Grocery Shrink

If you are starting seeds at home, it’s time!  I’m not, just so you don’t think I’m super awesome or anything.  I’m going to happily plunk down my money at the greenhouse for real plants–only after I get my rabbit fence up.

I had a very expensive garden fail last year when the cute little fluffies razed everything to the ground in the night.  So you can be sure not one seed will hit the ground until my rabbit fence is built.

I decided instead of fencing each bed individually, I’d like a fence around it all so once I’m inside the perimeter I can work freely.The plan is to buy 100 feet of 4 foot tall galvanized chicken wire.  Then bend the bottom foot of wire in an L shape like a foot for the fence to stand on.  We’ll bury that a few inches underground to discourage digging and then fasten the wire to fence posts every 3 feet.  Of course, there will need to be a gate.  I’m not sure how that will work out, but my farmer husband says not to worry.  He’s built many a fence, so I’ll let him take the lead here.

Below are some of the garden ideas I’ve loved from pinterest :).

Using cinnamon instead of root hormone.

I planted my garden a few days ago and little green shoots are coming up. The garden is more shaded than it appeared to be in winter before the tree leaves appeared. So it is a great experiment if anything will grow.

This bed has sprouts of green beans and okra popping up their heads. In the center is a spaghetti squash plant that I plan to train to a tomato cage.

The left side of this bed is red chili peppers and sweet bell peppers on the right. In the center I have 6 squares of lettuce and spinach, one eggplant, one cilantro, and one rosemary.

This bed has 4 tomato plants and a zucchini right in the middle of it all.  I hinted to the children that tomato cages would make a great mother’s day gift.

The fourth and final bed is all sweet potatoes–one start in each square. I love sweet potatoes!

When I got home yesterday my good friend, Janelle had left these marigolds as a surprise. I plan to put them in the bed with the lettuce and peppers for a pretty pop of color.

Here’s a reminder of what my old garden spot looked like:

Two weeks ago we had a garage sale and while I sat in the garage helping customers, Darren cleared my garden spot!  What a relief.  I didn’t know how I was going to find time to do that.

Then he built the beds for me too!  (I bought kits from Aldi and totally expected to do it myself..so what a great surprise!)

I drove to a local greenhouse and filled my minivan with bags of stuff.

Part 1: Compost

To save money I used the modified Mel’s mix talked about here. It uses twice as much compost since that is the least expensive and most nutritive part of the mix.  If I had my own compost, it would have saved $13 a box or $52 total.  I had to buy it and it was unusal.  More like fine mulch.  They called it cotton something compost.  I had never heard of it before.  I want to start a compost bin now to get the cost of filling the next year’s bins down. We will need to clear some land to build them…it feels a little overwhelming.

Part 2: Vermiculite

Each bed ended up with 2 cubic feet each of compost and 1 cubic feet each of vermiculite and peat moss.

Part 3: Peat Moss

 It cost $35 to fill each bed, which sounds decent until you multiply that by 4.  And I have 4 more beds that we didn’t build this year!  I hope to clear more land for them next year, but went ahead and bought them now so they would all match.  When they told me the total for all the stuff, I couldn’t help but think about all the FOOD I could buy for that much money.  But I reminded myself that this was an investment that I wouldn’t have to redo for 10+ years.  Plus, I like the idea of having a garden :).

Mixing by hand

My plan was to mix everything in the bins with a shovel.  But that was tricky to mix it well and not spill it out everywhere.  That dirt was like gold gravel to me and I didn’t want to lose a speck of it.  I resorted to just digging in with my arms and stirring it up by hand.  It was fun in a “I hope my Mama doesn’t catch me doing this” kind of way.   And then I remembered, I am the mama :).

Ready to Plant

I finished the bins just before dark.  Planting will have to wait for another day.

Before

After

Our new home has a jungle for a front yard (and back yard.)  So much of it is beautiful flowering plants gone wild.  Most of the front yard is a lovely shade loving ground cover that blooms all over in purple flowers.  The beauty is spoiled by all sorts of volunteer trees etc. popping up through.  So late last week, while Darren was at work, I grabbed my trimmers and went to work.

One of the weeds spoiling the yard was a very long, healthy vine.  I grabbed it and pulled it out, but I’m not positive I got the root.  I was busy congratulating myself when I saw the tell-tale 3 leaf pattern on the vine.  One of the leaves looked suscpiciously like a mitten.  Oh, dear.  “Leaves of 3, leave them be.”  I ran in the house and scrubbed my hands all the way to the elbow.  I thought about washing my face…but here’s the stupid part.  I had just put on a lovely smokey eye with charcoal gray and gold and I wanted DH to see it.  So I didn’t wash my face.  So now, I have poison ivy all over my face and not anywhere else.  Oh vanity!

I have much work left to do in the yard, but it’s fun satisfying work. I’m planning to remove the rest of the feeble evergreen bushes and replace them with shade loving varities.  Then I’d like to paint my shutters and front door dark gray while repainting the trim white to freshen it up.

I have lots of plans for the back too!  Hopefuly within the next 2 weeks that will mean clearing this spot:

For these:

I was so excited when Aldi had them on sale for $30 each!  Since I’m wood challenged, this was a great deal for me :).

P.S.  I’m thinking about taking the fake railing thing down off the top of the front porch.  What do you think?