Thoughts of composting class, warm weather, and veggies...

~DISCLAIMER~
Due to computer issues, I don't have any new pictures. But hopefully tonight I'll have a few to post.

The composting class last week was very informative! Not only did it give me a chance to see how wet the bins needed to be (A LOT wetter than I thought) but I got to meet a few new folks, hang out with my buddy, and got a welded wire composting hoop. Now to get mine started. I need to find a load of browns though, guess I'll be using the neighborhood's throw outs.

So my seedlings didn't do so well. I'm a veggie killer. I was starting the hardening off process and got wrapped up in the day. They spent the better part of two days outside and of course they were windy, hot, and dry. I lost everything except for a couple of cantaloupes. They are now in the beds and I'm hoping they'll pull through.

So I ended up buying all of my plants from a local nursery. Well, all of the except for all of my crowder peas. I started them from seeds in the beds and boy are they taking off! On Friday I was starting to worry I had planted them too deep, it'd been a week with no signs of life. And then came the 85-90 degree days over the weekend. It's amazing what some good sun shine will do. By Monday night they were almost 2" tall and looking extremely healthy!

Now here's one for you guys that are a little more experienced than I am (like that's hard). When watering my beds, the water drains out of them pretty quickly. Now I know I need to stop before this happens, but how much in the way of nutrients am I loosing in the brown water that comes out?

Since spring is officially here in NC, I hope everyone can get out and enjoy this beautiful time of the year!

Have a great one!

Composting Class

I singed up for Cabarrus county's newsletter when we moved back in Janurary. They have your normal county information as well as some classes offered for kids and adults. Well today I received the newest e-letter and they are having a class on composting. So I immediately sent off an email asking to be registered for the class.

Now I know I might not learn much more than what I've picked up on the internet, but they are offering a free composting bin for participating in the class. I'm not sure what type of bin it'll be, but for free and to be able to meet new folks makes it more than worth it!

Now that I'm all geeked out about going to this class, I'm off to ask the deli owner in the ground floor of our building to save me his coffee grounds.

Enjoy the weekend!

The beds are ready!!

So the next couple of weeks should end our cold snap season and the plants should do well in the garden. Due to some family stuff, we haven't been home the past two weekends. That means no yard/gardening time for me. Well tonight Joel and I made a quick run to the store and picked up some soaker hoses.

I managed to get them laid in and my square feet marked out with string.




And a view from the steps into the kitchen...



I'm hoping the soaker hose will do a good job of watering for me, anyone have an opinion on them?

And my poor seedlings, we were out of town for 5 days last week and I think the lack of watering has set them on a bad path. The cantaloupes still look strong, but I'm not sure any are going to be great producers. And yeah, I know I need to sharpen the mower blades and get them out of the house. ;-)





Hopefully this weekend we'll be able to get to the nursery and grab some seedlings from them. After all, I do have 64 square feet to fill up.

Beds built and seeds/plants growing!

What a weekend!

Erin and I must've cooked some bad pork chops Thursday night for supper, b/c she was sick Friday during the day and then I was almost ready to die Friday night. Which wasn't cool because I had to take the USGBC's LEED exam Saturday morning at 8:30. Even though I was up almost every hour Friday night I still passed the exam YAAY! Anyways...on to the rest of the weekend.

Joel and I made a run to Lowes this morning. You should've seen monster boy trying to help me pick up 2x6's, bags of compost, topsoil, and peat moss. He was a very big help. Well, as much help as a twenty month old can be ;-)

This is what I started with...(sorry for the quality, the next phone I get will hopefully take better pictures)

From Garden2009

Here's one of the piles of bags. My poor Caravan, I'm glad it's handled all of the abuse I've thrown at it.

From Garden2009

And here's the finished product. I've got 2 4'x8' beds. Now to get them mixed a little better and some quality rain to soak them on down.

From Garden2009

The seedlings are doing well. I really need a few more warm days w/o so much wind so I can leave them outside, they are starting to lean towards the windows as the day goes by.

From Garden2009

From Garden2009

Erin and I are going to run by the garden center and pick up a few more plants. We're thinking some lettuces, I know it's late but the rest of our yard is very shaded so we're gonna give them a try, some squash, strawberries, cucumbers, and green peppers.

So I'm totally excited!! My seeds have sprouted. I realize this is just the beginning, but this makes me even more anxious to get the garden going.

From Garden2009

Back to keeping the 20 month old monster occupied (aka Joel), their attention span is so short!

Started the garden...well the plants anyways.

I'm still on my quest to find vermiculite that won't cost me an arm and a leg. The local nursery wants $20 for 4 cubic feet. With the size I'm doing (2 4'x8' plots) I will end up putting $60 into just the vermiculite.

Anyways, I started the seeds tonight. Spent a few hours out in the shop building some quick seedling trays. I will probably end up changing or atleast adding paper cups under the peat moss cups. They leak horribly and Erin's going to kill me if I make a mess on the floor every time I water (not to mention I don't want to have to clean up the mess every night).

I have 10 brandy wine tomato's, 10 beef steak tomato's, 5 chives, 10 onions, 10 canteloupes, & 5 oregano's started. I'm thinking I might start a few more once I get these in the ground. Maybe a late crop of oregano I can keep inside and a few more chives to plant later in the season.

Here's a couple of shots of the seedling trays.








And here's a rough sketch of how I'm going to lay out the beds.







The lay out still needs a little work, but that gives you the gist of how it's going to go.

Starting of a blog....

So this blog is set up more to force me to keep track of dates and stuff for the planting of my garden. I figured if I started this and got people watching it would hopefully force me to keep up with it.