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.