Just a Quick Photo Update

I guess I'll start with my big project garden. It is West facing and doesn't get the constant love and attention of my South facing raised beds so we are going to be putting in really low maintenance plants. Right now we have rasberries, blueberries, rhubarb, potatoes, squash and cilantro growing. I have a ton of work to do to this garden still. The first thing we are doing is expanding our berries.



My Pac Man broccoli is getting HUGE! It already has the side shoot florets popping out. It's a really nice looking plant too.



This is our big 4'x8' garden filling out nicely :)



Our front 4 raised beds, we put another container in the middle with some swiss chard and cosmos.

Raised Bed Garden Pictures

This raised bed is my lowest but is still almost a foot high. Un-sodding the ground underneath these boxes was definitely not one of the easiest things I've ever done. I've heard you can also lay down cardboard on the grass, it's suppose to kill the grass but then break down underneath the garden soil. This garden has 2 different types of tomatoes, bush beans, onion chives, 5 mixed sweet peppers, 2 pacman broccoli and 2 non stop begonias. A bug of some sort snacked on one of my broccoli leaves though :(



This is Megan's raised planter. It has 3 different kids of spinach, a chocolate cherry tomato, bell pepper, lucifer onions, freckles lettuce, oregon sugar snap peas and cucumbers. I don't have any good pictures of Eddie's garden but I'll go out and take some later today if it gets sunny enough.


Ok, so this picture isn't exactly a picture of my garden but it is a picture of my first garden harvest of the year. I really nice mix of butter crunch, freckles and red sails lettuce. We also tossed in some fresh from the garden chopped onion chives. The salad was great!

We have over 25 lettuce plants in the garden so far and it's producing enough lettuce for our family of 4 to eat a big salad every other night, if not every night! I also have a ton of spinach out in the garden that I can start using in the salads as well. I can't wait until my radishes, carrots and broccoli get big enough!

Ok, well I have to head out grocery shopping but I'll add more pictures soon :)

and a big hello to my one and only follower!!! Since I saw that at least one person out there was checking this out I was inspired to post a new blog and add some pics. Enjoy!

Growing with Vermiculite and Other Garden News

I'll admit that prior to this Spring I had never even heard of vermiculite. My Square Foot Gardening book had quite a bit of info on it and it really seemed to make sense planting seeds in it to get them off to an easier start. In addition to seed starting in vermiculite (either indoors or direct seeding in the garden) you can use it as a soil conditioner. It sponges up the water and can really help with hard or clayey soils. Of course this is just what I've read... so far only a little has actually made it into the garden for starting some carrot and radish seeds but I've just today started some indoor transplants of tomatillos, lettuce and some walla walla onions.

I'll keep everyone updated on what I think of the vermiculite for a seed starting medium... the only thing I'm mildly worried about is the little seedling not getting any nutrients.

In other garden news our last weekend project has been finished. Sam made the 2 new boxes which turned out great and the trip to Boring Bark was awesome. I only picked out one plant from there but it was a 6pk of Freckles lettuce for only $2! and it was organic at that! The dirt more than made up for the lack of plants though. With a yard and a half we had enough dirt to fill both of the boxes and even add a little to the side garden.

We decided to use the new raised beds for the kids so they could each have their own space and plants. Megan's I designed for her based on her favorites... chocolate cherry tomatoes, slicing cukes, sugar snap peas, spinach, lettuce, etc.... With Eddie's garden I let him pick out all of the plants and seeds. For his we did another tomato, lemon cukes, goliath jalepeno pepper, lucifer onions and a few other things. The kids really got into the gardens and it was really cute to watch Megan water everything soooo carefully with her little watering can.

Moving on.... today was super rainy and wet outside (hence the indoor seed starting!) but I did venture out to take a look at the progress out in the garden. Two of my garden squares that were planted with radish and turnip seeds had been previously dug up by an unknown animal (I'm assuming)... this totally disturbed my picture perfect square planting method since I had no idea what was where after I re flattened the dirt back out. Now little seedlings are sprouting all over the place, including in a few square that they weren't suppose to be in at all. I suppose I'll just wait to see how they turn out, I'm sure most of it will be fine and I can thin anything that gets to unruly ;)

My lettuce is non stop amazing in the garden, with all the different varieties I have enough for full salads several days a week. We just recently added some spinach as well. I totally need a salad spinner!

April 2009 - Raised Bed Vegetable Gardens & The Square Foot Gardening Method

One of my favorite things about my house when we first bought it was the long three tiered garden on the west facing side of our house. When we first moved in I was pregnant with Megan and so that summer and the following summer when Megan was still pretty small the garden went without any care and barely any water. The only thing growing out there was rhubarb, blueberries and raspberries. The raspberries died shortly after from the neglect :(

Once Megan was toddling around we finally got our hands dirty in the garden with high hopes for all the awesome food I was sure we'd be growing in no time. We planted onions, tomatoes, tomatillos, squash and a bunch of other things. It was ok but no where near as amazing as I was hoping for.

The next year our wood garden wall holding the top tier of dirt started to collapse from water damage. We had a little extra money at the time so we went to Lowes and bought really nice concrete blocks and built a new retaining wall. Now that was a project I was (and still am!) extremely proud of. We were blistered and sore but we still have a gorgeous garden wall to show for all our hard work. Our garden was even bigger and better that year with a huge harvest of lemon cucumbers, squash, potatoes, onions, blueberries and rhubarb. My biggest problem was just having to trek all the way around to the side yard with all the tools, plants, water, etc...

My ultimate goal was to replace the majority of the front lawn with raised beds. Luckily my husband, Sam, is a super awesome builder and this year we got to work making my dream into a reality. Our first box was a 4'x8', for some reason I wanted it to be really tall and Sam made it about 2' tall.... where as that is just fine for my plants it definitely costs more to fill it with dirt.

Once the box was made and filled with dirt I got started planting right away... I put in a bunch of red and walla walla onions and marigolds. The very next day while browsing gardening books at Goodwill I came across a book called "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew. The booked went over the common downfalls of most home vegetable gardens. Overzealous planting, lack of maintenance, the out of sight out of mind mentality of having an off to the side garden... everything I was totally guilty of.

The book had great garden plans for space intensive planting in grid patterns, trellising vining crops to save space and single seed planting. It was just what I needed!

After I read the book I went out with some horseshoe tacks and garden twine and sectioned off my first 4'x8' garden box into 1' squares, a total of 32 squares (the book generally recommends working with a 4'x4' garden box so you can have more vertical growing space) . I carefully "un-planted" (hee hee) all of the current garden residents and got busy replanting based on the SFG planting method. Just as an example each square can hold... 1 tomato, 2 lemon cucumbers, 4 lettuce plants, 9 bush beans, 12 onions or 16 radishes. I have another book "The Sustainable Vegetable Garden" that recommends hexagon planting to fit even more in.... but orderly planting isn't my strong suit so I'm starting simple.

My 4'x8' raised bed is almost finished being filled, at least until my cool season veggies need to be replaced. Since it's in my parking strip that I walk by a million times a day I'm able to keep a close eye on it and keep it watered and happy. That still had left my front yard very gardenless... I mean can you ever really have too many veggies? (the answer is no if you donate you extras to your local food bank! check out www.growarow.org).

Sam then built 2 more raised planter boxes for me (all of these have been built out of recycled wood!). Our first planter we had filled with the "best" garden soil from McFarlanes, unfortunately after a hard rain it kept wanting to form a crust and I was less than impressed. This time we looked around online and found that Boring Bark had a 4in1 soil, it is a blend of humus, yard debris compost, processed cow manure and some sand. So far this soil has been far superior to the soil we got from McFarlanes.

We had a lot of fun planting in these boxes and I even had the help from one of the neighbors (thanks Angie!). I planted a lot of tomatoes and peppers that I had grown from seed in my front window, plants I had picked up at some local nurseries and I also planted some spinach, bush beans, turnips and more radishes from seeds.

Last night I was able to make my first garden salad of the year. I have a total of 20 lettuce lettuce plants... buttercrunch, red seeded simpson, freckles and a cool mix of some kind. I was able to put together a really beautiful and delicious salad to go along with our spaghetti dinner and today when I went out to look at the garden you couldn't even tell I had taken any. I also added some of my onions chives to the salad for flavor.

This weekend we are moving on with our garden project plans. With wood that Sam was able to salvage from his work we are building more raised planter boxes. He has enough wood to make 3 of them so we are thinking of selling the extra on Craigslist so we have more money for plants to put in the first 2 boxes. The addition of 2 new raised beds means a trip to Boring Bark for another yard and a half of dirt but most importantly I'll get to browse their beautiful organic veggie starts. They don't have a huge selection but there plants are obviously well loved, plus it's the only place I've found the Freckles lettuce at.

Pictures will be added soon :)