Wind, Wind Go Away!

The wind was blowing today as I tried to plant some seeds.  Luckily, I didn't lose any.

As you can see, my SFG is full of Mel's Mix and it has a grid.  So, off I went this afternoon to plant some seeds.

Here's my SFG filled with Mel's Mix and ready for planting.

Planting my bush bean seeds.

Hopefully this little guy will yield a lot of yummy beans for munching on this summer.


Besides the bush beans, I also planted broccoli, carrots, mini head lettuce, leaf lettuce and spinach.  I have bunch onions, cooking onions, leeks, eggplant and sugar pumpkin seedlings in the house waiting to be hardened off and planted in the SFG.  I also have some pepper and cucumber seedlings that I will be planting in upside down hanging planters.  I'll buy a tomato plant from the nursery and plant that in another upside down hanging planter.  There are 30 strawberry plants here waiting to be planted into a fourth upside down hanging planter too.  I'll post pics of these planters after I have them planted.

I gave my seeds a drink and tucked them in for the night.  I can't wait for some sprouts to pop up!

The Box is Built! Now where did I put those seeds???

First off, let me introduce myself.  My name is Kimberly and I live in Ontario, Canada.  I have two beautiful daughters (2 1/2 and 9 months) and a wonderful husband that supports my crazy ideas.  My latest "crazy idea" is to build a square foot garden and grow my own vegetables.  I'm trying to eat healthier and save some money, so why not?  Plus, it is a great way to teach my oldest daughter (and the youngest eventually) that carrots grow in the ground, not in the freezer section of the grocery store.

I learned about the square foot gardening method from Mel Bartholomew.  You can check out his website here:  http://www.squarefootgardening.com/.  I also recommend his book: All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space.  It's very informative.

Anyhow, back to my square foot garden (SFG).  Who knew it would be so hard to find vermiculite?  You would figure that it would be easy to find.  Nope!  I called around to local garden centres and finally found a source.  Whew!  Now I can make my "Mel's Mix".  Mel's Mix is a combination of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 blended compost.  I used sheep, cattle and shrimp compost mixed together and plan to start my own compost this summer so I can use that in my garden next year.  But that's a whole other can of worms! (no pun intended)

The next step was to build the box.  This is where my husband comes in.  He spent the whole afternoon today building me a beautiful 3x4 foot box.

Isn't it amazing?  I think he did a great job!

Now all I have to do is fill it with my Mel's Mix, put on the grid and start planting!  Wish me luck that there's no rain tomorrow so I can get some planting done!