Vegetable Garden Part II

I should have posted this a few weeks ago, but life has been really busy for Nick and I the past month and a half! The garden is doing great. Tomatos are starting to turn red...woohoo!

Having a garden is amazing! Everyone should do it or at least try.  And you can really do quite a bit with just a little bit of space. There are so many resources out there to help guide you.

About two months ago I transplanted everything into the garden bed that Nick built. It was both good and bad. We learned that you cannot buy tomato plants and not transplant them three weeks later, you need to do it within a week--oops. Quite a few of the pods where we started seeds did not transplant well...at all...they died. I don't know if I did something wrong or it was the weather, who knows. For some things like green beans and zucchini only a few if the transplants lasted, so i had to plant more. Carrots, zucchini and green pepper did not work at all, so I ended up planting seeds directly in to the ground for those. For some reason the green peppers never grew and I bought a starter plant last weekend. We also bought sweet potato slips and planted those last weekend. The lettuce and spinach were growing great and I got a few cuts off them, but the squash plant has kind of over taken their area, so they are not growing well anymore. 

So far we have had 1 good size zucchini, a bunch of green beans, lettuce and spinach. Soon we will have lots more zucchini and tomatoes!  The green beans continue to grow and I check them periodically to see which ones are large enough to harvest. 

It's exciting to see the results from our hard work!

Nick has been putting mulch on the plants that are bigger and this seems to be helping and keeps the plants moist between watering. Unfortunately we have pesky little bugs trying to eat our plants so we

are using a pesticide, but I want to look into some natural pesticides that will work. There is also a little birdie that likes our lettuce.

The garden has truly been rewarding. It is amazing to grow your own food, I feel so productive!

We have learned a lot from our gardening experience this year and next year will we plan things out differently and plant a lot more.

Since we are doing to have tons of tomatoes, I am hoping to learn how to can my salsa and can tomatoes. I hope it goes well. 

Lastly, look how cute Nick and Shiloh are!  Just walking towards the garden. Cute cute cute. 

-Court

 

Vegetable Garden -- Part I

Well, I do not know what I am doing when it comes to gardening. I did not do much gardening as a kid, so Nick has taught me a lot. First off, Nick was taught by his dad, who is amazing in the garden. His dad recently showed us how their backyard via Skype and it looks like a little Oasis. We are not going for Oasis at this time, we are growing a vegetable garden. Yep...lots of edibles and I am soooo excited.  

This will be the first of a few posts about our vegetable garden, so I will call this the 'prepping' stage. 

First, we decided to do a raised garden bed. Nick went to Home Depot and bought three 3x8x12 untreated boards. Had them rip one in half to it made a 4’x8’ bed that was 12” high. Took 15 minutes to build the box with decking screws, then he coated in a Thompson water seal. The box was filled with 1 yard of garden mix from a local nursery. Nick filled up the back of his truck and shoveled it into the box. It cost $30 for the boards, $35 for the soil. Not bad!

We bought seeds at home depot and we are planting the following: bell peppers, zucchini, green beans, carrots, onion, lettuce, spinach, basil, cilantro, sweet potatoes and tomatoes all in that 1 garden box!!!!  We split box into  1 foot squares and planted the vegetables by the foot. 

Here are some great tools that Nick found to plan out our garden. 

Here’s planting schedules for our zone, you can find others on this website too:
http://www.thevegetablegarden.info/resources/planting-schedules/zones-5-6-planting-schedule

Here’s the garden plotter site where you can put in your garden size and it will tell you how many to plant in each location. Pay attention to the planting instructions and “learn more” at the bottom -  some really good info:
http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Page-KGPJS

Here’s a soil volume calculator if you’re doing raised beds:
http://www.gardeners.com/Soil-Calculator/7558,default,pg.html

So once we figured out what could be planted in the ground and what needed to stay inside until the chance of freeze was gone, we started. Here are our seedlings growing and tomato plants in the garage. 

We also built a gate so that we can get in and out of our garden and so it is protected from little pesky animals, like our dogs and rabbits. 

So Nick built the gate and then I made it pretty. We used our projector upstairs to project the design that I made onto the gate and we traced it with pencil. Then I took it into the garage and started painting. I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. 

The next post will have everything planted and our fence around the garden. I hope we have lots to eat this summer. 

Lastly, I am ending with a picture of Shiloh. She is getting so big, almost 50 pounds. Yikes!!

Hope this inspires you to get out there and garden!!!

- Court -