Planting continues

As of today, I have yellow onions, broccoli, parsley, peas and spinach out in the garden, and tomatoes, peppers and basil under the lights. Cauliflower and first round of lettuce is now hardening and will go out today or tomorrow. So far so good.

I do have a squirrel that seems to like digging around in my beds. He doesn't seem interested in the plants themselves, he's just digging holes. But I'm worried that some plants will get damaged in the process. I haven't actually seen him so I'm not sure how exactly he's getting in. I'll have to keep a closer eye on the situation.

I also may have found a source for free, composted horse manure, already bagged. This will go a long way to reduce my overall costs.

Ramping up

As of today, I have onions and peas out in the garden. Parsley is hardening now and will go out tomorrow.

Inside, I have lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, basil, bell peppers and jalapenos started.

Got another few bags of wood chips for between the boxes, but other than that, all major projects are done. I'll get some new photos up once there's more stuff to take pictures of out there.

Done with construction

Finally finished the major construction projects over the weekend. I'm very happy with how things turned out. Really feels like a garden now. The only thing left is to put a latch on the gate.

Nearly finished

After a few more arduous days of work, I'm nearly finished with the construction of the new garden. Filled all the boxes, strung the grids, erected the trellises, layered wood chips between the boxes, and put up the fence. I still need to build a gate, but I'll save that for tomorrow.

Started my peppers a few days ago and will start my broccoli and cauliflower seeds tonight.

All in all, a pretty good couple weeks of work and things are really starting to come together.



Some may remember that I used $0.50 PVC elbows on my EMT trellises rather than the "proper" $5.00 ones. Well, after one season, they are holding up well. A couple popped off while moving them into storage, but they hammered back on without a problem and are holding well.

Filling boxes

I was able to partially fill the last four boxes on Sunday. Still have a little ways to go, but should be able to finish next weekend.

Also strung my grid strings on 2 of the new boxes and planted 4 squares of yellow onions. My parsley seedlings in the basement are beginning to germinate as well.

Rain

Spent several miserable hours in the cold, pouring rain this morning leveling and positioning the last boxes. Also started to fill them, but the weather began getting the better of me. I'm about 1/4 of the way done filling them. Probably need to make another run for manure/humus/compost to fill them. Hopefully the rain will let up a bit tomorrow so I can finish. I would have taken a picture but it was raining and blowing too hard. Maybe tomorrow.

Gathering supplies

Picked up some more bagged manure and made a run to my vermiculite supplier and bought 4 bags. Just need another load of manure and some peat and I'm ready to mix my soil.

Leveled three of my four new boxes. It was a bit of a pain, and they're not perfect, but it should do. I'm sure they'll settle a bit as the season wears on.

Also been messing around with my layout. I think I solved my trellis-shade problem by loading one rear box with tomatoes and either trellis the north row and stake the front, or run the trellis down the middle and grow them up either side. Regardless, I will not be trellising the row of boxes south of those boxes and either set some stakes or put up small trellises (2-3 ft long -- sun will penetrate to northern box) in a sort of ad-hoc fashion as I need them.

So far, I'm very pleased with the progress so far. Another solid weekend of work, and all the major projects will be done. I'm hoping I can even get some onion sets in in time. I had my doubts that I'd make it a couple weeks ago.