Sunday, June 8, 2008

My garden!





Now that we have a house, I no longer had an excuse not to have a garden. My mom told me about this new way to plant a garden, called Square Foot Gardening. It seemed like an easy way to start. I'm glad she was here visiting to help me put it together. It actually only took us about two hours from start to finish. Ben made the nice box for me just before he left on deployment. It turned out perfectly--I think it's a great looking garden.

First we laid the box down on top of a double layer of cardboard. That way the grass underneath will die and it won't be able to grow up through my garden. Yay! No weeds! Then we mixed the soil: 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost. That's supposedly the perfect combination for growing things. I planted four types of tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, carrots, zucchini, sweet peppers, basil, cilantro, and some marigolds to look pretty (and they supposedly keep the animals away, we'll have to see about that). I also planted pots of parsley, mint and chives up on the porch. Oh, and some lettuce, but I don't have pictures of that. The purple pots are the mystery peppers. When I was shopping for vegetable plants (I had to go to four different stores to find them!) at one place there were a bunch of pepper plants that weren't labeled. The clerk said they had no idea what they were, so they put them on sale. I decided it would be fun to plant them and see what they end up being. They'll probably be habaneros or jalapenos or something crazy hot like that! Or, they'll be green peppers and I'll have enough to feed all of Nebraska. =)

1 comment:

Jeannie Young said...

LOVE the new layout on your blog---very cute! Your garden looks great! My dad told me about Square Foot Gardening a while back. Sounds like a great idea. We did our first garden this year too. We did a raised bed, but just did fill dirt with peatmoss and some compost. I think it looks good, I'll have to share a picture.