5 new beds

April 6 I planted six tomato plants, some more onion plants, bell peppers, Anaheim pepper (love these). I had to cheat a little, hubby bought me plants from the store, bless his heart. Can’t guarantee that those are organic, but they will be grown organic in my garden.

I have 6 foot beds by 4 foot, they are 10″ deep. I squared them off of course and planted 9 onions per square foot. I only put in 6 tomatoes. three in each row 2 rows. You know they get so big, We will see if I could have planted more.

So How Are The Plants Doing

Checking on the plants today, I have a few that are starting to grow. Very disapointing, but then I did start early and I had to plant twice. Oh well stuff we have to live with. I did not get photos but I will. Some Romain is coming up, not many, same with the spinich, same with the beets. Also the Butter lettuce is coming up. Just starting, they are small. Now I have to wait until I see which ones are the plants and which is just weeds or grass. At least with raised beds there is not many weeds or grass.

Since we are going to have a very cold night I put up my hoops and put a cover on the plants. Just a temporary cover for the evening, until I buy some decent row cover. I put up blue plastic tarp. Sad isn’t it? But it should keep them from freezing.

You will want to check out the hoops at Gardeners.com. These are great.

I will get photos of these also. Pretty cool.

Building a Raised Bed

Saturday I built two 4 X 4 raised beds out of 2 x 10 lumber. Next time they will be 4 X 6 beds. 4 x 4 are just to small.

2 X 10 " boards

I spent most of day outside getting my garden area ready to build beds and plant food.

OMG, 68 degrees and sunny, the Ozarks are so pretty and the birds were singing.

So we built the beds and filled them with composted manure. I have plenty of it, because I have 4 horses. Here is one side completed:

One side of Sq Bed

2 X 10 attached to 4 X 4 which is 10″ in length. This gives a solid foundation and adds sturdiness to it. Which I don’t think is needed on such a small bed.

Finished Raised Bed 4 X 4 

 

Watching it Grow

How I built my cinder block garden bed. I wanted 8 ft beds so I purchased 16″ cinder blocks (I don’t know, maybe they did not have 12″ cinder blocks). I put down weed block material so that the material was on the outside of the cinder blocks, that way weeds and grass stay away from the edge of the beds.  I set 8 of these blocks on the long side of the bed, (two sides to the bed so that was 16 blocks). My beds are 4 ft wide, so there were 3 blocks on each end. The blocks are heavy, but I like them and it was only $54.00 for the blocks and the weed block material. Pretty inexpensive. Then I used my tractor and loaded up composted horse manure and filled the beds. That’s it.

Since I have not seen any plants coming up yet I thought I would give some instructions on how to get started. You can start even cheaper by just using nothing to hold your soil, just build your soil up from the walking paths.

That’s all for now. I have to get some sleep. Nighty, Nighty all.

March 6 2011 Garden Activity

Today I went and replanted my Romain Lettuce and spinach. I had planted them about 14 days ago and I do not see any signs of life. So I thought it wise just to replant. I did 12 Sq Ft in Romain, 12 sq Ft in spinach. These were the second plantings. Each planted with 9 plants for a total of 108 Romain plants and 108 spinach Plants.

Then I planted 8 Sq Ft sections in Beets. That would be 9 Beets per sq Ft so a total of 72 plants. Love the Sq Ft idea. We are sure going to love it if everything does well.

All of the plants I did today were contained in a 4 X 8 foot bed. Pretty awesome.

Since I had plenty of time on my hands, lovely day really; I planted some containers with herbs. My containers are on my back deck, I filled them with potting soil, and planted, Basil, Thyme, Cilantro and oregano. I know it is early to be planting, but we will see.

All in all a great day for being outdoors.

Gardening For Health

I started square foot gardening this year. Maybe it will be more successful than last years garden. I love the fact that one can plant more aggressive, more plants per square foot, intense gardening, neat as a pin. Now I will find out how well this works out.

The start of my sq foot gardening