I know everyone has just been dying to hear from me... but the garden sucked royal this year. The spot that it was in last year was pretty good so I put it in the same spot this year. Problem was that some trees had grown a bit more and were now shading the spot a bit too much and none of my plants really matured.

Next year I'll kick the dog out of the back yard and put my boxes back there. Only 5 more months to go!

My New Project

I've noticed some plants have leaves that shed water really efficiently. Take the cabbage for instance. The leaves spread out to capture a maximum amount of water and sheds the water downward towards the stem and roots. The water beads up on the leaves displaying a nice waterproofing ability.

I wonder........

This month's project:

A waterproof jacket made of cabbage leaves! As you can see I have a lot of cabbage to grow first! Stay tuned!

PEA: A closer look

Although I like to eat PEAS I'm pretty sure I only planted them this year because the word PEA goes well with the theme of my blog! We might as well enjoy growing them though. Here's a few pics.

Yellow PEA (bottom of the plants turn yellow).

Sugar Snap PEA.

This flower looks like a little PEA fairy.

Wha????

I can't believe it. Watermelons don't like water. Or good soil. I put mine in thinking that they would grow like crazy in my soil but NOOOOOOOOOO! They hate it and probably hate me too.

What a healthy watermelon is supposed to look like......

What my "hater" plants look like......

Fine! DIE! See if I care!

Dinner for something!

My Arugula got eaten last night! Something ate the leaves off of 4 sprouts leaving me with only 4 left. I only had 8 plants come up from the 16 seeds I sowed. I planted more seeds a few days ago so hopefully more will come up. Hopfully they won't get eaten also!

What Arugula looked like....

I'm wetting them every day now.

It's May 8th and I've planted almost everything I've planned on planting.

Frost be damned!

Arugula coming up. I like the double leaf configuration.

Danvers and Purple Haze carrots

Pumpkin plants I bought.



The garden loves the warmer weather we've had recently.

I'll post more pics soon!

Nice try Winter. I mean Mother Nature. I mean God! I better stop now.

The weather turned cold this week and we had a bit of frost this morning..... but not on the garden. Clint and I covered it with plastic last night just in case. I'm glad we did. Better safe than sorry. I don't want to replant if my plants can't handle it outside yet!



Here's some pictures of the uncovered garden. I've got most of the garden planted with plants and seeds. I'm waiting until mid May to plant tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The soil temperature is still a bit cool right now.

God makes dirt, I make SOIL.

I made my soil on Monday. This week the temperature is in the 70's and I can't wait any longer to get started! I used 1/3 (by volume) peat moss, 1/3 (by volume) coarse vermiculite, 1/3 (by volume) Gardner and Bloome Harvest Supreme compost.



A good way to mix this is to put all three ingredients in a large tarp. You need 3-4 people to help pick up the corners and mix it up good. Monday night I didn't have any help so I used my cement mixer. It worked good but I had to stop the mixer a couple of times on each batch to pull the back ingredients to the front. I guess a cement mixer works best mixing cement. Who knew? After about 10 batches I was done topping off last year's bed (needed to replenish some nutrients) and filling bed #2 (new this year!). By this time it is about 10:00 pm and I was working under some portable work lights. My neighbor came out to see what I was up to at all hours of the night. I told him I was making soil for my garden. He was mildly interested (doesn't garden) but quickly lost interest and went back inside. On his way back he called out "Have fun with your dirt!". I yelled back angrily,

"I'm making soil not dirt!"

After getting both beds filled and all my stuff put away it was time to wet my bed (what I was going to name this blog). Technically, beds. Since this soil is so dry to begin with and since it has the capacity to hold a lot of water it took me an hour of watering to get all 9 inches of soil wet! After it gets wet the first time it only takes a little bit more watering every day to keep it that way. The good thing about peat and vermiculite is that they hold water without promoting root rot. You can't over-water this soil! It will soak up what it can and the rest will go right down to the bottom of your bed and into the dirt.

I got to bed around midnight. I just had to separate my square foot garden into squares! Using a nice green twine from Target made a 12 inch grid. They are now ready for plants/seeds! I'm so exhausted that I'm asleep before my proverbial head hits my proverbial pillow.

Weed barrier is a MUST!

If you need a good reason to use a week barrier, here is a big one! I had one bed last year (this year I have two) and I made it, filled it with soil, and planted it with out knowing what I was doing. I forgot (or just plain didn't know better) to put a weed barrier down. It looks like the tree next door really loves my soil!

I had to remove all of my soil from last year and sift it by hand to remove as much of the roots as I could. I then dug as many roots out and put a 20 year weed barrier down. I was going to just use a 5 year barrier but I figured that these roots were pretty strong and hardy so I wouldn't skimp on my barrier.

Here's the pile of roots I pulled out.

I loathe them.

It'll give them character

I was talking to my grandfather Norris today. He is in his eighties and his garden still looks great every year!

I asked him if he had planted anything in his garden yet. Turns out he had already planted carrots, beets, and peas and they were starting to sprout. It is not yet mid April and we just had a week of light snow and freezing rainy days! I was curious and asked him how he had kept the plants warm through it all.

Norris looked at me and just said "Well, they have to look after themselves now. If they can't handle it then I'll replant new ones." Immediately the image of Norris out in the garden, as the temperatures start dropping, telling his young plants that the upcoming frost and snow will make them tougher and give them character!

In the beginning there was a void....

And the Gardener saw that it was NOT good and needed to be filled with seeds. So he bought some from http://www.parkseeds.com/. Then he not so patiently waited for the snow to melt.

I bought seeds today! There's 3 inches of snow outside!

It was the first day of Spring last Saturday and it was 70 degrees outside. The weather today: 30 degrees with 3" of snow. Nothing like getting your hopes up. I want to plant! To keep myself from getting too depressed I bought seeds! Wasatch Shadows in Sandy had a great selection of seeds. The only thing I couldn't find was Arugula. They were out of stock temporarily. I'm going to be ordering a few other things from Park Seeds and the rest (mainly tomatoes) I'll be getting from Wasatch Shadows as plants. The boys will love the purple carrots!