The Ultimate Sunday

We did a lot of gardening this Sunday! I finally got off my ass and took an updated picture of my veggie garden. Everything is doing pretty fantastic all things considered. There is an empty square where some brocolli used to be...he didn't make it...the poor guy.


There are little baby tomatoes growing on two of the tomato plants! They are little guys.

We were able to harvest our first yellow squash! We ate it with a thrown together chicken stir-fry, it was pretty good...although I didn't like eating the seeds...they were like the size of pumpkin seeds. I will need to look up an awesome way to cook it for the next squash. This is the squash we ate, and the remaining squash in the garden.



We also pulled one of our carrots out to check its size. They are still relatively small so I'm going to leave them in the ground for a few more weeks. It was delicious :D


And then as for the Sunday gardening, we went out and got a few house plants and some herbs and flowers to spruce up the yard a bit. Steve picked out some basil, rosemary, and catnip to add to our peppermint plant by the fence...which is exploding by the way.


And I got some...crap what were they called again...they are some type of mini-rose-ish-thing with interesting looking leaves...It looks like a succulant mixed with roses. Anyway I thought they were cute so I filled my planters with them and set them on the front porch!



That's about it for this update. I've been getting lazy on the posts...But I'm glad whoever visits gets a chance to see whats up...when I post...:) Have a great week!

All the squares are occupied!

I've been lazy on the updates...but a garden is a rather slow and ongoing process :)

Here is my full garden with everything in it!!!!!


There have been a few fails in the garden...a lot of the onions are just pooping out on me. I'm not sure they will make it to harvest...But i will try again with them next year. And one of my broccoli transplants is sort of doomed as well.

I crushed some eggshells and coffee grounds and sprinkled them in the soil in hopes to provide some more natural nutrients to it.

My carrots and lettuce are doing fantastic! Check these doods out!



Awesome!!! The lettuce should be ready for some gradual harvesting really soon! I cant wait to have a salad made from greens from my garden :)

The mystery seeds have been identified! According to a local utilities repair man that came by the house for some maintenance, the mystery seeds are *drum roll*................. ZUCCHINI!!! He said that they will probably be ready for harvest in 2-3 weeks! Here is a picture of them and one of the little gourd dudes.



And last but not least...my tomato plants are doing fantastic. Here is a shot of them...


All in all, I'm having tons of fun with this project. And learning a lot too! More to come later!

As the summer approaches...!!!

Hello!

It has been a while since I made an update on my garden...but thats because plants take a while to mature! But I have some new pics for you to enjoy! First off we have the entire garden...Look how everything has grown so far!!!!......



My lettuce is doing rather well! And so are my carrots. I have transplanted my tomato seedlings...though very small still...into my garden. They are still in a small state of shock, but are hanging in there...we'll see how they do. Everything else is ok too. I am starting a weekly feeding with the nitrogen rich plant food for them until i get some good compost going in a compost bin (soon to come).

Also, the broccoli will be transplanted within the next week or so...I'll update on that as well.

Here is the cat grass! It grew VERY fast, and Zero, our other cat, enjoys noming it immensely. Here is a blurry pic...an attempt to get an action shot in evening lighting with a crap camera...yeah....


When I go out in the morning to clip the cat grass (to promote growth and maintenance) i give him the clippings and he goes to TOWN on them. The grass clippings are no more as soon as his furry little paws get a hold of them, I am telling you!


The mystery seeds....LET ME SHOW YOU THEM!


Big huh? Yeah I still have no idea what the heck they are. Someone said Pumpkin? WHO KNOWS!? We will surely find out eventually, wont we :)

Until next time....

Adios Amigos!

A Sunny Sunday Afternoon!

Good Day!

We decided to hang outside with the kitties and do some yard work this morning. First we did some laundry!


Then it was time to plant some new flowers we bought at the store yesterday. We got some Forget-Me-Not's and some Impatiens. Im not sure how the Forget-Me-Nots will do, they are an early spring blooming flower...but its worth a shot!


We planted the Forget-Me-Nots and the Impatiens in the large round container...


...and I also planted some bulbs I had inside that my mom gave me last year (again...experimenting...hoping they will grow) in the container with the mystery plants! (I think the mystery plants are some type of squash....?)


We had also planted some cat grass for the kitties last weekend and that is doing pretty well. It's still sparse but I'm going to wait until it thickens up before I let the kitties devour it. One of our cats, named Zero, will probably nom it all in one sitting...he loves cat grass!


The rest of my garden is doing well! I think the plant food helped and I may need to get some more nitrogen rich organic matter to mix in later down the road. Here is a little lettuce seed that is starting to sprout his new leaves!


One more mini project we attempted was to transplant some peppermint herbs we had in a small planter near the side of the house. They survived for almost a year with much neglect (poor guys) and so we decided to give them a new place in the ground. We started digging a hole in the ground to put them in...we are hoping that they spread along the fence...but when we started digging we found out that our soil in the yard is CRAP and really clayey...


We also found some weird mystery alien egg-bulbs in the ground I have no idea what they once were, or are...they were kind of squishy and really weird...


We threw some compost in the hole too to give it some nutrition and began to pull the peppermint out of its container and GEEZE it was one solid mass of roots and soil...it was bad...sorry, no pic of it though, here is the peppermint in its container...


We had to try and break it up a bit to get it in the ground. We'll keep you all updated on the peppermint now too!


Maybe I should change the name of my blog to Arix's Backyard! Any who, thanks for stopping by and we'll have more gardening excitement to come!!

Food for thought...

Yesterday I decided to give my garden plants some plant food. I mixed it with some warm water and watered them all in hopes to help the little guys grow. I'm beginning to think that the watering is fine, but perhaps the soil is slightly deprived of enough organic matter to nourish the plants. The plant food has nitrogen in it (good for plants) and if it seems to help them grow, my soil might be deprived of enough nitrogen. I need to check my book again and re-read up about the soil and the correct chemicals it requires for healthy grown.

I ordered a new and updated version of the Square Foot Gardening book, but it is out of stock at amazon, so I'm still awaiting arrival on that. I'm hoping it has new info about the square foot method.


Those darn mystery seeds are getting HUGE...I'm flustered at the fact that those darn things grew out of no where and are doing better than anything I'm actually tending to in my own garden! BAH...


Also, this past weekend (i didn't make a post because it's not going to be a permanent thing anymore) my garden had an encounter with pests! Thats right...I planted some new seeds last weekend and something came along and dug them all up and ate them!!!! I'm guessing it was a bird...but at the time i thought it might have been a skunk or a opossum. So i bought some garden wire and wrapped it all around my garden in hopes to keep them out...but after analyzing the situation and asking for some advise from friends, I've concluded an airborne strike upon my garden home base. So the wire will probably come off this weekend, or be reduced because its severely affecting the beauty of my garden!!!!! It looks like a garden prison!!

MAN DOWN!!!

Spinach is DOWN! That's right. It didn't grow. I'll need to try again in the cooler season. But hey it was worth a shot :)

I'll also be poking a few more carrot seeds in the ground this weekend.

And the Saga Continues...

The seedlings indoors are doing well! I transplanted all of the seedlings from the vermiculite into a container that contains actual soil so the seedlings can start getting nutrients from the soil to grow! I think I should have done this a bit earlier especially for the broccoli...because it seems stunned and wont grow. The tomatoes stopped growing for about a week and i was like DUH! They need food! So now they are starting to do much better. The broccoli is hanging in there...I hope they do ok.


Almost all of the lettuce outside is doing great too, they are still very small I think I may be watering them too often to I'm laying off on that a bit so they can grow. A few of them havn't sprouted, so I may plant some more seeds in there a few weeks from now if I don't see anything.

The carrots are starting to sprout too! They are cute.

And the cucumber is doing great! However, one of my cucumber seedlings didn't make it :( You win some you lose some right? My spinach is still in the ground...not sure how thats gonna go, we'll see.


I decided to germinate some more broccoli seeds indoors because I'm not sure if the ones in the containers inside are going to do well. I used just a sour cream cup with vermiculite since there were only 4 seeds.


Also, the container I moved near the house is sprouting two large unknown seedlings! They are the biggest thing growing out back right now! I think they may be some sort of squach...but for now, they are dubbed..........THE MYSTERY SEEDS!!


More to come later! Thanks for stopping by!

Slow and Steady Wins the Race!

So after this little hellion stomped on a few of my seedlings inside, they still decided to keep on growing. Some of them tragically didn't make it...but there are still plenty for the garden! See how they've grown!


But never fear! My garden seeds are growing near! This is a cucumber that is sprouting outside. There are also many lettuce seeds that are sprouting as well. How exciting!


Thats all for this update. Just lots of growing and growing. I will post pictures when I get closer to transplanting my indoor seedlings. Bye for now!

Up Up and Away!

Today was a gardening day! It has been 6 days since I planted my indoor seeds. Some of the sprouts have grown tall enough to touch the top of the plastic cover of the planting tray! Tomorrow, I will be setting up an area next to the window in our bedroom for them to receive natural light while they grow. I have counted a total of 22 seedlings that have sprouted out of 40 total!! Here is a close up of my broccoli! I also have 7 tomato sprouts...i actually have 2 growing in one square...I must have accidentally dropped two seeds in there :)


I also planted some seeds outdoors today! I planted some lettuce, carrots, spinach, cucumber, and a marigold flower. The rest of the squares are for the transplants that are growing inside right now. In about 6-8 weeks, or as soon as the seedling sprouts grow their first set of real leaves, I will transplant them into the garden. Today was a hot day and the soil in the garden seemed to dry out significantly at the top, so I'm positive that I will need to water at LEAST 2 times a day if not more (especially on those scorching days of summer) I will probably also have to provide some shade for the garden by building a screen or something similar to help shade the plants while I'm away at work. We'll see how that goes. Here is what my garden looks like so far!


More to come!

Rise Seedlings...RISE

A few little tomato and onion guys started poking their heads out...but I will take another picture when a majority of them emerge from the SOIL OF DOOM! Wait...no my soil is the bringer of LIFE AND BREATH! BREATHE SEEDLINGS BREATHE!!!

Seedlings!

Hooray! My first Seedlings sprouted today! So far its only the broccoli seeds that have poked their leaves out, but the rest should follow shortly!

Also, I've been tending to my soil throughout the week and it is starting to become usable! It's not quite ready yet, it's still a bit dryer than I'd like, but it should be ready by the weekend if I continue my watering patterns.

Preperation

Lots of yard work today!

The first thing I did was remove all of the dirt from a container that was in the yard when I moved in, moved the container to a new location, and filled it back up with the dirt minus any crap that had accumulated in there over time. I'm guessing whoever lived in the house before me bought and used this container to grow some things. It is now positioned underneath our bedroom window against the house. I'm probably going to plant some shady flowers or something in there later on.


THEN I began removing old grass and leveling out the area where my new garden is going to go! It was tough, but a few blisters later it was in place! The next step was fastening the PVC piping to the sides of the container to hold it in place. It is just slightly wobbly near the top so I may end up securing it to the ground with some hemp and stakes if necessary. Then in went the soil! My mixture and the amounts fit perfectly and Steve helped me out with the mixing. TA DA!!!


After getting all the soil in i wet the top with some mist to help the soil settle and retain a bit of moisture. I'm probably going to do this every other day or so throughout the week until next weekend...or until the soil has a good consistency for seed planting.

After some lunch I began prepping the mini seedling cups for my indoor seeds. I filled all the cups with vermiculite, then put seeds in them near the top, then topped them off with a little more vermiculite. Then I let them sit in a pan with 2 inches of water so the vermiculite could soak in the water, returned them to their original dry pan, labeled my seeds, then covered and sat them under a lamp! I know the seeds don't need light for germination, but the lamp will hopefully help retain some heat and moisture inside the lidded pan until they start to sprout. Then I will put them in a windowsill for some direct sunlight.



Thats all for today, my legs are sore, but I'm totally excited about my new garden. Here we go!!!

Trip to the Nursery

Today I ventured to a really neat nursery center near my home to gather the soil ingredients for my square foot garden. Bill, who owns the nursery was VERY knowledgeable about gardening. I asked him about sweet potatoes, garlic, and some other things I had on my mind and he was able to answer them honestly and thoroughly. His website is at City Farmers Nursery. I'm pretty positive that this will be my nursery of choice whenever I have questions, concerns, or am in need of some new gardening material or seeds.

So I picked up compost, peat moss, and vermiculite for my soil. I used the recipe from Mel's book.

1/3 Vermiculite
1/3 Peat Moss
1/3 Compost


A total of 16 cubic feet of soil is needed for my 4'x4' garden

(hopefully in the future I will be able to create my own compost as soon as I build my own compost bin...stay tuned for that)

I also gathered some 4'x4'x12" wood planks and PVC piping to create the actual container for the garden at my local home improvement store.


Aaaaand just because I have to be creative...I bought some blue plastic spray paint so I could paint the PVC to look nicer :) I'm also going to include orange marigolds in my garden to compliment the blue poles because I'm artsy fartsy. I might paint the outside of the wood...we'll see.


Tomorrow I will be mixing the soil and getting it prepared for some seed planting next weekend. Since I am not able to plant all of my seeds in the garden right off the bat, I will be planting those indoors to prepare them for transplanting weeks from now. Here is a list of the seeds I will be planting nest weekend straight into my garden:

Lettuce
Carrots
Spinach
Cucumbers
Marigolds (a natural pest repellent)

And these are the seeds I'm growing indoors to transplant later:

Tomatoes
Onions
Peppers
Broccoli

All I have to do for the garlic is buy an organic bulb of garlic at my grocery store then plant the individual cloves. And for sweet potatoes, Bill will have some root strips available in the first few weeks of May so I can call ahead and pick some up then.

Thats it for this update...Stay tuned for more gardening awesomeness!

My Journey Begins...

Well hello thar! I have been wanting to grow a small garden for quite some time now. I decided to ask my mom for some advice on growing vegetables. She sent me a book called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and I began reading!

My preconceived notions of gardening were that it would be easy...but the more I read the more I realized that there seemed to be much more to growing a successful garden than meets the eye!

My adventure begins tomorrow when I go to the local garden center and lumber store to purchase supplies to build a container for my square foot garden. This blog will be a documentation of my progress, success, failure, and anything in between!

Here is my plan, take a gander!