Chapter 146...Our Annual Trip To The Greenhouse..How Exciting

My stepdaughter and I wait for this day every year.  It has become our tradition.  Each year we make a day of doing plant shopping for our gardens and then we go out for lunch.  It is a fun filled day for us.  There is nothing quite like picking the food you will plant and then get to harvest it.

We live near a small town and we have some great options for buying our plants.  The local High School has their own greenhouse and the students grow the plants from seed.  We used to always go there first but last year they raised their prices which I think hurt them.  We also have a huge Garden Barn which has multiple greenhouses and a very large variety of plants including vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers.  Their prices are great.  The vegetable and fruit plants come in 4 packs that are $1.50 each and the 4 1/2 inch pots of herbs and flowers are $3.00 each.

Every year I get excited and buy more than I have on my list.  How can you not get excited when you see this?:)


Some of the flowers:

And some of the fruits and vegetables.  I love how organized they are.  The plants have signs with all the information you need to care for them.

I plant a square foot garden which is a raised bed garden with a special soil mix.  The first year I mixed the special soil which is 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 mixed compost.  After the first year I add a little more compost each year.  I have my garden sectioned off into squares and have 108 squares I can fill.

I use a planting guide to figure out where and when I will plant my plants.  This is what I use to help plan my garden Garden Planner

I have already planted lettuce, spinach, peas, kale, mustard greens, carrots and collard greens from seed.

These are the plants I bought:

Today I bought 20 different tomato plants.  I got Mike's favorite "Sweet 100" which he likes to eat right off the vine like sweet candy.  He does have to be careful though because he gets a rash on his hands from the acid if he eats too much.

I also bought some Roma paste tomatoes which are good for canning.

And for the first time I am trying Grainger tomatoes from the famous Grainger County tomatoes in TN. Tomato Festival and One Of The Local Tomato Farms 

Then I bought three 4 packs of peppers.  One pack of California Wonder which is a big green bell pepper, one pack of Golden California Wonder, and a pack of Purple Beauty.

I also wanted to try a Sweet Pickle Pepper plant which I thought would look cheery and colorful. Picture Of Plant.

The last of the food growing plants I got was two Yellow Squash and two Zucchini.

Now for the herbs:

I bought a Basil plant.  This year I am hoping not to kill it.  I have bought a Basil plant each year for the past few years.  I kill them every year.  I think I may be overwatering the plants.  This year I will do my best not to kill it, lol.

Next I bought a Stevia Plant.  This is natural low calorie sweetener.  What Is Stevia.  My stepdaughter has been using the leaves in her herbal teas and she really likes it.  This year we will both try to grow our own.  You can dry the leaves and use it as a sweetener, grind it up and add it to foods and drinks or make an extract from it.

And lastly I bought a Dwarf Lavender for the scent and also to attract bees to my garden.

Flower Time:

Although I love flowers I have not gotten onto growing them...yet.  I bought some in hopes of attracting bees to my garden but also using a limited space.

I bought a Dahlia and a pack of Zinnias.

And now for the plant which I think is really pretty.  It is sold in a hanging basket for $17.50 and is beautiful.  I figured I already spent enough money so I bought the small version and will try to grow my own for this season.  It is called a "Sunbeam Samba" or Fuchsia.  This is what it should look like when it grows in.  Picture  I want to plant this in a hanging basket on our patio to attract hummingbirds.

I think my stepdaughter and I both scored today and I'm sure our plants will bring us many hours of enjoyment in our gardens and of course consuming them.  There is nothing quite like eating the food you have grown.

Chapter 134....Gardening for 2012

Hello everyone.  I am caught up on old stories.  Now I will start new ones each week.  I will write a new story on Monday and on Thursdays I will write a "Tasty Thursday" story which will be something about food.  If Mike and I get really busy I will add more stories:) Please subscribe to our blog so you don't miss any updates:)


Now for today's story which is a recap of my square foot garden for last year.  This year I have big plans for my garden and I will also be planting fruit trees and blueberry bushes.  I am very excited about producing more food:)

I originally chose to do a square foot garden for the ease of it.  With our ever changing life and projects I thought this would be a good idea. It is very easy for a beginner gardener, your soil quality doesn't matter because you mix your own, and it doesn't require much weeding.

April 14

Geting ready to add more compost.  I really need to start my own compost pile.

My new raised bed for the strawberry plants I ordered from the 4-H.

April 23
My new plants:).  Since my house is off grid and I have so few windows I can't start my own tomatoes and peppers.  Their seeds can't be planted directly into the ground so I need those plants.  Each year my stepdaughter and I go to the local High School where they sell plants for a very good price.  This year we were so excited to go to the High School but when we got there they changed the way they have been doing things for years.  They were only selling larger plants at twice the price.  Since we have more than a month before we can plant them in the garden this would not work.  We were very disappointed but we did go to the local Garden store and found our plants there:)

This is the first year I planted lettuce and spinach.  It is an early crop so I was happy not to have to wait.

May 6
My little spinach coming up.

I also planted some peas and used tomato cages to help them stay supported.

My strawberry plants.

May 18
The weather has been warm so I added my tomato plants and also added string for my green(pole) beans to grow on.

Some extra plants.  Once again I bought to many.  I just can't seem to resist,  Mike says I would turn the whole back yard onto a garden if I could.  So...what's wrong with that, lol.

The peas are blooming.

May 26

I think I have every available square filled:)

And then some.  It seems I ran out of room so I went into our building to look for some scrap lumber.  I found some boards, grabbed the drill and screws and added on to my garden, lol.  Mike says I'm nuts.

Look at that beautiful lettuce:)

June 26

My pole beans are doing well.  I am training them to climb up the string.  I am never happy with my pole bean trellises.  Some day I have to come up with the perfect solution.  Any ideas????

The yellow squash, zucchini and peas are doing well.

June 28

This is the first time I tried to train my cucumbers to grow vertically.  They are pretty heavy so you have to make sure they are tied to the string until they are long enough to wrap around themselves.  This worked well.

Uh oh....I hate when the cows are behind my garden.

Oh and you can see the Japanese Beetle bag in the above picture.  Here is where you can find them, Link.  They really do help on the amount of Japanese Beetles that used to eat my pole bean leaves.  I will have another one this year although they are pretty gross to empty.



July 5

My cucumbers are doing great:):)

The squash is really coming along.

At some point right after these pictures the cows reached over the back fence and pulled out all of my pole beans.  I was not happy with the cows that day to say the least.


Even so I had a lot of food from my garden.  I made a lot of zucchini bread and even canned yellow squash relish and zucchini relish for the first time.  My friends loved the zucchini relish.  I really liked the yellow squash relish especially on hot dogs:)  This year I plan to have more food and get more food canned up.




Yesterday was actually the first day for 2013 that I got to play in my garden.  I turned it all up and got it ready for new plants and seeds.  I will be planting some lettuce and spinach this week.

Mike and I have also started working around the property during the good weather breaks.  Soon we will be working full force and we can't wait:):)


Have a wonderful week and I will write again on Thursday and next Monday.

Chapter 66...My Square Foot Garden..2

Off Grid...Chapter...66 Hi all. I am posting more pictures and an update on my Square Foot Garden. I have never done any gardening before so if anyone sees something I should be aware of please let me know. I made my first garden on 5/16/09 and planted beans and cukes. On 5/24/09 I planted my peppers and tomatoes. Garden is sprouting on 5-27-09. I thinned out my beans to 9 per square foot as recommended by the SFG book. On 6/1/09 I had some questions about my cucumber seeds because I seemed to have too many. I wrote in and asked about that and I was told to trim them back. Here they are trimmed back. On 6-6-09 my DH helped me build another garden bed. We used some leftover wood from our solar panel mounts. Here is a 3x10 bed. I am very excited about being able to plant the rest of my plants. We moved the bed into a different area. Hopefully it will stay here permanently and next year we will add one more the same size. I might fence it off so the plants have a built in climbing support. My DH is dumping in some fertile dirt to help me build up the bed. Next I put the weed cloth in. Then I dump the ingredients for the special soil mix on a tarp. Here I am mixing it all together. And now the fun part. I planted the almost all of the rest of my veggies. I planted 3 kinds of peppers, 4 kinds of tomatoes, 2 summer squash, and 1 zucchini plant. Here is my new garden. I am very excited and I will be happy if 1/2 of my veggies produce. If they all produce come on over and help me out. I will post another update when things start growing. I am finding out that I don't have the patience for gardening. I want everything "now", lol. But I have to wait about 60 days just like everyone else, lol.