Yummy!

I need to remember that I tried somebody's Crispy Frills lettuce and it tasted amazing. Think about it for next year...

Silver bells and cockleshells

and spinach and lettuce all in square foot garden beds. We planted four square feet of 'America' spinach today, four square feet of 'Bronze Arrow' lettuce, and three square feet of 'White Lisbon' bunching onions.

Hello, pea

Some of the peas we planted on Mother's day are sprouting. Nothing else is.

Hey! We planted something!

Kathleen, Dever, Fiona, Nora, and I went out to Country Gardens and picked up some seedlings of the things that we didn't sprout early enough ourselves; namely,

• 10 sweet basil plants
• 1 'Wisconsin 55' tomato plant
• 2 'Gypsy' broccoli plants (gave one to Heather for her birthday)
• 4 bell pepper plants: 'Ace' (red), 'Sunray' (green), Mavras(chocolate) & Islander (white to purple)

We also picked up 20# of worm castings to fertilize without burning the plants. Kathleen bought the worm castings, but we bought everything else for under $12 yesterday and put it into the beds today. Go us!

Day late, dollar short, but done

It's Mother's Day, and we can plant outside now. Doesn't it just figure that today's the day we're planting INSIDE? Live and learn. The kids wanted the experience, though, and it WILL keep the squirrels from digging up the seeds immediately, so we did it.

We DID make our outside beds last week, and we filled them up with Mel's Mix of vermiculite, mixed compost, and peat. Tomorrow Ian's going to screw the lath together (while we go get seedlings to replace the tomato plants we didn't have a grow light installed for 10 weeks ago or whatever).

Reading about gardening is interesting. Buying gardening things is harder, but can be done with enough scrimping and saving. Knowing what we're really doing is much, much harder and comes with hard knocks and practice. We'll get it, but probably the hard way.

3-2-1- compost!

Today's a day we've been working toward for quite some time-- we built our compost bin! The neighbors, who have been studying gardening topics with us for quite some time, helped us put it in. We're really excited and are looking forward to using our leftovers in a new way as much as we're eagerly anticipating the rich, black soil we'll get for our Garden Experiment.

Vacation postpones seed-starting plans

OUR FAMILY IS GOING ON VACATION. This truly merits caps. I can't remember the last time we took a week and left our home. I think Fiona was about three. But the hardwood floors on the main story are being refinished, and there will be too much furniture piled in our kitchen to be able to cook/eat anything there, so away we go!

This keeps us from being able to monitor seedlings, so we'll just have to wait until we get back to start them. I refuse to let this get me down. In truth, I need to add to my spreadsheet to track back which days which things need started anyway, and I can do that from ANYWHERE, ANYTIME. So perhaps I'd best get crackin'.