Gardening Newbie

Hello…my name is Christy, and I’m a garden-o-holic.  Some may say I make fun of a serious condition, but my husband would agree what I deal with IS a serious condition.  About 6 months ago, I found a book called “Square Foot Gardening.”  Click here and prepare to join me.  :o) 

Now, I can’t read enough about growing stuff, making stuff to grow stuff, watching videos on youtube about making stuff to grow stuff AND growing stuff.  It’s ridiculous really….BUT here’s our journey to growing as much food of our own as we can being garden-newbies!

Step #1 ::  Make a garden plan.  (Read get graph paper, measure back yard, sketch back yard to scale, draw 6 garden boxes –also to scale.)  Now, the average gardener would decide what to grow & how much to grow, then proceed to

Step #2.  I, being the garden-o-holic AND a tad bit (ahem) OCD, carried it to the slightly obsessive level.  *I’ll have to take a pic of my garden plan once I finalize it.  We decided to build additional garden boxes…plans have changed.  Back to the drawing board, I guess*

Step #2 :: Order Seeds  I ordered from http://www.superseeds.com/ and clicked the option (24 hr in-house processing – which cost an extra like $5 but was sooooooooooooooo worth it!)  I ordered on Monday morning and received my seeds in my mail box on Thursday.) 

Step #3 :: Plant seeds indoors (because my frost date is April 15 which means anything I plant before then will most likely be annihilated by mother nature.)  I found this nifty design for a warming bed and thought I’d scavenge some materials to make one of my own.

I cut some foam insulation board to fit my husbands took workbench (see 1st paragraph where he would agree that I have a special condition!)  Then, I weaved some rope light across it while attaching small strips of the same insulation to help hold it down and keep the heat inside.
 
Then, I laid some scrap pieces of drywall on top (because the lights get HOT and will fry the seedlings.)  I found this stuff on the side of the road while out for a run.  I picked some up (after I had come home to get my car) and stashed it away for this purpose.

Step #4 :: Plant seeds.  I thought this would be the hard part.  Really, you just follow the directions on the back of the seed packet for the time to plant, depth to plant, special instructions like stratifying, etc.  I’d say the most important part of this step is to use a seed starting mix.  I bought one bag of Jiffy’s Organic Seed Starting Mix from Walmart for $4, but  I’m quite cheap and researched the ingredients for “homemade” dirt and made 2 batches of my own.

Step #5 :: Make Garden Boxes  We chose to do raise beds (mainly because that’s what the Square Foot Garden recommended) because Larry & I are a bit OCD and an unsightly mess or weeds & mud with half dead plants would just be a pain and completely unenjoyable tow work in.  We knew the “traditional” plow-up-your-yard-garden was NOT for us.  So, we started with this:

Bought some lumber & brackets at Lowes (for less than $100) and got to work assembling 4 boxes that measure 4ft x 8ft
    
In about 3-4 hours, the finished product!

Step #6 ::  Mix dirt.  Now, this sounds ridiculous because we own 1/2 acre of our own dirt…yet, we followed the directions in Square Foot Gardening to make “Mel’s Mix”

We started with a LOT of compost, vermiculite, & peat moss  to create our “dirt” hoping to fill 3 boxes with it.  After lining the boxes with weed fabric, we got to work mixing our dirt in "batches" according to the Mel's Mix formula.   So far, we've used:

• 2 bales peat moss (3.8 cu ft each) Lowe’s $9.87
• 4 bags vermiculite (4 cu ft each) Mize Farm & Garden $14
• 6 bags organic manure & compost mix (40 lbs each) Walmart $1.38
• 3 bags black Kow manure (50 lbs each) Lowe’s $4.77
• 3 bags mushroom compost (1 cu ft each) Home Depot $2.68
• 6 bags humus (40 lbs each) Lowe's $1.38
• 6 bags worm castings (10 lbs each) Walmart $3.58
• 10 bags manure compost & humus mix (40 lbs each) Lowe's $1.38
• 4 bags organic soil conditioner 50%pine, 50% compost (1.5 cu ft each)  Lowe's $2.68

When I did the calculations, I didn’t take into account the fact that part of our boxes would be deeper than 6 inches so we have to buy more poop (um…compost), peat moss, and vermiculite to finish filling the last 2 boxes this weekend.
  
Mixing dirt!  THIS was the hardest step.  It was HEAVY. 

But the finished product is pretty.
  
These are our partly filled and empty beds on the fence line.
 
Step #7 :: Watch for seeds to germinate  (coming soon)

Step #7b :: Finish filling boxes with Mel’s Mix (total bill for poo & dirt “ingredients” coming soon)