Ist planting of the year!

I planted today! Usually it is too early to plant anything this time of year, but it's been such a mild winter that i'm afraid to wait, and miss out on spring crops. I made a little pea tent on the patio... a modified version of the pea tepee I did 3 years ago:


That one I planted directly in the ground. I thought my son (then 3) would like to play in it, but he really had no interest in it, other than to eat the peas :). This one is in pots on the patio.


Maybe the dog with enjoy playing with this one ;).


I also planted some spinach & kale for the patio.


It's too early to plant the stuff in my raised garden, but I felt like I needed to do something in there, so I tilled it (just overturned & fluffed the first few inches of dirt with a pitchfork).


I checked on my strawberry patch, which seems to being doing just fine without any help from me, so I let it be.


Since I am done with the spring seeds for this year, I put them in a baggie in the deep freezer to use next year. I read somewhere that freezing them helps them last longer.

While I was in there, I took out some bean & melon seeds left over from last year. I won't be planting the melon seeds this year, because they didn't produce much last year, and took up a lot of room. The beans were great though. We got a lot of beans all summer, and none of us got sick of them. I even put them in my pasta salads, and they were great.

Garden planning!

Can you believe gardening season is almost here? I just got some kale seeds to start this week, and i'll be starting sugar snap peas as well.

I'm going to do things very different this year. Last year I had, in this order:

melons - beans - blank space - tomatoes - peppers


The melons didn't do so well, and took up a lot of space, so i'll be getting them at the Green Market instead. The beans were great, and a good buffer between the peppers & tomatoes, because they are shorter. I was expecting the tomatoes to take over the blank space, but instead they grew over the peppers, and robbed them of the sun. I got 2 peppers from them all summer. It was all a great learning experience.

This year, I will grow:

bell peppers - beans - tomatoes, in the raised garden, and sugar snap peas in pots. Maybe i'll do another pea tent, but this time on the patio.

I think I might not buy any tomato plants, but instead i'll use my "volunteer plants". Last year I had a bunch of tomato plants spring up where I didn't plant them. I was very excited about them, and asked around. Apparently theses are called "volunteer plants". We should have plenty of these next year! I let all the half eaten tomatoes fall to the bottom of the garden, so there should be lots of seeds in there!


Last year we mixed in our compost with soil from the garden center. This year, we only need to add compost, so the plants should flourish.

the garden

My garden is flourishing! I have been picking a bowl of raspberries, a bowl of green beans, and a handful of cherry tomatoes (which Jack eats before we can get them in the house) each day. I love fresh food! The raspberries have been making our smoothies delish, and i'm freezing what we don't use for future smoothies. So far I have 2 full gallon sized baggies in the deep freezer :).


Here's my garden... melons on the far left, beans to the right of them, tomatoes to the right of the beans, and the peppers on the far right. The tomato plants are as tall as I am!


I love picking our snacks right off the vine!


Here's the raspberry area... i'm going to have to thin that out soon!


My melon plants have apparently decided they don't have enough room, and have started growing out of the garden.


I also have 2 small tomato plants that cropped up, that I never planted. Cool, eh?

So, how is your garden?

More garden updates!

Are you sick of my garden updates yet? No? Good! Today we went to an earth fair at the Green Earth Institute, and I bought some of my garden plants... some heirloom cherry tomatoes & sweet peppers. I bought several varieties, so I could see which ones I end up liking & make note of it for next year.



I still need to get my tomato plants from The Pure Gardener, my local organic garden center. I got my organic 7 heirloom seeds from them, as well as other garden necessities. Not only do they carry the best stuff, but they are master recyclists, and come up with the coolest ideas. One I saw, and borrowed, was lettuce in a colander... perfect for my spinach plants!



Hmmm... I still have a lot of space in my garden...


Time to get plantin'!

Now back on the inside of the house, the little wisps of dill that started to sprout died almost immediately :(. I'm going to try again, outdoors this time. As for chia kitty?...



I don't think this is what the picture on the box looked like. Hmmm.

Cinder block raised garden

After much thought, I have decided to make my raised garden with cinder blocks. I originally wanted wood, but if I use treated wood it will have chemicals. If I use untreated wood, it will eventually rot, and need to be replaced. I also read that "cinder block raised beds have the added advantage of creating thermal mass which stores heat and warms the soil longer". The down side is that they are ugly, but there are some solutions.

This creative recyclist used mosaic tiles to decorate her cinder blocks:


There's cement stain, and split faced cider blocks, that are more visually appealing like these:


My husband likes the look of the flat pavers on top like this person did...


I kinda like the idea of using the holes to plant things in, like this person did:


I am currently waiting to see if anyone on Freecycle has some cinder blocks that they don't want. If not, I may go with the split face cider blocks. I figure it's worth the extra few cents a block, since it will be a permanent fixture in the yard.