I should really start at the beginning. Back in April I told Paul that the only thing I wanted for our 30th Wedding Anniversary was for him to build me a square foot garden. I had been reading about square foot gardens all winter long and was thoroughly intrigued. I've grown herbs the past few years and last year I grew some monster tomato plants, but I hadn't had a real honest to goodness vegetable garden for a long, long time. Having quite a bit of shade in the yard, I wanted to start small with just one or two 4x4 frames. Paul ended up building 3 frames and I have some large containers as well filled with the sacred "Mel's Mix". So on April 10th, Paul created my square foot garden.
He also made a compost bin for me....what a guy! He really knows the way to my heart!I spent the next two weeks planning my garden on graph paper. I planned cool weather crops, succession crops, I planned and I re-planned. I bought enough seeds to plant a few acres. In the end, I planted some seeds but I also had to resort to planting some purchased seedlings. I planted lettuce, arugula, peas, spinach, radish, carrot and beet seeds directly in the soil on April 23. On May 1st, I planted some cool weather seedlings...broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts.
I had some other more tender seedlings that I planted in pots and protected them in the garage a night.
The trusty old radio flyer came in handy to wheel the tender plants in and out of the garage.
On May 8th I planted my celery, peppers, eggplant, parsley, and oregano, sage and mint. I planted my Sweet Millions Tomatoes in whiskey barrels. I was able to winter over my rosemary and thyme. Tarragon has been self-sowing the past 4 years and I think my chives have been growing for 20 years...which was when I had my last vegetable garden. I also threw some cilantro and dill seeds into some pots to have a nice variety of herbs.
This is a picture taken on May 8th of one of my tomato plants....Wait until you see it on June 7th!!! |
And in just one week, the first flowers appeared on my tomato plants. I'm thinking this Mel's Mix has magical powers!
By Memorial Day the radishes, spinach and half of the arugula had been harvested. This made room for some cucumbers, zucchini, and bush beans. I also started some more lettuce, spinach and arugula seeds hoping to get another crop before it gets too hot. So here is my garden on June 7th.
Sweet peas |
Growing Strong |
My Gnomes protect my herbs in my recycled Weber Grill |
Remember what these tomatoes looked like a month ago? They are going to be monsters!!!! I swear you can actually see them growing! |
Dianne....beautiful job!DRV
ReplyDeleteI did square foot gardening a bunch of years ago. It was fun to plan, but kind of a lot of work to manage, if I remember correctly. Around that time the deer and rabbits got pretty thick in our area, and we found that we were doing an awful lot of garden work just to keep the critters in produce. We tried doing container gardening on our patio, thinking that they wouldn't come that close tot he house. But when we saw deer on the patio chomping on our tomato plants we gave up.
ReplyDeleteNow we live further out, but in a new development. We thought we'd work on our garden here. We started with bulbs our first fall. The following summer we got a puppy, who spent the next few months digging up and eating all of our tulips and daffodils.
I think he may be over that (well, sort of). We have a few things growing in the back again. But we have 2 fig trees in the front, and one of them is just LOADED with small figs. We've already harvested 8 figs this season. You may need to teach me to can (finally).
Leonore