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By Alyssa, May 26, 2010 2:52 pm

Welp, I’m a gardener now.  I have a garden.  Don’t mean to brag, but man did I work hard on it!  Remember this area?  And that box I picked up for free on Craigslist?

I painted it, along with a few scrap wood boxes Haus made for me (we enlisted the neighbors to help move the big box into the backyard)…

Then I drilled 1/4″ holes in the bottom for drainage and stapled black weather guard to the bottom of the scrap wood boxes (I heart power tools)…

I put a 1/2″ of peat rock in the bottom of each box and then mixed 1/3 assorted compost, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss (only place I could find Vermiculite in Denver was the American Clay Works and Supply Company.  $20 for that huge bag.) …

In the last step, I filled all of the boxes about 8-10 inches full of my soil and planted!  Here’s my main square foot garden with cucumbers (in the milk jug “hot caps”), herbs, lettuce, beets, carrots, and marigolds in the corners:

Craigslist box

In the scrap boxes I planted winter and summer squash with a marigold border (on the left), and tomatoes with a basil border (on the right):

I used old milk jugs without caps and bottoms cut off to make hot caps for the tomato and cucumber transplants.  I didn’t think they would survive the current Colorado night temperatures or wind without them.  As soon as summer really hits around here, I’ll phase them out.  Next time I’ll post about my transplant mistakes and tomato cage discovery (Did you notice the cages are upside down?).

Please post tips for me if you have them. I’ve spent $50 on seeds/transplants and $80 on soil and Hubby Haus is kinda hoping to see a return on the investment.  Your gardening secrets would help!  Happy gardening, friends!

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By Alyssa, February 23, 2010 11:03 pm

Seed Catalogs

Missed Part I?  Click here.

I almost broke the first rule of beginning gardening.  START SMALL!

As the seed catalogs came in the mail, I found excuses to visit my backyard and dream about my future plot of greenery.  With every visit, I had a new idea. I’d build this and then move that and then buy this and… yeah, I got a little out of control.  Thank goodness I’m married to the most logical, non-emotional decision maker I know.  Hubby looked over my plans, listened to my ideas, gave small suggestions, and then, when I mentioned the cascading ivy, wild flower sanctuary, and waterfall, he put his foot down.  One vegetable garden this summer, one, uno, that’s it.  I persuaded, then ranted, then threw a mini-fit, followed by a major fit… and, well, did the only thing I could do in this type of situation.  As the mature one in our relationship, I stormed out like a teenage girl, thought about everything for a bit, and, decided he was right.  I’m such a great wife.

If I want to set myself up for gardening success this year, I have to force myself to start small.  This means no herb garden and half the garden size I originally intended to grow. Check out the new plan (Yes, I used red to show my bleeding ideas, killed until next summer.  Can you say, Drama Queen?):

I’ll still be building the kid’s sandbox (well, er… assisting Hubby in the construction) and moving the doghouse, but everything else is going to wait until next summer.  I know at the very least I want to grow cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash, but I’m still rethinking the smaller garden.  I did narrow down the seed catalogs to heirloom seeds only and decided to use Seed Savers Exchange.  To be honest, the only reason why I chose Seed Savers is because Barbara Kingsolver, my absolute favorite author, uses their seeds in her garden.  Quite the logical decision, right?

I may have lost the war on my ridiculous garden plans, but I did win one battle.  Hubby’s buying me a pretty sweet composter from Costco.  It’s his logical answer to yet another one of my crazy ideas.  Wait, did I just put sweet and composter in the same sentence?  I’d say it’s time to go to bed.  Garden plot plans coming soon!

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By Alyssa, January 15, 2010 8:37 pm

Now that seed catalogs are on their way in the mail and I’m fully committed to this garden, I decided it was time for a plan.  I’m a planner so I totally geeked out in the process.  I measured every square foot of our southern lawn and bark area.  I printing a grid on the computer and designing my future garden area to scale.  Here’s what the current area looks like:

Looking east from the fence gate

And from the other side:

Looking west from the grass

Yes, there’s still snow on the ground and I know it’s January, but I’ve got a lot to do prior to planting.  I’ve never liked the river rocks by the fence since the bark is constantly blown into them and I’m sick of the monstrous dog house in the middle of nowhere.  I want my final product to look like this:

My Nerdy To-Scale Garden Plan

First thing, find a way to move that dog house to the northwest corner of the garden area. This task sounds simple, but my engineering hubby built it.  The dog’s house is literally a scaled down home completely framed and roofed to withstand WWIII. Don’t get me wrong, Hubby’s an incredible engineer and I’m proud of his workmanship, but it’s over 400lbs. No, I’m not kidding.

Anyway, task one: Move dog mansion.  Task two: build sandbox.  What??  That’s right, before I can even start landscaping and gardening, a sandbox must be built.  The reality is that I have a four-year-old and one-year-old and these boys are not going to entertain themselves while Mommy’s out messing with the vegetables.  Wait, they probably would entertain themselves, but dumping everything out of my dresser drawers and unrolling all of the toilet paper in the bathrooms is not my kind of entertainment.  So with my garden planning, I had to include outdoor boy entertainment and a sandbox surfaced at the top of the list. I’ll leave you with this “before” picture as the area will soon include a sturdy WWIII-ready sandbox.  Have a great weekend… I’ve got river rocks to move.

See that big pile of river rocks? Imagine a sandbox in the middle.