☼ Grow your own damn Food! ☼

. . . . . . . . . .

These weekly posts are to share the progress of our garden; sharing photos and our gardening experiments and will hopefully inspire you to grow your own garden too! :) 

. . . . . . . . . .

What did we get up to this week? 

Well, our kale has come up and looking healthy and growing quickly--plus they All came up so we'll have to thin them out soon. The radishes and mustard greens are getting bigger. Basically everything in our little outdoor greenhouse has been doing super awesome. Everything else is a bit slow. Although we do have tinie tiny lettuce popping up as well. 

[mustard greens]

[radishes] 

[kale]

We planted some zucchini and cucumber starts this week as well. We soaked the seeds for about an hour in organic fertilizer solution and then planted them to stay inside in the greenhouse to start. Oh and one watermelon. Cory is very determined to get watermelon this year. 

The other seedlings are steadily growing and we had to thin them out today--which I feel guilty doing, I feel like I'm killing a perfectly happy plant :o. In other killing news, the aphids are still being problematic so Cory has been getting rid of them every couple days to keep them from spreading. I can't quite believe we already have an aphid problem and the plants aren't even outside yet! But otherwise, healthy. ;) 

There are also some pretty flower coming up in our front garden beds, because, well, that used to be a giant garden bed so we can expect this even after turning the soil and whatnot. They're pretty and mostly in the corners so far so I think we'll be keeping the ones that have come up so far. 

[pretty flowers]

That's all this week! ;) 

If you found this article to be helpful, please consider a small donation or visit the shop. Thank you for your love and support.

☼ Grow your own damn Food! ☼

. . . . . . . . . .

These weekly posts are to share the progress of our garden; sharing photos and our gardening experiments and will hopefully inspire you to grow your own garden too! :) 

. . . . . . . . . .

[radishes growing]

[pretty flowers]

Lots of outdoor planting has been accomplished this week! On Tuesday, we made all our little rows in the bed and got planting! 

Because we have a fresh layer of manure on the top of all the beds, we didn't really want to plant directly into that. So we dug down little rows or circles (depending on what we were planting) and filled it with our own "starter" concoction. The soil is a mixture of coconut coir, starter soil, manure (bagged mixture blend), and sea soil. 

Most of the seeds were planted in rows. The kale was planted in zig-zagged circles, quite different from our messy rows last year. We eat a lot of kale, it's great for everything imaginable so we've got most of one of our garden beds filled with kale. Our lettuce, spinach, kale, peas. Our lovely landlord came by too and gave us two cabbage starts so we made space for those in the two corners of our pea bed (the lone bed). 

[lots of worms in this bed! Yay for worms!]

[celery stem Cory planted a while back--it's getting bigger!]

[playing with the landlords dog, Tips :)]

[rows of peas]

[lettuce rows]

[spinach rows]

[another spinach row behind the peas]

[cabbage]

We're still trying to decide what to do about deer, because living in this area it's a problem you're bound to run into. Our space is tricky for building a fence because our landlords need to be able to get in with the lawn mower--and we have three different areas with garden beds. Cory made a make-shift netting over the lone newest bed and then yesterday he got more creative and used an old swing set that fit perfectly. Isn't repurposing fun? ;)

[first net]

[creative netting/protection]

Nothing has come up yet, but it's been a rather cold week and lots of rain. Hopefully more sunshine comes along and our little seeds get bigger! 

Our indoor starts are still doing great. Although we had a little aphid problem (damn buggers), hopefully they're all gone now and we caught it before they spread. Lots of the starts are getting more and more leaves. Exciting stuff! 

If you found this article to be helpful, please consider a small donation or visit the shop. Thank you for your love and support.

☼ Grow your own damn Food! ☼

. . . . . . . . . .

These weekly posts are to share the progress of our garden; sharing photos and our gardening experiments and will hopefully inspire you to grow your own garden too! :) 

. . . . . . . . . .

It's been a rainy week most of this week, but fortunately last Tuesday was beautiful and we got a bunch of gardening done! 

Okay, so I'll start with, well, the starts. ;) The peppers have finally all come up and growing quickly! Our so very nice landlords lent us a heat pad to place underneath them since peppers like warmth--like a lot. The romaine lettuce seedlings have started to pop up as well that we planted last week. And everything else is still growing and getting bigger and healthier.

Last week's post I mentioned that we were going to make the last garden bed. So we finished up all the beds! It was a day spent shovelling horse poop basically. Yum! For the last bed, we turned over the grassy soil and then did a thick layer of straw and then a pile of horse manure. Because the manure still kind of Looked like poop, we hosed it down with water and used a hoe and rake to break it down. 

[newest garden bed/ last one to be built]

The back garden beds used to have flowers and plants in them. Cory already raked out all the stones and turned over some of the soil. We finished off the beds with a nice layer of manure and did the same thing; soaking it with water and breaking it down. This completes all our garden bed making! It's nice to be done, one more thing down and done. The rain all week has been nice for the manure as well, to really break it down and soak it in. See, rain is good sometimes too. Balance, right? 

[Back Garden Beds. Poop!] 

[Soggy Poop!] 

[Lyla and Buster watching us rake manure from the windows] 

[soaked the other three front garden beds too]

The radishes outside have gotten so big! And there is also soooo many of them! A thousand radishes!!! (I kept teasing Cory because he planted sooo many haha). We thinned those out since there were so many. The mustard greens are also getting nice and big and healthy outside too. That's still all really for anything planted outside yet. Since we've had so much rain and a bit of a cold snap, we decided to wait a bit.

[thinning the radishes]

 [happy mustard greens]

[frost cover for the radishes and mustard greens in the greenhouse]

So, the garden beds are all done. The seedlings are doing well. Can't complain. Today is another day off for Cory and the sun is flickering between the clouds so we'll be out doing more. I'll share more next week. ;) 

[happy seedlings]

Hope you're all having a beautiful day and that your gardening and planting is going splendidly. :)

  

If you found this article to be helpful, please consider a small donation or visit the shop. Thank you for your love and support.