WOO WOO!

Okay, I have to confess that we're in the middle of the start of baseline data collection at work, thus I'm pretty much swimming in paperwork, ordering last minute things and generally helping things run smoothly and attempting to take a deep breath.  Pictures are going to be limited until things settle down a bit.  Here's a brief update anyway:

The good news:
From the meeting on Monday, we found out that we got a space in Skidmore Community Garden, and it's one of the big 64 foot corner plots. 

The tomato seedlings are ready to put in the ground, nownownow.

The Wee Tot told me that the garden is her favorite.  Also, that tree that we just passed on our walk?  That's her favorite tree.  And our dog Sally?  That's her favorite Sally.  And I'm her favorite Mommy.  And Daddy is her favorite Daddy.

The bad news:
 It would appear that I have a penchant for wanting climbing and viney things, and in my mental garden, I'm quickly running out of vertical space.  And we're not allowed to put up trellises in the community garden.  So I'm going through my seeds and seedlings and trying to decide what will have to be planted where, and what gets shelved for this year to be planted next year.

It's threatening to snow this weekend, thus putting off all of my plans for cleaning up the driveway garden and the new community garden.

But hey, you know, that's what you get this time of year in Minnesota.  At least I have broccoli seedlings in the ground, and kale, swiss chard, peas, carrots and lettuce planted in the square foot garden (we'll be covering the broccoli seedlings this weekend...)

Speaking of square foot gardens and gardening in small spaces,  here's some cool info:

1.) The square foot gardening website the guy's book has some good info, but his language bugs the hell out of me in ways that I can't fully explain.  Still.  Focus on the info.  Goooood info.

2.) Veggies by the Yard. Similar concept, different design and really cool plans for gardens closer to the space we'll be planting in (at least along the driveway and in the community garden)

3.) A coworker reminded me of this traditional companion planting (corn, squash and beans). If you have limited space, but have a good sun for corn, why not grow squash and beans too? A little more info with diagrams!

I am alive

Winter threatened to kill all hope of spring, thus sucking my will to live for a while there...on top of last minute scrambles for my grad school application, which is why there hasn't been an update for a while.

HOWEVER!  We're (almost) back on track.  We worked in the yard and practically lived outside all weekend and yes, there are pictures as soon as I can convince the toddler who likes to press buttons to go play with daddy for a while.  I have a better update coming soon, but here's some highlights:


I have a meeting tonight regarding our community garden assignment (WOO WOO).

There's some plans in the works for a large patch of corn in a neighbor's yard.

And I managed to plant kale, lettuce, swiss chard, peas and carrots in the square foot garden on Sunday.

Ry built trellis for morning glories (think I can convince him to also grow scarlet runner beans there?) and is currently working on fencing pieces for his experimental corn patch.

Very cool thing going on

So our seedlings are growing and growing. Some of the Black Krim tomatoes have gotten so big that I put them into compostable pots this morning.  I'm still debating whether I like these pots or if it would be preferable to use the cheap, black plastic ones which could be reused for several years.  We'll see.

Pictures, I swear will be coming eventually.  I just need to get them off the camera.  Hopefully, this weekend.

While you're waiting for pictures ('cause I know you're waiting with bated breath...all three of you.) here's a very cool thing going on in Frogtown involving green beans.
I have a great love of growing beans...I wonder if we could encourage something similar for the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood....

If anyone reading this is in the twin cities, there's a sale on rain barrels and compost bins going on.

I know Ry wants to build our compost bins and rain barrels, but he's been talking about a lot of projects going on for this summer, plus camping. Plus, me going into grad school (hopefully). Plus gardening. Plus toddlers. Plus dogs.

It might be worth our time to just buy them.

Just a quick update

So, I'll try to update every week or so, although, until this snow melts, it'll be sporadic.

Seedlings continue to do well.  It looks like I'm still having trouble with spinach, only 1 in 4 sprouted at all.  But from what I understand, spinach is kinda tricky.  No worries, that was just a test row anyway.

I haven't mentioned something, but now it seems safe to:
Around the middle of February, I signed up for the community garden that's two blocks from my house.  I haven't mentioned it before because I wasn't sure it was going to happen since I know that community garden plots can be in high demand.  I'm still not entirely sure where we are in that process, but they have deposited my $25 check, so I'm assuming that I've got either a 40' or 64' plot.  I suspect I won't know until we go to the mandatory meeting in April.

I'm brilliant

I was just having a discussion on FB about being careful about growing seedlings in windows and how it can make them too leggy. Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...I had another house, another garden and another life.  And we had a brilliant seedling set up. I do sometimes mourn the loss of that set up (although I don't mourn the loss of the life that I led).    I learned early on that if you place the light source too far away from the seedlings, you end up with leggy plants.

So, remember this picture from the other day? I'm...okay with this set up.  I'm not especially as happy about it as I'd like to be.  When starting seedlings indoors, I've always been told that you need your light source as close to the seedlings as possible without scorching them.  Especially if you're using a fairly weak light source like the light we've got.  I tried moving the light closer to the plants yesterday and it's just awkward and weird and I don't like it.

It just occurred to me that the seedlings are sitting on an adjustable shelf.  Instead of moving the light closer to the plants, I could just move the plants closer to the light.

Sheesh.  It only took me 4 days to figure that out....

Woohoo!

Guess what came in the mail today???

My seeds!!

She points out the tomatoes and says "They're yucky!" Sooo...something to work on.

I'm oddly excited about that spinach

The wee tot is underwhelmed

I am not a patient woman

So I told Ry that I needed some seedling trays for the garden this year.  

He got me lots!  Like I said earlier, I've been getting antsy for spring, so we started some last week.  I also started some more this week (Hey, I need something to entertain the toddler early in the morning on Saturdays when her daddy is still asleep...)

I have to admit, I've been a little obsessive about checking them.  Actually, I feel a bit like the little kid anxiously waiting for the cookies to come out of the oven, watching through the little window on the oven door (or was I the only kid who did that??).  That first day, I swear I checked on them 10 times an hour. "Why has nothing happened yet?" I kept wondering.  Of course, this might be a sign of how bad my attention span is and possibly a sign of what the effects of an instant gratification sort of culture...but anyway.

 Patience (HA!) paid off in the end.  These were taken on Wednesday.  We have little seedlings, ladies and gentlemen!  The first thing up was a spinach.  Actually, it looks like that's the only spinach seed to have germinated to date.  Bah.

"So she stares like this for EVER and stops paying attention to me"

The first seedling tray sort of traveled around the house looking for the warmest spot, since we didn't have the sun lamp set up for it yet.  Here, Sally demonstrates what I do around newly planted seeds.

"You're ridiculous, Mom."

 

 So Ry actually found the best spot in the house for the seed trays.  This is a north facing window, but it's sunny and better protected from drafts than the southern windows in the house (due to plastic on the window).  And, it's even near an outlet, which are a hot commodity in our house.

Reeeach for the light, my little ones!  REACH!!!

Black Krim tomatoes are the bottom row, followed by three rows of basil

Checking in on the seeds planted yesterday.  They totally should have started sprouting by now.

Some pictures from last year's garden

 So I wanted to post some pictures from last year's first attempt at gardening in this new space.  Before we bought our house, it was apparently, used as a rental and the yard suffered from a giant amount of neglect.  With a wee tot in tow, plus both of us working full time, there's really only so much we can do in a weekend, so things are going slowly, slowly.
You can see the yard is kindy junky, but also here's one shot of the square foot garden Mom and her SO built for us and installed.  We've got a trellis up on it to help save space when it comes to growing things like tomatoes, cucumbers and peas.  By the end of the season last year, ONE tomato plant had taken over that entire 6 ft x 4 ft trellis.

Peas.  The wee tot liked picking them straight off the vine so often, we frequently had a pea shortage.

Better shot of the square foot garden

 So this is the corner of the back yard. Apparently the previous owners used the patio as an extra parking space.  Wheee.  It's also where we get the strongest and longest sunlight, so I'm planning on making the most of it and doing a lot of container gardening on it this year.  We grew one brandywine tomato in a big pot here last year (you can see it in the background) and that worked fairly well, however, during giant storms, the pot had a tendancy to fall over.  And we needed to water nearly daily when it wasn't raining, as the tomato took a TON of water. The plans this year include adding at least two more tomato pots for the patio.  And I have plans for a dwarf variety of pea.

 This is mostly weeds, walking onions and mint.  It's been the transplant bed for the past two summers, but we're turning it into vegetable garden.  I have to admit, I'll be sad to see the walking onions go, but I'm hoping I can save some and move them elsewhere.  They're just so very useful and require no work.  As for the tranplants that are in here...the first job as soon as we can dig in the soil is to find new places for them around the yard.

Our yard is narrow, but deep...

Oh yes

It's winter.  We've just had a fairly large snowstorm.  In fact, it shut down the University of Minnesota, which never happens.  And I'm feeling antsy about starting my garden.  The problem is that at least according to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum website, I should be holding off on planting even tomato seeds until mid-late April.

Well, I've never been good about following rules when I don't see the reasoning behind it. I understand that here in Minnesota we have the potential for frost until Memorial Day weekend and gardens should be planned accordingly.  However, in recent years, particularly here in the city, we haven't seen frost past, oh say, the beginning of May (at least that's what I'm telling myself, don't spoil my delusions right now, this winter has been long.) Which is why on Friday night, I started a tray of seeds.  I really only wanted to start 4 tomato seeds, telling myself that I was really only trying to see if they're still viable (they were purchased last spring), but well, I have a curious and extremely persuasive 2 year old. And one thing led to another and, it was either plant a tray of 20 seeds, or forfeit the little soil disks to my daughter's toy box.
So now, I've started 12 basil, 4 spinach, and 4 tomatoes.  I know it's early for the spinach and basil, but I was having trouble with the spinach seeds germinating last year, so I want to see how good the seed still is, and the basil...well, I have a lot of basil seed and I never seem to grow enough.  We'll see if we can't get a head start on that.
Pictures coming as soon as I figure out how to download pictures from our nifty new camera