Late June

Black Krim

Mid-May

In the beginning...

This is the new layout! From the top left: Peas (just planted), rainbow tomatoes, sweet baby tomatoes, black krim tomatoes. 2nd row left: 3 leeks, broccoli, broccoli, 2 corn. 3rd row left: sweet banana pepper, jalapeno, green bell pepper, 2 corn. 4th row left: Rosemary, basil, cilantro (just planted), red oak and some other kind of lettuce (the name escapes me....)



This photo was taken around the beginning of May.

Everyone's transplanted

To say that a lot has happened since the last post would be an understatement. Without making anyone reading a gardening blog feel awkward, I will just say that instead of two Square Foot Gardens, there is now only one being written about. 'Nuff said.

I will say, though, that if there is one thing I have learned about this process, it is that almost anything will survive a transplant if you do it well enough. When we first created our SFG boxes, we put all of our seedlings into the dirt praying that they would take to their new environment and grow. And they did. Wonderfully. And then came The Great Move, in which everything (that hadn't been eaten by deer/rabbits in our neglect and absence of gardening) was pulled out of the dirt and put into a large cardboard box. Corn was pulled out almost 4 inches high, baby tomato plants were temporarily planted in an Amazon box, lettuce was laid (dirt still attached to the roots and all) in the big box, etc. Knowing that Mel's Mix of soil=GOLD, we hauled everything we could shovel into the back of the Forester and split it half and half. The frames were easy to strap to the luggage rack, but the lattice was trickier. One box went to Kathryn's house, the other came with me to mine. The plants were separated and then planted (again) in hopes that they took and began to grow.

I have not seen Kathryn's SFG box lately, but mine has been doing great. With the rains of WNC, I have only had to manually water the garden once or twice, and the vermiculite does some awesome things with regards to water retention.

I added some new plants to mine: Peas (the original peas were all eaten by animals), Rosemary, Cilantro, Sweet pepper plant, green bell pepper, and a jalapeno plant.

Photo update

Growing nicely...



Red Oak Leaf Lettuce out of control



Rainbow carrots sprouting



Gigantic broccoli and buttercrunch lettuce

Update from the side of the garden (iPhones rock!)

Spinach is flourishing! This is very exciting, since our spinach last year never sprouted. If there is anyone who is not convinced about Mel's Mix, let me be the light. I had 4 broccoli seedings from a plant sale, rootbound and wilted. 12 hours later they are upright and regaining color. GO COMPOST! If only we could make our own...

Poor Peppers

I hate to admit defeat, but I think I'm going to have to go buy ::shudder:: a pepper plant or two. When we planted the other box a few days ago, we put in the two poblano seeds that we started awhile back that have never done anything. Let me rephrase that: we planted a bunch of soil, with a poblano seed in there somewhere.

Part of the fun in planting what we did this year is to supplement what we wouldn't be receiving from our CSA. We focused more on (as Kathryn likes to call them) snack foods. Poblanos don't necessarily constitute as a "snack food", but I don't believe they are a part of our CSA. And I like peppers, so, there you go.

Dirty Hands

There's something truly amazing about putting something in the earth and watching it grow. I was finally able to plant something in a box!! (thank you to Kathryn for preparing the whole cold-weather box). Our seedlings were desperately needing a change of habitat, and most were growing tired of their newspaper homes, so we put them in the ground yesterday. I'm hoping that we didn't jump the gun on planting the warmer weather crops right now, but our tarp-covering system has seemed to be working when they need protection from the colder WNC nights.

Can't see much going on right now except for the sweet corn growin' wild.

Early morning in the garden

There's something blissful about going out to the garden in your jammies.

Even more blissful is weeding said garden, in said jammies, in less time than it takes to brew coffee.

I saw the weed. It saw me. I walked over to it. It shuddered (ok, there was a breeze, but still).

With two fingers, I pulled the bastard out of the box. Root ball and all.

Weeding is done, dude.

Damn, I LOVE SFGardening.