And, we're off!

It's happening, it's finally happening; we're finally getting the garden started! Despite being two years behind, Clemmie and I are really pumped that the garden will be started in the next weekend or two.

I really have to give credit to my mom since she loves to give me gifts. As I've grown older, I become increasingly upset if she purchases items that I don't need.  For Easter, she purchased us some seeds, a couple of herb plants (basil, dill, rosemary, and sage), potting soil, and garden gloves.  I think she knew if I didn't have real plants, I probably wouldn't get enough inspiration to get the garden started.  The plants were alive originally, but she left them in her car for a couple of hot days before giving them to me.  I tried for a week to revive them, to no avail; the sage plant is the only one that survived.  We had to take all of the others back.  There are now sage, rosemary, and basil plants in the kitchen window...and they're doing well!

I've also planted some catnip.  It's been two days since I planted some seeds in an old Helluva Good dip container filled with some potting soil.  I put it in the window with the lid on to help it preserve moisture and heat.  I'm going to check on it Friday to see if anything has sprouted.  I think our cat Sheila will be pretty pleased if it does.

Another project I'm trying is using an old celery stump to grow a new one.  It's been a day and it looks like the celery is just starting to rot.  I'm going to give it a couple more days.  If I don't start seeing some roots growing, it's going in the compost!

Clemmie and I have been brainstorming what we want to do for our garden bed.  We've decided we're going to get started with one small raised bed that will be 6' x 2' x 1', with a trellis along the north side of the bed.  We did want to do a bit bigger, but we found a 16' x 1' x 2" that is $25 at Lowe's.  That's almost half the cost of getting the two boards we would've need to make a 6' x 3' x 1' that we wanted originally.  We figure that if it goes well, we'll build one or two more next year.

Clemmie is planning to prepare the bed doing a combination of double digging and huglekulture.  "Uh-what?" I hear you saying.  Basically, huglekulture is the utilization of fallen timber to maintain the hydration and nourishment soil. Check out the video as it provides a good explanation:

I'm going to take some photos as we go and try to post them up here in the next week or two!