Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today everyone's Irish, even those who woke up late and forgot to wear green.
Still nothing growing, but I watered under my "plank" and it appears the spinach seedlings have made a bit of a turnaround, looking better today than yesterday.
Anyway, nothing too much to talk about my garden, I was too busy to call Territorial, but I bet they're too busy with Spring approaching to get everything out in a timely fashion. I don't think I'll buy an "organic" potato from the store and use that. I don't trust that it won't have diseases that seed potatoes are guaranteed not to have.
Frankly, I was going to skip posting tonight since it's more of the same, checking blogs and forums, maybe researching something, but I found out I'm infamous! MUAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, it seems more than just my friends at Ft2Garden.com and GardenWeb look at my blahg. Someone actually received a newsletter (hopefully a gardening one) that mentioned both Judy's and my blogs. Whoever reported on us, please comment to let me know who it was. I'm flattered.
More importantly, I really hope new gardeners come here to find out what to do, and what not to do. I promise again that I'll make tons of mistakes, fix most of them, and STILL get a garden that neighbors will ooh and ahh over when all's said and done!
So let me know you're out there. Let me know what you like, don't like and want to hear about.
And thanks for reading, hope you are getting something out of it!
Newbie gardener here in GA, have a few tomato starters, and radishes on my window sill that I'm hoping to keep growing until its time to transplant, so I don't have to buy at the garden center last minute when DH thinks its a good idea. I don't have raised beds, or beds at all (bad sloping yard), just a couple containers on the deck that I'm hoping to expand. Anyway I'm watching and learning this year, and hope to get a bigger set of containers going next year! (just a little at a time for now!) Though I'm loving the idea of broccoli, cauliflower and pickling cucumbers -- lettuce tomatoes and herbs! :)
ReplyDeleteWelcome Grumpy! My favorite of the 7 dwarfs! And another 72 here! Hehe, if that means 1972, that would make three of us. Popular year.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, let me stress that I went really overboard with my design. I am a big proponent of Mel's advice to start small and then when the feeling overcomes you, you figure out a way to grow more. If this works for you, you could do a 4x4 bin next year and grow broccoli, cauliflower lettuce and herbs, all in the 16 SF you built. How cool is that?!?
As far as the sloping yard, if it's closer to \ than -- you might consider terracing it. One of my mother's best friends had a yard like that and cut out 10 foot terraces into her yard. Then she put raised beds on every terrace and grew everything from soup to nuts, so to speak. Of course that's going WAY WAY WAY overboard, but you do have options, especially if the slop faces northish.
Best of luck this growing season and if you can keep the seedlings growing without getting too leggy, then you're a better gardener than I! If you've read my comments from January and February, you'll know I'm not an indoor gardener yet.
Welcome!
Yup that's what the 72 is.... and BTW, I happened here from following links a few weeks ago from Gardenweb to GardenGirl's site and I've been reading your posts for the last week or so! Watching your progress. You are braver than I - for your volume!! I haven't killed the tomatoes yet, so I figure I'm doing okay... my 6 yr old is loving this green stuff growing on the sill, leggy or not, they still seem pretty compact, so I'll take my chances! Sadly(or maybe its gladly!), I don't plan to be on this particular plot of earth in a year or 2, so I don't want to do much to the yard - I do face north but there are too many trees and the HOA has an issue if you take them down - short of natural disaster! SO the growing isn't much good short of on the deck, so containers it will be for at least a year or 2. I need to get a tub and get a salad going in it!.... hmmm.... thoughts ever expanding!
ReplyDeleteWell Grumpy, I sure hope that you'll be moving to a better local in a few years and not losing your home to the credit woes that plague this country. But in your situation I'd do the exact same thing.
ReplyDeleteThat said, if you DO decide you want to expand and go with a raised bed, Mel's book has the perfect solution for you. It's temporary, or more so than my beds, but on page 183 of the 2006 edition he has a great alternative. You build the same 4x4 box but line the bottom with plywood that has holes drilled in it for drainage. That way, you can place it on your deck and not worry about all the dirt draining out.
You could even place it on bricks like your containers to help with the drainage if you don't have much in the way of spacing between the deck slats. Just a suggestion if you decide next year to expand in your current digs. Thank you for posting, I always love hearing from folks. It helps me know I'm not just writing to myself.