Well, it took a while, but I finally got all four squares completed- yea! I mulched the first 2.5 squares before I ran out . It looks like I'll be making a trip to Lowe's! The onion bulbs I planted in the first square and the garlic bulbs planted in the second square back in January have come up and are growing nicely.  The have survived the 3 snow storms we've had since then- whew! I've also planted other seedlings that I started indoors in January, and even got the compost bin back up. Grass has been planted in the new walkways and it looks like everything is on it's way! Even the dog is excited! 4/6/10

My kids decided to get into the act this year, so we took  the extra landscape edging and made a new flower garden area around our tree in the backyard. They picked out the seeds and planted them, with a little help from Mommy. They chose two kinds of sunflowers, planted in a circle closest to the tree, lavender, in a larger circle, and marigolds at the outer edge. It will be gorgeous once everything starts growing!! They are so proud of their little garden, and I'm glad they're excited about it! 4/14/10

Here's a close-up the little sunflower seedlings starting to emerge: 4/14/10

Here are a few cute photos of the kids watering and having fun in the garden 4/6/10:

My kids are helping me clear out the "old" : the dead tomato plants form last year and all the weeds. And then we'll be ready for the "new"! 1/18/10

Whew! The big gardening bed is finally cleared...
1/18/10

And the tomato cages are neatly stacked....

And here's my giant mess that needs cleaning up! Oooh, fun!

The vine garden- as it looked in January 2010. It's needing some TLC before the planting season!











Whew- the bed is all cleaned up and turned.










Next, I divided out the space. The shape and space for this area is awkward, but I think I divided it pretty well by basic "square foot gardening" principles. I "placed" each crop into a square on a plan drawn on paper. Seeing the whole garden laid out beforehand made it easier and faster to plant the seeds in the garden once it was ready.


The vine & lettuce garden planted with all the winter veggies: lettuces, broccoli, and peas- January 18, 2010. The kids had fun poking the little seeds into the ground. The planting goes MUCH faster when you have a plan in place!

Creating the garden bed

I last left off with the green beans, and the planning of the rest of the garden. We layered dirt, cow manure, compost, grass clippings, other materials until the bedding area was about 8 inches deep. Here is a photo of the layering in progress. We had just dumped on all the grass clippings from our grass after my husband cut the lawn. We had one bag of compost left, and that went on top of the grass clippings for a total height of about 10-12". Originally, I had the garden come right up to the patio, but decided that I didn't like the idea of dirt washing onto the patio, so I bought three paver blocks at Lowe's and added them to the garden. Not only does it help with the dirt, but it also gives an nice entrance into the garden. I really like how it looks. Here's a close up of of the layering process, at the edge of the patio. Under the layers is a base layer of newspaper & cardboard. It WAS much easier than digging up the sod & I'm glad I learned about this method! The photo above shows the finished garden bed. Next, we will add the "squares" that will divide the garden for planting.

Catching up...

First, to anyone who might have read my blog: I am SO sorry for leaving it for so long. Life just got crazy for a while & I didn't have the time or energy to keep up the blog. But, now that we're through the first growing season, I will try to catch up on the blogging to show you some of our exciting results! Here we go...

How our garden came to be...

April, 2008:

It all started when my son, who is in Kindergarten, brought home a Styrofoam cup full of dirt.... well, dirt & a pumpkin seed. Excited, he asked me to help him water it and find a place for it to grow. Over the next week, we watered the dirt and kept the cup in the window sill, hopeful to see something green emerge. Eventually, the dirt was pushed up and a small green stem emerged. The seedling continued to grow. First, the seedling leaves appeared and then the first true leaf.

During this time, my son also brought home a sad looking plant in yet another cup. This one was a Lima bean plant. To make a long story short, the lime bean plant was already on it's way out and died within a few days, but the pumpkin plant looked promising until an unusually warm day about a week later. The plant still had it's one true leaf and it was growing rather large. It looked like it might start growing another leaf, but the heat of the day proved too much. I guess plants weren't meant to be grown in Styrofoam cups! By that evening, the plant was wilted and basically dead. It was gone by the next day and I had a very upset 6 year old boy on my hands! With tears streaming down his little face, he asked me why his plant had to die. I felt so bad for my little guy!

Over the next few days, I thought about how distraught my son was. I thought about gardening as a kid, growing strawberries, zucchini, and tomatoes with my parents, and how much fun it was. I thought about the unrealized garden plans I had for my own backyard for the last 10 years, the seeds I had purchased over the last few years that hadn't been planted, and I thought about how much fun it would be to have a REAL garden for my kids to enjoy.

*Moment of truth*

That was it... we were going to have a garden!!! Now, where should we put it? What should we grow? How big should we make it? How will I dig up the sod? EEK!! Now, I was a little overwhelmed, but figured we could do this if we planted seeds inside to start growing in order to give me time to make the bigger decisions. So, we got a bought of dirt, some peat pots, and a few seed packets. I also gathered the seeds I knew were around the house, garage, etc, and started planting. Before long, I had two window sills full of little pots of dirt, two excited kids, and crossed fingers in hope that we wouldn't kill any more plants! But, I kept finding seed packets I had purchased over the last few years. Since we were starting a garden, it made sense to plant a little of everything we had.

OK, that was a dumb idea! Now we're out of pots, window sill, room, and we still have several different seeds we haven't planted yet. By traditional gardening standards, we probably had enough to plant our back yard, and a couple of our neighbors. We needed a better way! I had heard of square foot gardening, knew there was a book about it, and knew it meant you could plant more plants in less space, but I didn't know much more than that. So, I was off to the Internet to see what I could find..... Apparently, the information is pretty closely guarded, so I headed to Amazon.com to see if I could get enough information from the pages I could read for free to start the garden outside.

I got that 4' x 4' blocks were good garden sizes, so I picked the garden spot and started digging up the sod. Mind you, it was about 90+ degrees outside, and we have Bermuda grass, so work was slow. I dug up a 1' x 2' plot and I was done! I thought I was going to die; I had no idea removing sod was so difficult!! After a nice, cool shower, I went back to Amazon.com. I decided I needed to purchase the book and see what I was really in for! Amazon suggested another book for me, called "Lasagna Gardening" by Patricia Lanza. The cover was interesting, so I clicked on the book and started reading the "teaser" pages. Within a page or two, I was hooked! This was my answer!! This book showed how to start a garden without digging up the sod!!! Instead, you build UP from the sod. It is a non-traditional way to garden like square foot gardening. So, I bought both books to see what information they held. After I received both books and read the key chapters of each, I decided to form the garden beds via the Lasagna way and plant the square foot way. The square foot garden book has much more detailed information about planting while the lasagna method of building the garden beds gave me an easy way to get the garden started, which is great and very timely because I had many seedlings growing too big for their pots!
In the next post, I will explain how we built the beds and show photos of the work in progress.