Time to start on the garden!

For half the country, it seems this winter has been the coldest ever. For the other half (my half) it's been the warmest yet. Even though my ground has been ready for seeds for some time, I don't want to jinx it and lose all my seedlings if the frost does stick around until our last frost date, April 30. I'm keeping my schedule for zone 7A. We have all our seeds started in the house now, ahead of schedule for most, but late for others.

 You can find the schedule for your zone here. I love this. It spells out all you have to do for each week. If you are square foot gardening like me, this will tell you how many of each plant will go into each square. I'm really debating breaking my raised beds into mini-rows this year. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear what works for you.

My family was outside today hard at work ripping up weeds, topping off the beds, and raking it flat. It was a joy.

What do you do in the Summertime?

scrap kit Bloomin' Beautiful by Mel Hains at Scrap That Idea
Here's a handy list of things you can do this summer. Well, things you WILL do, if you are in my family. Some of which, as you can see from the above scrap page, we already did on Memorial Day weekend.
1. Swim or run in the sprinklers. The girls will be in lessons this summer and the younger one is such a fish, I'm afraid she'll pass the class and move on before the older one.
2. Have a potluck or block party
3. Put the popcorn popper on a blanket without the lid and let the popcorn fly all over. If you have a oil popper and not an air popper, stand back, cuz those hot oily kernels really hurt!
4. Spend your days at the park
5. ROAD TRIP! We always go to Utah.
6. Drink horchata from the taco truck. I was so addicted last year.
7. Go biking a few times a week (this is why summer is losing weight season for me. I tote the kids around in a trailer behind it)
8. Visit the local library for story time. Kids loose 35% of what they learned during school over the summer. I didn't pay monthly preschool tuition every month so that she has to relearn it all again in kindergarten.
9. Learn to BBQ the right way. Especially if you are a chick, it's so hot. Try cooking veggies and fruit on the grill, too. Grilled pineapple-HELLO!
10. Make real lemonade: Peel three fat lemons. Cut them into smaller pieces. Drop the pieces into a blender with 1-1/2 cups of sugar and 1-1/2 cups of water. Use the blender to chop until coarse, then strain into a pitcher. Add ice cubes. Adjust as needed.
11. Visit the zoo. We are going next month to meet up with some friends and I'm so excited!
12. Sleep outside. I thought about setting up our tent last night since our A/C broke and it was SO hot in the house.
13. Horseback riding. Easy peasy for this family, there is no shortage of willing equine around.
14. County Fair: this will include entering items for judging (I get free admission this way, and sometimes MAKE money), watching the rodeo, eating fair food (here it's elephant ears) and partaking in the vomitfest that is the carnival.
15. Farmers Market. Local farmers' markets are overflowing with fresh, delicious fruits and vegetables. Go to localharvest.org or farmersmarket.com to find a farmers' market near you.
16. Tend your own garden. Mine is pathetic this year, but I'm sure I'll get something out of it.
17. Make those traditional summer treats like homemade ice cream, shaved ice, key lime pie, salads galore, and popsicles. You can get popsicle molds from the dollar store.
18. Play on the river. Maybe boating, maybe floating on tubes, maybe fishing, maybe cliff jumping. I don't know, but we will be dipping in the water this summer.
19. Nature Hike. Last year we hiked to a waterfall and found frogs and tadpoles and identified (or not) all sorts of other plants and animals. The girls loved this.
20. Movies. It gets so hot, find refuge in a dark air conditioned theater. I'm really looking forward to UP! and the new summer sequels.

More Square Foot Gardening

What a flake I am. I just kept thinking about all the things in the last two weeks I could have blogged about, but I said at the end of my last post that I would give you more of the scoop on SFG. So I put off blogging until I was in the mood to talk about gardening again. bleh. How can I NOT be in the mood now that the weather is so warm and sunshiny???

So by now you are probably WAY ahead of me and have all your seedlings that you want to plant in thier little pots or whatever. We started a while ago and a bunch already died. I swear, every year I get more of a black thumb for some reason.

Instead of making this a huge long post about how to space out your plants in a square foot garden, and when to plant (which I was planning on) I'm going to give you a couple handy links I found. I made a chart a few years back with a timeline and a map of my garden. I have little squares on there with every crop that I fiddle around with.
The first link is for when to plant. You need to know your last frost date. For us here in zone 7a, ours is May 1. If you don't know your zone, you can google it. I finally found my hard to find zone after the 4th try (really, we are in a weird spot. Unless you live here, you wouldn't know there is a desert in Washington). You can find the customizable planting schedule at http://bioarray.us/Skippy%27s%20planting%20calendar.html . This is for the spring crops. From there you can also get to the fall planting schedule based on the first frost date and counted backwards. The beauty of square foot gardening is that you can greenhouse just one square of plants if you wish, making a hot house from plastic and hangers, or even a 2 liter bottle if it will fit.
You can find tips on spacing out your plants at http://allaboutsquarefootgardening.com/?page_id=22.
Also, I took a class on this last week. SO GOOD. I don't think I learned anything new, I had read the book before, but it was such a good refresher and now I want to dig out all my dumb feedlot dirt and fill my box with "Mel's Mix", a three part soil made from 1 part coarse vermiculite (holds in water, find at nurseries or *maybe* Lowes), 1 part peat moss, and 1 part compost. The compost should be made out of as many different materials as possible. Next year you can just stir compost into squares as needed. You shouldn't need fertilizer or bug reppelant if you have good compost.
So, I'm not a genius, and I'm not the most experienced gardener, but I wanted to tell everyone what I DO know about this great method of gardening. I hear veggie gardens are REALLY popular right now since the economy is in the toilet and eating healthy is in. If Michelle Obama was doing SFG, she wouldn't have to have the President out there weeding the new garden at the White House. You can really do this, and if you don't think you can, just take a gander at the book. If you can't find it at the library, I saw it on Amazon for $12. Really, at the seminar they showed us a picture of a SFG on someones roof.

Another thing I've been pondering are the "topsy-turvy tomatoes". My In-Laws have been wowed by the ads and have a tree or two at thier house. Do these things really work? why can't you just hang up a bucket? Maybe cut a hole in the side? I might try having a few hanging baskets of tomatoes or something this year, but I'm not sure. This will be for mere experimentation. I've read bad reviews on the product, but I think the general idea is a good one. Anyone know anything about these things?

Starting my Square Foot Garden

Are you limited on space? When we moved into this place 3 years ago, I knew having a garden in the back yard was not a possibility. I remembered that my aunt had a small but productive garden when I was a child, so I checked with her to see what was so great about the garden that she did. It's called Square Foot Gardening, and I'm a convert.

Basicly, each plant gets it's own square in the plot. Every thing is really close together, but actually has quite enough room to grow, and you can grow exactly what you need. I have never had to deal with having a ton of extra plants to care for, or have too much food that my neighbors run when they see me working in the zucchini. The gardens can be configured however you'd like for your space and needs. I reccomend the book "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholemew. I checked it out from the local library and had it read in 2 days. There are a ton of tips and tricks to get the garden to work for you, but I just used what I needed.

At a spring farm auction in 2006 I got my hands on some railroad ties that I knew I wanted to bulid my raised beds from. I think I paid about $7 a piece. I had to buy 20, I used 8 and sold the rest on craigslist. They say not to use rr ties because of the creosote, but they haven't damaged my plants at all. I was in labor when I was stacking the ties and building the actual garden. It was a beutiful pring day, and I wanted to get something done before I had to go to the hospital and be laid up for a few days. I made a 4x12 box that is two ties high. We put a metal rod through them to make sure they wouln't topple over with time. We filled it with dirt from the cow pens at a nearby feedlot. I made a grid with nails and yarn. This marks out the square feet. I studied the book carefully and spent time making a chart with graph paper and on the computer of my grid garden. I also made little squares with dots on them, showing what I planned to plant. Some plants go one per square, others are placed 16 in a square, or anything in between. Some, like watermelon, need 9 squares. There are some plants that need a trellis to grow on. That I made with steel pipe and yarn. This is what my cukes, squash, pole beans, cherry tomatoes and peas grow on. Okay, I didn't edit this photo and tip it the right way, just turn your head. These photos are from my 2007 garden. You can see how everything is in it's own little spot. Do you see any weeds? No? I've never had to weed until last year. It took that long for them to find my raised bed. Even then, it's very easy to sit on the edge of the garden and lean all the way into the middle. I measured my arms before I built the garden. I made sure that I could reach to the middle if I was kneeling outside the bed. I go out and play with the kids and they help me weed for 10 minutes here and there and it keeps up pretty well.

Phew! I think that will be more than enough to keep your mind reeling for the night. Next time I blog, I'll tell you about what we have done (and what you can do) to get ready for 2009.