Plans Have Changed ~

So we were putting together some costs for this weekends project of getting the beds together.

If we get the rototiller, that's $45 flat for the day. Then we have to buy top soil to mix in with the stuff that was rototilled... and that's about $6-$7 a bag. For three 5 x 10 beds, I'm thinking we are going to need a lot of bags. Or we can buy a ton of dirt for $45 that's been screened and mixed with a fertilizer, but with the rototilled dirt and a ton of dirt... that's way too much dirt for those beds... and I don't want a pile of dirt just laying around in my backyard. Out of the 4 kids, I'm sure 3 of them would try to bury the 4th one and that would just be all bad. This way I'm looking at $90 to get the beds ready.

So here's my though... why til at all? According to Bartholemew, the SFG God, we can use 6" of soil (of course, his special mix is what he recommends) in the beds and grow what we like without messing with the rototiller. So $45 for the ton of top-soil and then assemble the beds. I think one ton will do the trick and I can fill the beds 8 inches with that (if I did my gutinzas right --- goes-in-tas --- Beverly Hillbilly terminology for ya right there!) and I'll be done at half the cost and 3/4 less manual labor for Andy. I might help put the beds together, but you won't find me anywhere near the scene when he's got to wheelbarrow dirt from the truck to the backyard lol. I'll have some family emergency that I'll have to tend to, or sprain my ankle, or be in the middle of dying my hair or something... but I won't be out there!

According to my google calculations on tons to cubic feet to cubic yards... I'm going to need 0.33 ton of top-soil for each bed. Fancy that, I have 3 beds! So exactly a ton should fill my 5 x 10 beds 8" deep with top-soil. If not, I'll buy more. I still can't believe it's only $45 actually. I wonder if there's a catch in there somewhere that I don't know about.

So, that leaves me an extra $45 (from the rototiller that we aren't going to rent now) to get more garden stuff lol. Woo hoo! This next trip to Lowe's is already going to cost a fortune. We've got to buy a wheelbarrow, shovel, rake, sheers, a hose, and whatever other fancy gadgets I can find that I can't live without. Being that we just moved from an apt to a house, we don't already have this stuff. I'm probably going to get more peat pellets, but this time I'll just get the pellets b/c I already have the trays. Believe me, I've been looking on Craigslist for stuff too and I'm just not finding anything.

That reminds me... I need to call on that wheelbarrow I found yesterday!

More later...

Pics of my peats

Here's one of the 16-pellet trays that seems to be doing very well. It amazes me how much growth there is from one day to the next. That messy ole 72-pellet tray in the in the background... I hope it survives :(

There's my garlic sprout. There are 4 of them so far. I'm like a new mommy. I love this game!

Peat or Pete? That is the question...

Last night I put all three peat pellet trays on the stove, and the 72-pellet tray closest to the little fluorescent light on the back panel. No more moldly looking junk, but for Pete's sake, still no sprouting. The other little guys in the 16-pellet trays look healthy and growing right along. Their little sprouts moved toward the light overnight, like they were all raising their hands at a concert, it was cute.

So I rotated them and I'm waiting until the sun heats up the yard a little more before I move them closer to the slider door. I might even sneak them outside for a bit, especially that 72-pellet one to dry it up a little bit. I'm going to get that diluted peroxide spray bottle ready just in case...

ACK! I've Got the Peat Pellet Blues

Ok so I'm all excited this morning about my peat pellets! Growth was happening and I nearly peed my pants. I CAN grow stuff!

Well, this afternoon, I ran into my first gardening quirk and I'm only three days into this gardening thing. Not a fantastic beginning lol. Experiment I keep chanting... Experiment!

About 4ish I'm looking at the third peat pellet thingy (this one has 72 in it, but the others have much larger pellets and there are only 16 pellets to the tray) and there appears to be some white/grey mold stuff on the tops of my pellets. No growth on those, just moldy looking stuff. It's almost like a fuzz. I don't want FUZZ! I want healthy little green sprouts!

Being the google whore that I am, I searched and searched for what this could be. So far it boils down to this:

1) I've over-watered and kept the stupid dome on too long (it's only been like 3 days)

2) That white/grey stuff is actually germination

3) They were just crap to begin with and I should toss them out and start over!

I think what I'm going to do is take off the dome and put that tray in a warmer place. I don't have fluorescent lights in the house (might invest this weekend) so I'll have to stick this tray closer to the slider door to get more sunlight too.

Then if something doesn't sprout in the next day or so and that moldy looking stuff is still there, I read to spray with hydrogen peroxide diluted in water to kill it.

If that doesn't work, I'm going to toss this batch (salvage any that I can) and start over with the bigger peat pellets that I haven't had a problem with. This kind of pissed me off to say the least. The 16-pellet trays are doing wonderfully... why o why is this 72-pellet tray giving me the blues!?!?

I'll take a picture in the morning so I can monitor their progress. Hopefully I'll be able to save these little guys. Time for bed. I'll probably have nightmares about the peat pellet blues! :(

My first sprout sprout!

I'm so excited! I got up this morning and my Brussels sprout has sprouted. There are like four of them sprouting so far! I couldn't be more proud of my babies!

Andy is getting the rototiller this weekend, and we are expecting a freeze on Sunday. So that should help kill weeds before we get the garden all planted.

I talked to a friend in a chat room I visit too! She lives in Texas and gave me some good advise. Apparently she's been gardening for years and I didn't have a clue! It's great, I have a friend who gardens. All of my local friends just think I'm nutzo for doing this, but when I hand them veggies by the basket because I have too many, we'll see what they have to say then! HA!

I need to do more research on the shredded paper for mulch idea. She told me that as long as it has already decomposed that it would be okay for the garden. I'm going to see what I can find out about that with my trusty googling. (I'm such a google nerd!)

Anyway, just had to show off my sprout sprout! I've got seeds left over from almost everything I started indoors, so if my experiment fails and they don't do well this way, I'm still planning on planting a lot of things straight from seed into the garden.

Shredded paper for mulch

Wowza! Talk about a great idea... and cheap! Andy said he might be able to get us a couple big ole bags of shredded paper from his job so we can mulch the garden. I was worried about that, b/c everything I've read says in Oklahoma it's crucial to mulch and mulch good! I'll read up a little more and see if paper is really a good idea, but so far it's a GREAT one according to me. It's FREE!

Scarecrow!

Andy came up with a fun idea for the kids to enjoy as well. He wants to put a scarecrow in the garden. I think it's a great idea. We are going to hit the thrift stores this weekend and see if we can get him some clothes and all the essentials for creating him.

I've never really made a scarecrow, so I googled, lol. I'm a google fanatic! I have my list of supplies ready! We'll get all the stuff this weekend and next weekend when we have all the kids here, we'll put him together. I'm even thinking about sewing his face on instead of just using a marker. And I think I can get leaves from Nikki's flowerbed that I saw piled in there yesterday for the stuffing. Woo hoo! I'm excited. The kids will have a blast. I'll put up pictures when he's done.

Andy is supposed to get the rototiller on Friday evening and plow away Saturday. Then we'll put together the beds in the yard, put up the scarecrow and see what it looks like. I even mentioned to Andy about painting the beds before we put them in the garden. He was all gung-ho about it and told me to just get the paint and he'd do it! What a handyman he's turned out to be! I'm lovin' this! I just plan things and he puts it all together for me! What a fun game LOL!

Well here goes nothing!

Let's begin with some history. I was raised primarily in California, but when I was 13, I was transplanted to Oklahoma. We moved from the city to 4 acres in the middle of no where... Seminole, Oklahoma. Talk about culture shock! After a month or so in the sticks, I learned to embrace the idea of being in the country.

My most fond memories are of the garden my mom worked so hard on. I hated having to go out there and water the dang thing, but she sure did put a lot of work into it. She even got some brick from the brick plant in the next town and made walkways and aisles. It was very pretty and I sure did love all the fresh veggies. We even had a peach tree up closer to my aunts house on the same property. Man o man, there is nothing better than fresh peach cobbler. At 14 I was picking peaches and whipping up a cobbler for the family. I've always had a thing for cooking, and there was something so rewarding about cooking from your own garden.




Anyway, since my high school days, we've all moved away from Seminole and gone our separate ways. In fact, I'm the only one in my family left in Oklahoma. This is home to me and I love it here. You get to experience all four seasons and their beauty.




So fast forward about 20 years and here I am in Yukon, Oklahoma (just west of Oklahoma City) with my own family. I met a wonderful man almost a year ago and we are building our life together. I've moved out of the apt I was in for about 5 years and we rented a house. Between the two of us we have four kids... and I'm not sure we are stopping there! We are a big family and we love to cook... and we LOVE to eat! LOL




The house is just the perfect size for us (until we complete our 5-year plan lol) and move back to the sticks! The back yard is really big for a city yard and I was thinking about what I could do with all that space. Now of course, we've got kids from 2 to 15, so yard toys and swingsets are a must! But that doesn't nearly fill up my yard. A garden! That would be beautiful, a penny saver at the grocery store and something the whole family could enjoy. Done deal! I'm sold! Now what?!?!




Ok, so over the past couple of weeks I've been playing with garden plans and doing a lot of research on the internet about gardening in Oklahoma. Boy howdy there is a lot of things to know about such a simple idea! I've spent countless hours looking at gardening sites. My love comes out of the room in the middle of the night to check on me from time to time to make sure I haven't fried my brain. I think he's actually jealous of the computer at this point lol.




In my research, I've run across the SFG (square foot gardening) sites and recommendations everywhere. Everything that I've found says it's less work, more fruitful and nice to look at. I decided that would be the way for us to go. Andy is gone to work all day and I work from home and take care of two small children during the day. I also go to school one night a week as well. So it's not like we are a retired couple who can devote an inordinate amount of time to gardening.




Andy and I decided to make a trip to Lowe's to see what we could see. I just wanted to get some seeds and look at the wood so we could get some plans together for the raised beds. HA! We ended up buying everything we needed that day. We decided on 5 x 10 foot beds and we will start out with three of them. We decided to place them in the back of the backyard, and then if we want to put another bed or two back there in the future, we'd still have the space for it. We got all the seeds and peat pellet starter kits, wood, brackets and a bag of soil so I could start my strawberry crowns in buckets too.




Now... it appears we have jumped in with both feet and have no clue what we are doing. Gardening can't be that hard right? LOL. I look at it this way... I've read up on a lot of how to do this and I'm going to take the bull by the horns and run with it. Trial and error. Of all the things we bought to grow, we are bound to get something out of the garden.




The only real drawback for me is that I'm not a rule follower. I can't even follow a recipe without changing the ingredients and altering everything until I'm happy. I've read all the plans and how-to's and the best way for maters according to Jim, and Tim's rules on brussel sprouts, and what fertilizer works best for Martha... but I'm never going to find out how I want to do this until I try it.




So here's what we are going to do...we are going to take this backyard





and we are going to take this wood...

and we are going to build some raised beds. Andy will til up the land back there in 5 x 10 plots and then we'll put the beds down. Then he's going to get me some good soil and we'll mix it with the tilled up ground to make some good dirt for growin' some goodies. I'm not going to test the soil, and I'm not going to freak out about the pH balance and such. I'm just going to wing it and see what happens.

Here's another alteration I'm making to gardening. I'm starting everything from seed in the house with peat pellets and then I'm going to transplant it. I know a lot of things don't transplant well, and if I lose some veggies in the process, I'll know for sure that I shouldn't do that. Trial and error I tell ya! This is as much an experiment as it is a project I seems lol.

So I've got everything started in my peat pellet casings... we are trying corn, bush beans, spinach, tomaters, cukes, squash, zucchini, okra, sunflowers, garlic, onions, bell peppers, hot peppers, radish, carrots and even some brussel sprouts. We opted for bush beans instead of pole beans mostly because I didn't want to mess with trellises. I know I'm going to have to design something for my brussel sprouts and tomaters, but I'll deal with that when I get there. I'll definitely get something in ground before I transplant my goodies, but for today... it's not on my to-do list. I'm still decided if I want to paint my raised beds or not. I've seen some really pretty pictures of ones with plain white on them and I like that. I might do a sunshine yellow or something. My house is white and yellow and I think it might look purty. We'll see if I get that hair or not lol.

Right now, I'm just playing the waiting game. Waiting on Andy to get my raised beds together and waiting for my peat pots to sprout. I may have started too early for some of the stuff... but it's an experiment I tell ya! I'll learn the hard way what NOT to do.

My biggest concern right now is how many of the little boogers to transplant per sq foot. I'm in the middle of designing my bed layout as we speak. I think I'll put the corn, bush beans and squash in one bed... read something about companion gardening and it makes sense. If it worked for the Native Americans for all these years, surely I can do something similar.

From what I've read there is a lot of controversy on how many stalks of corn can grow in a sq foot. I'm thinking I'll put 2 in there and see what happens. I've read about 1 per sq foot up to 4 in that tiny space. I'm thinking I'll put the corn right in the middle and then surround them with the beans and squash. I'm not a tall lady, but I'm sure I'll be able to reach the corn lol. Ok maybe not completely sure, but Andy can get to it if I can't LOL.

The maters I'm thinking need their own squares, and I've got a lot of maters! That might swallow up a whole bed by itself. Ugh! Maybe I'll do half in one bed and half in the last bed. That might be better.

Man, now that I'm trying to put my layout on paper, it seems I might need one more bed lol. I'll talk to Andy about that one. He's my bed putter togetherer. Lucky for me he likes to put on the hard hat and tool belt! I think it's more of the male macho drive and building something than anything else... As long as I have the beds I need I'm good lol.

So... back to the waiting game (and planning the layout). We'll see what happens!