Garden at 9 days

In an attempt to keep myself focused on my garden this year, I'm going to try and keep a log of what I'm doing and the results I'm seeing. Hopefully this will also help guilt me into making sure that I keep checking up on the garden and taking care of it.

Well, we decided to move our raised beds up to a location that gets better sunlight as our vegetables last year just didn't get enough. All in all, it took me about 3 weekends to get the old bed moved up to the hill, leveled, and then build a second bed for planting. We ran out of dirt from cutting into the hill as the hill is a pretty steep one. I ended up putting in some old rubber mulch as a fill under the front bed. Therese and the kids helped me at various points, and I think the results are pretty good.

We're using the same method as last year from the Square Foot Gardening book, although I couldn't get the same vermiculite we used last year. I had to get the bigger, pearl-ized kind. I did find some nice, all vegetable compost called "Foothills" which I combined with some good old fashioned composted cow manure. Lots of changes this year, and hopefully will result in a good crop.

Close up view of a red cabbage sproutIt's been raining the past few days, and I haven't been able to get out to check on the beds much. Today I just couldn't stand it any more, so I went out and took a look. I was pleasantly surprised to find almost of my seeds have spouted. The lettuce and red and green cabbage sprouts look a bit like clover to me right now, and the spinach is just starting to peek through. The green onions apparently think it is a little too cold right now, so they haven't done much yet.

Planting bed showing some sprouts and dig marks from squirrelsIn the back bed, the squirrels have been digging around in the soil, so some of of the seeds have been disturbed. That's why I always follow my mom's advice which she got from my great grandmother on my mother's side. Granny Kate always used to say that when you plant seeds you plant one for you, one for the animals and bugs, and one for the Lord.

Today's conditions: Cloudy, High of 53°, with showers off and on.

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