’re really enjoying the spinach and lettuce in salads. I also have a couple of HEADS of lettuce doing well. :0)
I had a nice harvest from our little garden this morning. I just finished washing it and putting it in gallon bags for the fridge. We’ll have some of it tonight in a chef salad for dinner.
I’m going to look online for cooking fresh leaf spinach because I’ve never done that before (even though I’m older than dirt, there are lots of things I haven’t done yet :0) )
I still have some pruning, supporting, and weeding to do out there. I’ll do another session soon.
We had super heavy rain in waves from about 8pm until a bit after 11 last night. We were lucky. We were under a tornado warning – with Greenwood actually mentioned as ‘in the path’ but – other than it becoming ominously quiet at one point – the bad stuff passed by us. I watched the TV coverage until I could see the yellow and red blobs, along with associated tornado rectangles, had passed us. (I need to do a harvest of the lettuce and spinach this afternoon.)
I walked around the yard this morning to see if we had any damage. I found one rose bush branch was broken off, but that was all. The garden is still looking good. They certainly got the watering they probably wanted, and then some, but all looks good so far. (The lettuce plants here are head lettuce, and the heads are forming!) I’ll bring some bungie cords to put around the supports to give the tomato plants more to hang onto.
I’m planning to go out later – weather permitting – and see what needs more support, rearranging (in the case of the tomato branches) and what needs harvesting (lettuce and spinach.)
The clematis bloomed suddenly. The blooms are looking a bit battered after the storm, but I’m hoping they’ll perk up. I’ll bring my husband out later, since these are his favorite.
And this is the first bloom of our Stella de Oro lilies. You can see there are several buds, so I’m hoping we’ll have a nice display.
My sister-in-law sent me some phone apps suggestions that might help me identify my mystery perennials. I added them to my phone, and hope to make the time to see how they work later today. She also sent me a Kindle book on flowers and veggies. Isn’t she wonderful?
These pics are from a couple of days ago. All the plants seem happy right now. I really need to harvest lettuce and spinach, but will have to wait until the rain leaves us.
I was excited to see a couple of ‘heads’ of lettuce forming when I looked at things quickly yesterday!
I’m hoping to be able to get up close and personal with my plants tomorrow, doing some harvesting, pruning, and supporting. I also have four planters left to weed and lots of things to cut back…
So far, things are good. Something was eating my spinach and lettuce, so I mixed and sprayed EIGHT on all the veggie plants earlier this week. I love that stuff because it’s safe for humans and our pets, but kills the pests.
Here you can see the holes in the spinach leaves. Hopefully, I’ve now stopped the pests at least for a while.
I’ll probably do some harvesting of spinach and lettuce later today.
Here are 4 tomato plants along with a few more spinach and lettuce plants. I’m see several yellow blossoms on the tomato plants now.
This is the other tomato planter with another 4 plants. I nipped off suckers and cut off branches that touched the ground earlier. I need to make sure all the branches are supported well. This can change from day to day, and growth can happen quite suddenly, so I want to stay on top of things before I can’t manipulate the branches through the cages anymore.
Our veggies are still doing well. I took a gallon bag of lettuce to my hairdresser, Michael, yesterday and he seemed very happy.
I’m going to tend the veggie planters today, weeding, doing any pruning needed, fertilizing, and harvesting some lettuce and spinach.
I’ll get out there this morning because it’s a bit overcast and just almost 70. It’s supposed to get to 88 this afternoon. That may be a record. I hope that it’s not enough fuel for the weather that the rain we’re supposed to get tomorrow afternoon and evening will be severe.
The first I remember about April Fool’s Day was my dad playing pranks on his family and friends. He had an unstoppable sense of humor. You just couldn’t be around him with smirking, smiling, or downright laughing out loud at his stories and antics.
My mom told us that when they agreed to marry, my dad wanted to get married on April Fool’s Day. She just stared at him, saying, “I’m not fooling!” (They married on April 3, 1942).
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Ernst Heating and Cooling
We have a geothermal heating and cooling system similar to this. Ours wasn’t put in when we built the house, but they were able to install the system for us several years ago. We took advantage of a service with AirPro Heat and Air, our service company, to have a tech come out twice a year to check everything over inside and out, change our filters, fix problems, etc. The tech is here now, making sure all is good before we do much changing from heating to cooling.
Unsplash
I’m going to have to take sheets out and cover up my garden plants before dinner, due to a forecast for possibly severe thunderstorms tonight – with rain, large hail, damaging gusty winds, possible tornadoes, and flying hair balls.
I’m HOPING (1) we don’t get the “severe” – just the rain, and (2) the sheets I put up protect the veggie plants. And (3) that the other plants in the planters around the house survive and aren’t beaten to death, like the azalea above.
I’m not this young (by a LONG shot) and don’t look this good, but I’m making progress with the weed-whacking this afternoon. It’s now 63 degrees and sunny. The stuff I’m whacking is still pretty wet, but it’s coming down.
I’ve finished the 3 veggie planters on the east side of the house and am taking a ‘back break’ and drinking some water before going out again. I want to at least finish under the porch, under the deck, and along the back sidewalk before I call it a day today.
This weed whacker is working fine. Everything is compatible. I told my husband I was going to mark this one with some tape, and that I wanted to do away with any others we have, as they don’t do near as good a job as this one does. Right now, it seems that he is in agreement. He is still holding on to his announcement he was not going to mow in March. I really can’t blame him. He spends a lot of time on our riding mower during the mowing season. Usually this begins sometime in April. This year is weird, but he’s trying to ignore it. :0)
Oh, I almost forgot! When I went out to weed whack this afternoon, look at what I found!
(Please, just look at the IRIS, not all the weeds in and around the planter….)
Going to rest a bit more, drink more water, then head out for the next session.
Somehow I forgot to send Happy Spring Wishes yesterday. My apologies. I DO send them to you. :0)
I finished planting my spring garden yesterday afternoon. We got the rest of the plants yesterday morning and I waited until it warmed up to actually plant. Yesterday I planted 6 more spinach plants and 8 tomato plants.
This is the 8-foot planter. I planted Butter Crunch leaf lettuce, iceberg head lettuce, and spinach. Due to space, I just spread the plants out as best I could, changing from one type of plant to the other, rather than planting the spinach 4-to-a-square, and the leaf lettuce the same way. I’m hoping the plants will do okay like this.
This is a closer view. The plants have a bit more room to spread out than in traditional square foot planting.
This square planter has 4 tomato plants around the center pole with supports tied to the pole for sturdiness. Then I planted some of the lettuces and the spinach around the perimeter.
The ‘niche’ planter (because it is sheltered by the back of the house and our screened porch) has the other 4 tomato plants. I’m going to TRY not to allow the plants to spill over the side onto the ground this time. I really hate cutting healthy vines, but I’m telling myself that all the energy goes to the vines, rather than producing tomatoes…
Today I’m planning to get there this afternoon when it’s warmer (it’s 47 now) do some weed whacking, fertilizing, and soil-enhancing.
This yard work PLUS my yoga practice PLUS my normal other activities is really making me welcome the bed at night. Probably good for building my character, as well. :0)
This is what used to be the iris planter. It’s now weeded and ready for tomatoes in the spring.
This is the second tomato planter.
And I’ll plant spinach and lettuce in this planter. All three are filled with Mel’s Mix.
This is where some of the iris plants ended up.
This is a tall planter beside the front porch.
And this one is in the front yard, to the other side of the front porch.
I also cut the elephant ear plants down as far as I could. I’m starting to cram as many leaves as I can get in that planter between now and the first real freeze, with all appendages crossed that it will be enough to protect them until they hopefully start shooting leaves up again in the spring.
It’s gray and raw and 46 outside right now, so I’m using the morning to work on my Etsy shop and write blog posts. I’m HOPING that it will, in fact, get to the forecast 58 degrees this afternoon.
Gardener’s Path
I’d like to pull the iris out of one of our brick planters in the back and distribute them in two other planters in the front. This will free up the back planter for a downsized square foot planter garden in the spring. My plan at the moment is to use an 8 foot brick planter for lettuce and spinach and two other square brick planters for tomatoes. All already have Mel’s Mix in them and will be ready for planting.
My husband insisted that I buy a Dremel glass etcher at Walmart yesterday. If it doesn’t clearly show how to change the bits, I’ll try to call the company. The new one will allow me to continue my work on the glassware today. The one I got from our shop is too large for the work I’m doing. My hands are strained just trying to hold it, much less trying to do anything with it. Fingers are crossed that this one will work for me.
I Should Be Mopping the Floor…
My To-Do List is beyond daunting at this point. I TRIED to feel good about doing one thing from the list each day, but the list is growing exponentially and I just feel guilty about all the things I SHOULD be doing. I may just throw it out and start a new one, listing the things I NEED to do THIS WEEK…
I hope that you’re having a nice Saturday, doing something that brings you joy.
I just gathered these, plus a bunch of cherry-tomato-sized tomatoes from the two planters. I think this is probably the last harvest, as the vines are looking tired and the tomatoes are small or spoiled on the vines. I’ll probably start pulling them out and cleaning up today.
Meanwhile, I’ll have a nice gift to take to Michael, our hairdresser, soon, and we have a few left that are hopefully not ‘mealy’ as my husband said of the earlier ones.
This has been a disappointing year for tomatoes. Tomatoes like a warmer temperature that doesn’t fluctuate a bunch, lots of sun – but not the intensity that fries them on the vine, and a steady amount of water. We’ve had none of these things this season, so it’s really amazing we got to enjoy any tomatoes at all.
It looks a bit better now, I think. When I got the weeds and Bermuda out, I found that grasshoppers have been gorging on the iris spears. I’ll go back out later with my EIGHT spray and hose the sweet iris plants down.
The NEXT outside project is gathering tomatoes and then cleaning up the two planters. This has been an awful year for veggies. My main square foot garden plants started out well, then got drowned by all the rain, beaten down by hail, and then baked by the sun, over and over again. I’ll need to clean that up later, as well.
The tomatoes LOOKED like they were doing well, but the tomatoes were cherry tomatoes, rather than fulls-sized, and were ‘off’ in flavor. I’ve gathered the few full-sized ones from time to time. My husband pronounced THEM ‘mealy’ and wouldn’t eat but a sparse few here and there, so I lost interest. I’ll see what I can salvage and then clean things out. Some years just aren’t good ones for veggies.
It’s 77 degrees F., dark and rainy here right now. We have the doors open to welcome the cool breezes. We’re not supposed to be threatened by flying hair balls, so we can simply relax and enjoy the rain. AHHHHHH :0)
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LOOK WHAT I DID!
Painted Container with Lid – Hand-Painted, One of a Kind – Glass – “Stained Glass” – $41.99 with FREE SHIPPING in the contiguous U.S. – lindawlewis1@gmail.com for more information. HandmadeHavenByLinda on Etsy.
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ART ROOM
Pixabay
I’m starting to dream about the Christmas presents I want to make for my friends this year. I’m thinking of etching some glassware with initials plus some other decorative stencils with some free-form dremel additions in-between. I have no idea, really, how to do this, but I’m having a great time in my dreams… :0)
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Yesterday’s harvest
My main spring garden was a complete bust this year due to the wonky weather. The spinach turned yellow and the lettuce started bolting way too soon. I’ll get that cleared out in time. Meanwhile, the tomatoes are doing well.
Ahhh. We finished our errands and I headed out to check the tomatoes. Good thing I brought a big bowl because I was stunned at how many ripe tomatoes we had – and more coming!
I only had to toss ONE that bugs had gotten to. I’m thrilled.
Needless to say, we’ll have tomatoes with lunch in a few minutes and our cookout dinner tonight. HOORAAAY! My lettuce and spinach this year were pretty much a bust, but the tomato plants are LOVING the heat and the sun.
We’re starting to get ripe tomatoes! There was one larger ripe one this morning, but the bugs had gotten to it, so I had to pitch it. I gathered some cute little ones for us to eat celebrationally with our lunch today.
“cute” rather than substantial. The vines are pretty loaded. I’ll spray and fertilize the tomato plants Friday and keep my fingers crossed for more beautiful ripe tomatoes.
I checked our head lettuce plants and most are starting to bolt now. :0( The weather just got too warm too fast this year. I’ll salvage what I can and then see if there are any other plants I want to start when we are in town next.
The plants are looking healthy. If they spill out in the way of the lawn mower, I’ll trim them, but other than that, I’ll just let them do what they want this year. Last year I trimmed them pretty severely, following some directions I found on the net that was supposed to increase our yield. I think I’ll just let them do their thing this year and see what happens. I’ll fertilize again next week.
I’ve only done one session of weeding in the garden and I’m already hot and tired. I’m going to rest a bit, drink a bunch of water, put on a sweatband and then go out for a 2nd session. I have finished one garden box so far.
I have a mixed bag on veggie results this time. My spinach apparently didn’t like all the changes in temperature plus the constant rain. It was already bolting, so I pulled up the plants. :0(
My head lettuce is looking pretty good, though, so I’m weeding around the plants. I’m not sure when I’m supposed to harvest this. I’ll see if I can find some information on the net.
I’m hoping that I can finish the weeding today. I would also like to start digging the Mel’s Mix out of the 2nd planter whose bottom gave up the ghost, sagged, and broke. The first ruined planter is free of the soil alternative now, but the bottom is only sagging in the second, so the soil is in there much more securely.
The concentration is weeding today and figuring out when I harvest.
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The information I found says that the lettuce will start to bolt when the daytime temperatures exceed 70 degrees. That’s NOW. When I finish weeding, I’ll look carefully at each of the plants and decide if I should harvest them. This has been a really weird spring planting.
These photos are from yesterday. Things are going quite well so far. The plants seem to be thriving, and there are not a whole lot of weeds right now.
If you look closely, there are leaves toward the center of the plant curling up together. The ‘head’ lettuce will form in there.
My spinach leaves are being eaten by ‘something,’ but I can’t find any bugs. I’ll go ahead and spray with Eight to see if I can discourage whatever is chomping down.
The tomato plants are growing a lot each day. We’re trying to get the irrigation system for the flower planters (which includes the tomato planters) to work.
The plants are almost covering the whole surface of the planter now. I only have one plant, though, that has yellow blossoms at this point.
I haven’t planted anything else in the main square foot garden. We’re going one day at a time around here lately, so I haven’t pushed seeing what other plants are available in town.
I’ll be working to see if I can get the two timers in the well house working today. We’ll have a test run later today, though starting Wednesday of next week, we’re supposed to get a LOT of rain.
The tomato plants are looking healthy and are more than twice the size they were when I first planted them. They needed some rearrangement of young branches for better support, but I decided to wait a bit longer on watering them.
This shows you that the plants are now about 1/4 the way up the supports. I brought out some bamboo stakes to add to the mix for the best support possible. No blossoms on these yet.
This is the 8-foot-long planter, and the plants are thriving right now. I rearranged branches here, too. There are three small yellow blossoms on one of the plants. I’ll see what other supports I have in the garage and bring them out for next time.
Just wanted to share my joy on this one. One of the buds started to bloom! Hooray!
I had to leave my husband home, since his back is still hurting a lot. He says it’s better, and he looks a bit more perky, but he still needs recovery time.
Today Lunch Bunch was especially fun. When I got to Lunch Bunch, Kay and Bud had brought a neighbor couple, Willie and Cheryl. We mainly talked gardening, and then were surprised when Patty and Linda came late! So almost the whole gang was there. The conversation was lively and fun, with a lot of laughing.
I brought home good wishes from everyone plus a bacon cheeseburger for my husband.
On the way down the driveway, I saw a package was sitting on the ground behind the trash can. (UPS has started leaving stuff down there, rather than trying to drive up our driveway.) It was the bag of Worm Castings I ordered from which I’ll make “tea” for the garden. It’s supposed to be an organic fertilizer and disease prevention for all garden plants and flowers, etc. I’ll start the process of ‘steeping’ it this weekend.
I’m going to rest a bit and then water my tomatoes and check on the main garden. We’re due for possible large hail tomorrow afternoon and evening, so I’m thinking of a method to try to protect my plants as much as possible.
I found some really nice “Super Girl” tomato plants yesterday. I planted them yesterday afternoon. There are six plants in this brick planter.
Here’s a closer look at some of these.
There are 4 plants in this planter. I’m going to try to keep an eye on these and keep them as tied up as possible. They tend to be calm for awhile and then they ‘spurt’ in growth, seemingly all of a sudden spreading out over everything with the limbs too large to move without breaking them, yet really needing more support. I’ll try to do a better job of getting outside each day or so and giving them as much support as I can this year.
We also got the irrigation system controller installed on the faucet that goes to the garden. It’s set to start at 3pm today. I have a timer set so I can get out there and make sure the sprinklers are working and that the flow of water is good for watering my sweet plants well in the 10 minutes I have the controller set to now.
Later on, we’ll set the irrigation system for the yard. For now, I’ll just water the tomatoes with a hand held hose.
I’ll try to check next week to see what other plants I can add to the main garden.
When we got back from errands this morning, I went right out to the garden with the flat of head lettuce and the flat of spinach. I got them planted before lunch. I’ll set up the automatic watering system tomorrow, but I THINK it’s supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon and evening, giving my new plants lots of water. (I hope not too much!)
My plan is to prep my two brick tomato planters next and get them planted, and then figure out what else will go in the main garden.
After lunch and a rest, we went out to the shop to get the snow tires off the truck and put on the regular tires. We had a hard time. I insisted we come in and rest after we got the tires on the front. We drank water and rested a bit and then went back out. We got it done, but it was a close thing.
My husband surprised me on the walk back from the shop after we finished. He has finally agreed that when the snow tires need to be put back on, we’ll put the tires and wheels and lug nuts in the back of the truck. I’ll make an appointment with the tire place so they will change the tires for us, air up the tires and put the others in the back of the truck. The only thing we’ll have to do next time is get the tires in and out of the back of the truck and into the shop. This has been a long time coming, and I had almost given up hope on getting him to see reason. I’m relieved.
We will do some serious relaxing this evening. :0)
Sorry I’m late getting to my blog today. We just now came in from working in the yard a bit. My husband used the chain saw to cut down some really big evergreen branches that were hanging down between the house and the shop. So our trash pile (to be burned when safe) grows again.
We gathered our trash and also put the metal we needed to get rid of in the back of the truck. We drove it all down to the bottom of the driveway and got the trash can set up for emptying tomorrow. Then we drove to the recycling place and a nice man helped us empty the truck. Amber was flirting with him, trying to get him to come pet her. He finally did that, laughing. The way he easily threw the metal way up to the other end of the metal bin there, “I” told him we would really appreciate him on the OTHER end of our trip. At least we made him smile.
I wanted to go to the Co-Op to see what plants they had and we hit the jackpot. My husband’s favorite lettuce is head lettuce. Usually we MIGHT find one small 6-pack. This time we got an entire FLAT. The spinach was also looking stellar, so we got an entire FLAT of that, as well. I’ve JUST now come in from getting what we bought planted. I’ll take some pics to share later. Right now I’m breathing a bit hard and over-heated, so I’m relaxing, writing this, and drinking a big bottle of water.
Later my husband wants to change the truck tires. I know I told you we were planning to do that yesterday, but we got distracted, and ‘somehow’ I forgot to remind him. :0) So, now I’ve said that we can do it after lunch and after we’re rested.
Since we were BOTH looking pretty bedraggled on the way back to the house after our yard work, I took the opportunity to remind him that we’re not 30 anymore and that we both need to keep our work sessions short with lots of rest and water in-between. He seemed to listen and agree…
I’ve just come in from STEP 1 of prepping our square foot garden for planting.
This is the garden, minus the two brick planters on the other side of the house that we use for tomatoes. There are six 4′ x 4′ wooden planter boxes. You can see that the neon tape I strung to let the deer see there is fencing here need repair.
Here’s a view from one side.
This shows the weed barrier cloth I put in each planter box, held down by a brick in each corner. You can also see the irrigation system for these three boxes, with the pieces of hose strung together running along a piece of wood and the sprinkler in the center of each box. The six boxes are all irrigated with one timer on an agricultural faucet.
I removed the bricks and stored them in two corners of the garden, pulled the weed barrier cloths off, folded them up and stored them.
The results of the weed barrier cloth vary. This is the worst, but it’s still much better than if I hadn’t shielded the Mel’s Mix. As you can see, weeds love this soil alternative just as much, if not more, than the veggies I want to grow!
All the planter boxes were prepped the same way, and yet each is different on how many weeds were prevented.
I’m going to call this experiment a success because, though there are weeds, there aren’t NEAR as many as there were when I just left them from the fall to the spring uncovered.
My experiment with tarps wasn’t as good as this, either, because the tarps didn’t stand up well with the temperature differences, the wind, the snow and ice, etc. I had put buckets in the center of each box to try to keep water from pooling, but that had varying success. The tarps also tore and the bungee cords I used didn’t hold the tarps on as well as I had hoped.
I think that when we finish in the fall and are getting the boxes ready for the winter again, we’ll put TWO layers of the weed barrier cloth in each box.
This afternoon I’m planning (again) to uncover my gardening boxes in preparation for starting my spring garden. (I got snafued by the weather once and was just plain lazy after doing other things yesterday). I’m hoping that today is the day I can prep to get spring plants going. I just checked the forecast and it looks like we won’t have any freezes in the next 10 days, so maybe it’ll be safe to get things started.
I’m hoping to find several different types of lettuce, plus spinach, and sweet onions to start tomorrow. We’ll plant tomatoes, of course – in fact, we devote two brick planters to those. Otherwise, I’ll plant broccoli maybe, squash, and radish seeds. I’m thinking of playing with some herbs in the kitchen this year just for fun. I’ll plant celery bottoms from the ones I buy at the grocery store.
Everything will depend on what I can find, and I’m excited to get started now that the weather is getting more cooperative.
It has now warmed up to 27 degrees F. here. The sun is shining, but that isn’t helping much. The forecast says, “A cold final day of winter before a spring warm up.”
I really hope the weather folks are right because I’ve had my fill of cold and am itching to play in the dirt of my garden. I’m planning to prep the garden and get some things planted next week, unless the forecast changes.
Right now I have weed barrier cloth cut to size in each of our six 4′ x 4′ wooden planters. The cloth has been held down by bricks, hoping to keep the weed growth to a minimum this year. I’ll take pics when I start prepping the boxes so you can see if it worked or not.
This is an old pic, showing when we used string to mark the planting ‘squares.’ Now I use wire because it is much more sturdy. You can see the irrigation system. We strung pieces of hose together between sprinklers in the center of each box, attached to a piece of wood that runs between 3 boxes in a row. There are two rows of planters. We have the whole thing on a timer so things are watered daily automatically.
We built the boxes in the shop, then hauled them out to the garden area. We welded angle iron together to make the supports for the boxes. We put them at my chest level so that I don’t have to bend over double or get down on my hands and knees to plant, weed, or harvest. My body really appreciates that.
The six planter boxes are surrounded by fencing to keep the deer out. We also put chicken wire around the bottom to keep rabbits and other critters out. We have a ‘door’ to close off the area. I put neon tape around the perimeter of the fence to give a heads up to the deer so they don’t run into it.
Since we live on top of a ridge line, we have no soil. Everything up here that isn’t rock was trucked in – some to be able to have a ‘yard’ around the house. All else is rock and woods.
We fill the planter boxes with “Mel’s Mix” (Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Garden) – a combination of peat moss, Vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as we can find or create. I use mushroom, barnyard, and cotton, plus we try to make our own.
Josephine Neuse – University of Illinois Extension
I have a wonderful square foot garden that my husband and I created several years ago to enable me to enjoy gardening even as I get “more mature” and less able to get down and up again from my hands and knees and do heavy lifting.
We built SIX 4′ x4′ wooden ‘tables’ up on top of iron supports. We surrounded the six tables with fencing, then added chicken wire around the bottom to keep small critters out. We threaded neon tape through the fencing to make it VISABLE to the deer who come through from time to time. We added a screen door so there is a definite ‘inside-the-garden’ and ‘outside.
The tables are about my chest height and filled with “Mel’s Mix,” a soil substitute mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and at least three different kinds of compost. We filled the boxes with the mix, after making the mixture in a used cement mixer. That’s the heaviest part of the gardening I do now. :0)
We marked the ‘squares’ of the square foot garden using wire criss-crossed over the tops of the boxes. We mounted a sprinkler head in the center of each box, tied together with hose, for daily irrigation.
We used to have a greenhouse that we built from a kit on the other side of our property, but since we couldn’t afford air conditioning and heating for it, it was truly a dream and wasn’t really useful to our efforts. We finally took it down when it was heavily damaged by a storm a few years ago. Now I buy plants from town.
I can just walk into my garden area, taking my spreadsheet diagram of where I want to plant things, move a bit of soft Mel’s Mix, and plant. My plan enables me to rotate my plants, avoiding disease and increasing yield. I also have not followed what I COULD do with my square foot garden, and spread my plants out a bunch for easier care.
Right now I have the boxes weeded and covered with weed cloth held in place by bricks. We’ve had several big storms and so far, the cloths are staying in place. That will hopefully enable me to plant without a lot of weeding first in the spring. :0)
I’m going to concentrate on lettuces, since I plan for us to eat a lot of salad, growing several kinds. My husband likes me to plant head lettuce, so I do, if we can find the plants. Otherwise, I try to plant three or four different kinds. I also want to plant a lot of spinach so I can use it in our salads, plus freeze some. I’ll grown radishes, sweet onions, and of course, I’ll use the two brick planters on the other side of the house for tomatoes. I’m at the dreaming stage now, so I’ll peruse lots of veggie magazines to see what else I might plant.
I WISH I were a good cook. I love the idea of growing herbs and spices, but I don’t tend to USE the fresh stuff much. I buy a bunch or two at the store, use a bit and end up tossing the rest when I haven’t used it fast enough. Maybe I’ll try a couple of the ones I use most often, trying to grow them in the kitchen, rather than in the garden….
It’s FUN to dream – especially while we’re expecting snow any minute here.
creativeartworksblog 