Modern Gardening « it's just an observation

Catching Up

Posted on 22nd June 2011 by toothrough in Modern Gardening |Random Thoughts

Since my husband wants to finish watching the “A-Team” movie tonight, I have a bit of time to play catch up with my blogging. Since I left you, birds and/or squirrels have killed our purple and yellow bell peppers, we’ve been on vacation, and I actually got out to see a current movie! I know what you’re thinking – big things have been going on over here right? lol

I also was involved in an “altercation” we’ll say over on eonline. I was expressing my dislike of the movie “A Christmas Story” (in a thread about movies/shows you hate mind you!) and a guy over there who loves that movie got mad about my rant and said I was both unintelligent and irrational. Wow right? Ease up dude, just because I don’t like your stupid movie doesn’t mean you have to resort to name calling – dick! Anyway, I took the high road and ignored him the first time while some of the other cool people on the page took him to task for being a grinch essentially. Then he came back with a worse comment about my intelligence and I was DONE! I had to put him in his place with the quickness so he could see just how intelligent I could be. Sigh… some people.

Let’s see what else happened? I hurt my pinky toe (today) and my kids are driving me CRAZY.

Our First Garden – Day 1

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Posted on 23rd May 2011 by toothrough in Modern Gardening

Over the Winter we decided a good project for the kids this year would be a garden. We also thought it might get them to try some new veggies since they had a hand growing them. So off I went, on the recommendation of a gardening friend, to find the “All New Square Foot Garden” by Mel Bartholomew. I delved into the book immediately and loved the idea. Mel thinks he’s a little funnier than I do but the basics were there.

Once Spring was on the way, we priced out the wood and picked up all the compost, vermiculite, and peat moss to become accomplished gardeners. Of course by this time we had also become lazy gardeners and completely flaked on pre-starting peppers, broccoli, and tomatoes 12 weeks before the last frost. I mean really, how am I supposed to predict the last frost in THIS area? Anyway, cut to warmer weather and my loving husband building our boxes.

1st of 3 Gardening Boxes

2nd of 3 Gardening Boxes

Carrot Boxes

Next up was actually putting together “Mel’s Mix”. Clearly we didn’t anticipate the massive pile this mix would make in advance or we would have bought a bigger tarp. That was a lot to mix on our deck to try to keep on our teeny tiny tarp but we did it. First was the compost – four different types of compost to be exact. Then came the vermiculite and last but not least the peat moss.

4 Types of Compost

Lots of Vermiculite

Peat Moss

Then we mix. And mix. And mix until we get this:

Mel's Mix, mixed

Now it’s time to get that mix into the boxes. Where are our little helpers? There they are with their little spades to fill the carrot boxes. By the time they got those boxes filled, they were over this experience and wanted to go in and have snacks. Sigh…