How Does My Garden Grow?

It's been a while since I've showed you my garden, and since one person actually asked me about it I thought I should share my progress.

WARNING: I am not a master gardener! In fact, this is my very first garden EVER! So please do not feel the need to follow in my footsteps in any fashion because I may be completely wrong. The only thing I really do know how to do is read a book and do what it says. I'm pretty good at following instructions... and that's about it.

(Feel free to click on the pictures to ENLARGE! Some of the little things coming up are pretty tiny.)

So this is my little raised bed garden. It actually has a lot more green in it now because since I took these pictures on Sunday I've also planted my starts that I seeded in the house back in February. They'll make an appearance in a few minutes.



These are my snap peas. I planted 2 squares of them, plus 2 more of snow peas. One of my next tasks is to build vertical supports for my peas, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I'm hoping to do that next weekend, we'll see.



I tried to do nasturtiums in the house back in Feb. too, but they ended up too gangly due to not enough light. So I decided to just throw some seeds in the ground and TA DA! I now have nasturtiums. I don't think I'll try starting them in the house next year. There's actually a 4th one in this square, it's leaves are just a different color.



So The Book says that you should always have nasturtiums and marigolds in your garden because they have natural pest deterrent properties. But it also suggested planting other flowers as well just for fun and to enhance the beauty of your garden. So I picked up a few other flower seed packets at the store. One of them was zinnias. I only see 2 coming up so far, so we'll see. :)



And what's a garden without carrots??? So of course I planted a bunch of them. Get it? A bunch! Ha! I crack myself up...



And I planted 2 side-by-side squares of cilantro. We LOVE cilantro in this house so I wanted to make sure I'd have enough. :)



And then there's my radishes! Aren't they lovely!



My romaine is just starting to come up. I was kinda hoping it would come in faster, but I'll take what I can get. :)



And here's my lovely tomatoes & chives. As you can see I bought 4 tomato plants, and they're all different varieties. One is an heirloom, one is Early Girl, one is Sweet 100 (a cherry tomato), and the last and final one is a yellow pear shaped variety!



And it wouldn't be a garden at my house without some lavender! I bought 3 tiny little lavender starts, all different varieties, all culinary. I thought I'd let them get a good start in my garden, and then I'll probably move them to another spot in my yard once they get bigger. Here they'll get more attention.



Next to the lavender, 2 squares of spinach. I love to put raw spinach in my "green smoothies" every day for lunch and those boxes of organic spinach can get super expensive super fast.



And here's one you might have to click to enlarge! I decided to plant some bok choy. Ain't they cute?!



I also planted some herbs (although I'm sure you gathered that already based on the chives and lavender). Here's my little start of dill.



And here's my varigated thyme. I also have another more traditional thyme planted, but isn't this one pretty?! You'll also notice the edge of my mesculin square, I forgot to take a picture of them. They're also coming in nicely.



And here are some of the things that are now also planted in my little square foot garden. Ignore the stuff in the box... I know, it's hard to (and yes, that is a dwarf climatis! Cool, huh?!). See those strawberry plants? Those are now in my garden. I dedicated an entire 4x4 foot spot to strawberries. The lady who sold them to me said they are 'Evangeline' strawberries. They are not ever-bearing, but she said she gets a bountiful harvest from hers each year, so hopefully there will be enough to make some jam with them or some killer shortcake.



These are what's left of my February starts. From left to right you'll see bell peppers, marigolds, and parsley. The parsley looks pretty sad and pathetic, I don't think I'll start them in the house next year. Especially since the squares where I planted parsley seed ARE coming up. The bell peppers are long and skinny, but I've read other places that if you bury part of the stem that new roots will form along the stalk, so that's exactly what I did when I transferred them to the garden. The marigolds are probably the healthiest of the three. They're actually already forming buds, so I'm sure they'll be fine.



More pathetic parsley.



Depending on how the harvest goes (and if my peppers produce anything at all) I'm thinking I'll just buy starts of these plants next year rather than try to do my own in the house. I just don't have the setup for it and they don't get enough light and heat. Plus they take up a LOT of space on my kitchen counter! lol Just wait, come next February I'll be getting out the soil pellets and lights again trying to make a go of it!

So that's my garden! But stay tuned! I'm planning to share the progress on the rest of my yard on Thursday, and it's possibly even MORE exciting!

Spring Fever!!!

It's dreary, cold, and yucky outside today... it even snowed a bit this morning. Ugh!!! I am SO over it!

So to combat my winter blues I've picked up the book my parents gave me for my birthday, Square Foot Gardening. I'm about 1/2 way through it, and I am so excited for spring! I can hardly stand it!

So as I'm reading it I've been discussing it with Hubs, because lets face it, I'm not setting up a garden for the first time by myself. In case you didn't know, there's this whole huge theory surrounding SFG (that's what the kids are callin' it on the gardening forum, I checked). Basically you plant things in squares rather than rows inside of raised beds. Now these beds can be as simple as tilling up your entire space and then marking the squares with wooden plank pathways (so they actually aren't raised at all), or they can get much more elaborate from there. Obviously there are just about a bazillion plans out there for creating raised beds, all using different methods and materials. For us? We need one that is relatively simple to create, and will never need to be created again. So using wood at all is just not going to happen, because it will eventually rot and then need to be replaced.

That leaves us with cement of some sort, or plastics of some sort. Hubs' first idea was to create the beds using large PVC pipes. And of course I inwardly groaned and listened to his reasoning of why that was such a marvelous idea. I just envisioned ugly white pipe in my garden, pipe that would be uncomfortable to sit on or kneel on... and after I googled it and found lots of info about PVC (how it becomes brittle over time in the sun and eventually cracks and how it may or may not leach chemicals into the soil), I came back to Hubs and calmly and rationally explained what I had found. Sometimes... it's very very hard to be calm and rational... especially when it comes to something that I view as mine. Like my garden.

So then we discussed cement. Now cement obviously will last for practically forever, but we instantly hit a roadblock. I suggested cinder blocks, because they're cheap and easy to construct with. He did not like that idea... at all. He thinks they're ugly. And although I don't think they're a picture showpiece, I also don't really expect my garden to be seen by everyone. But lets face it, I'm gonna be proud of myself if I ever get this garden off the ground and I'm gonna want to show it to people, and then Hubs will be mortified that the beds are made out of cinder blocks. Yes, that is me rolling my eyes.

Then I mentioned these raised bed kits that I found online yesterday while surfing around learning everything I could about the subject. They're made out of recycled plastic (Orcaboard), they're non-toxic, and they have a 50 year warranty. Downside? It'll be about $1500. But considering that it's a one time expense, and an improvement to our property and hopefully house value, it's not too terrible. So today my job is to call around and find out of Home Depot or Lowes carries this sort of thing or if we really do need to order it online.

I'm so excited! Just take a look! Orcaboard Raised Bed Kit. So here's the question to all you seasoned gardeners out there, do you think it's worth it??? We have the money to do it, otherwise we wouldn't consider it, but obviously we don't want to waste our money either. Anyone else own anything made out of Orcaboard? Apparently they also make outdoor furniture and other products.

I'd love to hear from you!