Small Success

Clem and I went to Home Depot yesterday to see what plants they still have on sale.  Many of their plants were on sale for 5 for $10!  We picked up a Roma tomato plant.  We also wanted to purchase a cherry or grape tomato plant, but all that remained in stock were hybrids.  The eggplant plant we had in our buggy turned out not to be on sale, so we're saving that money for something else.  We may check out Lowe's to see if they've marked down any of their plants yet.  When we went last week, they were still about $3.50 but still had non-hybrid cherry tomatoes and eggplants stocked.

Otherwise. finally found our grow light.  We scoped out the basement for the best spot.  Clem and I are going to be nailing up the florescent light this week and starting our seeds for cherry tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, zucchini squash, cucumbers, and sugar snap peas.  Yes, I know it seems a bit late.  We're still getting thick frost some nights, however, so it felt best to wait a bit before starting the seeds. (That, and I can't do anything correctly without a bit of thoughtful procrastination first!)

As far as our herbs are concerned, they all appear to be doing well. The basil plant is about 8-10 inches tall now, so we decided to use some of the top leaves in the veggie packet we're cooking on the grill tonight as a side for our pork chops.  The catnip I planted last week has germinated ahead of schedule, and we have 3 itty-bitty sprouts so far.  It's surprising how encouraging these small victories are!

While assessing what plants we're actually going to have in our garden this summer, we decided we may not need to build a bed after all.  We found a large, sturdy kiddie pool curbside at the end of last summer that we kept around with the idea of using it for a container garden.  I have to measure out it's area, yet it may be all we need.  We're going to use some used for the potatoes.  According to an article I found online, the old tires are safe to use as long as they are not cut or damaged.  We may also utilize an old stainless steel garbage can for growing potatoes.

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!