New plants!

We visited Earthfest 2013 today and found an awesome variety of veggie plants from local farms that were too good of a deal to pass up. Only problem with this type of shopping..... I don't have any space in the garden to plant them! The onion and garlic we planted in the box to overwinter is not ready to harvest yet, and its taking up the last bit of space that I was going to turnover and plant tomatoes in. "No worries," says the hubby, "we'll just make another box" ;) lol
So, a few hours of planning, drilling, and dirt later, we have a new box for the tomatoes!

We added posts to the front that are the same height as the fence to give us support for the bird netting that we found last year is a mandatory protection from our flying visitors. This will allow me to drape the netting across the posts and fence so it doesn't hang too close to the tomato plants.

We got 12 tomato plants, 2 basil plants, and a thyme plant for just $20! I learned last year how much Basil really does, and plan to keep it with my tomatoes from now on! I planted it in between the tomatoes last year, the plants all grew huge and we had far fewer bugs and pests than previous years. This year I'm trying to get into more perennial herbs as well, so the thyme will be a great addition to the variety of herbs I've already got going this year. Here's hoping I can keep up! Going to be a great year for gardening!

Spring veggie garden!

Talking to my family back home in Idaho reminds me of how lucky we are here in East Tennessee to have such warm weather. Sure, I won't be feeling that way when July hits, but right now I've got most of my garden already planted, and my cousin reported Idaho Falls had snow this weekend!
This year we're trying to maximize space and get more out of our garden. Sure, we plan to add a few things, I want to put in blueberries and some more rain barrels and he wants a garden shed so he doesn't have to see all my tools ;) but I also wanted to see how much we could get out of the boxes we already have. So I did some reading this winter on square foot gardening, and laid out a grid in the big box to try it out. We planted arugula, mesclun, romaine, iceburg, spinach, dill, cilantro, broccoli, and carrots in the middle of the box. The onions and garlic that we planted to overwinter are still growing in the other levels, but as soon as they're ready to pull we'll add tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers!

I know, it looks like dirt right now, but with a little sunshine and water, a few weeks from now we'll have a backyard produce section! :)

Composting Experiment - Small Sucesses

Wow how time flies! One minute you're fighting cabin fever while you wait for spring, the next you log on and realize you haven't posted anything since February! So much to catch up with!
For this post lets talk about dirt. Or compost really, but eventually it becomes dirt and anyone that knows me knows how much I love to play in the dirt :)
So I'm calling my composting experiment a success! The freestanding barrel that rotates didn't do as well as I hoped, but with all the freak cold weather we've had and my lack of care, it still made some usable compost, so yippie! It's been refilled and I've renewed my vow to take better care of it (now that its warm and I want to be outside more...).
The wood compost bin did great, it decreased in size by about 1/3 and had some really rich compost that I've dug out and used to plant the garden. Used all of it to be exact, so I'll have to hunt for some more materials to fill it, but that shouldn't be too hard to find.

 The black plastic composter seemed to have some success too! The pile has decreased in size, it's about a foot lower than it started out, but I haven't needed it yet so no word on how the contents turned out ;)

So I seemed to have the most compost in the shortest time from the wood composter that was open to the weather all winter long. Interesting. But probably more a factor of my inclination to forget it when its cold outside and less the type of bin. The others probably would have done better with some turning and water....
So that give me my next experiment! Now if I can just remember to turn it every few days....I'll keep you posted!