Gardening progress ... and setbacks

Today was a big day in the day of my vegetable garden. Last night we bought all the stuff we needed to put together my three boxes. I decided to do 1 4'x4' box and 2 4'x2' boxes, as I needed space in the 'back' rows for climbing plants.

This afternoon Peter started cutting the wood and assembling the boxes while Nathan and I mixed the soil. The square foot garden book calls for a very specific mixture of 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost / composted manure, and 1/3 peat moss. The measurements are supposed to be done by volume, but the only thing I could find sold that way was the peat moss. The other two I had to estimate based on the size of the bag. Nathan had a great time helping me mix (after we were done I saw the book said not to let kids play on it as it will crush the vermiculite particles ... oops!)

As we were doing this I remembered that my grandfather's garden always had these little white specks in it. As a kid I thought it was just fertilizer, but I wonder if he used vermiculite, too. I'll have to ask him next time I call.

I attached landscape fabric to the bottom of all the boxes. I left the front row of the 4x4 box open on the bottom as I plan to grow carrots, garlic, and onions in it. Here is one of the 2x4 boxes before it was filled.


And here are my three boxes all filled and ready for their 12"x12" grids to be attached. That will be a project for another day - hopefully sometime this week.


I can't wait to start planting!! I bought some onion bulbs that are supposed to grow into green onions last night, so I'll plant those asap. I'm also going to try planting some garlic soon, even though I know it should have been planted in the fall.

I want to keep track of how my seed starting goes, so here is the setup I am using right now and what is happening at the moment:

Nathan pulled up all my plants I had started from before :( so I'm counting that a total loss even though I am still caring for some of them to see what happens. My system right now is to put seeds on damp paper towel on a cookie sheet until I see roots. As soon as roots appear I fill a Jiffy pot about 3/4 full with seed starter mix, wet it, add a couple of seeds, add a bit of seed starter on top, and re-water. I really do not like the seed starter soil. I find the water just pools on top or runs straight out the bottom. It is really hard to get the soil a good 'damp-ness.'

So ... April 14th on paper towel I started:
- chives
- tomatoes
- peppers
- green onions (just as an experiment - counting on the bulbs for actual onions)
- parsley
- rosemary
- lettuce
- broccoli

April 15th:
- transplanted 4 lettuce pots (a few seeds in each) as roots were breaking out of seeds

April 17th:
- transplanted 2 pots of broccoli
- transplanted 2 pots of green onions (from seed)
- transplanted 1 pot of chives
- lettuce shoots visible in 2 pots (not sure if this is good or bad - they are among the ones Nathan played with)

My plan for the herbs is to keep them indoors (transferring them to bigger pots once they are big enough). The lettuce I'm going to try and put outdoors once it gets big enough - the book says it can be transplanted outdoors up to 5 weeks before the last frost (that would be this week). Broccoli and green onions will also be hardened off and transplanted outside when they are big enough. At least, those are my thoughts right now ...