Here are the garlic bulbs I picked out of the garden tonight:

The garden is doing well… we got off to a rocky start when everything got killed by a late frost between April and May so I replanted from seed and some nursery grown plants. So far, the crop of the year award goes to the strawberries. I planted them last summer and they were successful in surviving the winter. We’ve been picking a few ripe ones here and there, but last night I got all these:

In the first box we have the strawberries, cabbage, cucumbers, and some romaine lettuce.

In the rear box are garlic (planted last year), pumpkin, squash, a bunch of different tomato varieties, hot peppers, and some herbs.

When I re-seeded after the frost had killed everything I was very generous with my tomato seeds. A lot more of them have sprouted up than there is room in the individual squares so in the next few days I plan on transplanting a few of them to other squares and seperate containers.

And finally a shot of one of the first tomatoes:

Today I took the girls with me and we picked up fresh compost from our local yard waste center. Every year they have a huge mound of the stuff and its free for the taking - black gold, as I often refer to it as - and so must others because the stuff goes rather quickly. I used it to replenish the soil that’s currently in our two box planters. I keep a mixture of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite as my soil. Got the recipe last year from here: squarefootgardening.com

They recommend a 1/3 mixture with all three components, but I’m probably heaviest on the compost, then the peat moss, and finally just a dusting of the vermiculite. That worked well for me last year. After adding everything in this evening I spent a few minutes tilling the soil and getting it nicely aerated.

I use the square foot method discussed on that site, but last year the twine that I used to create my squares disintegrated towards the end of the summer and just became a mess. I like the idea so this year I’ll try fishing line instead and see how that holds up through the season.

I also need to get a decent rabbit deterrent system in place. We have a family that lives under our shed, and the planter boxes are pretty much in the middle of their living room. It never really dawned on me last year that I should protect the plants, until one morning I discovered that the rabbits had taken a liking to the romaine and broccoli that we planted. At the time, I had just thrown together a very quick and dirty wire mesh fence around the one box and it did the trick, but this year I’d like to make something a little more sturdy and reusable.

The plants seem to be coming along nicely. I’ve transplanted most of the original batch of seedlings to larger cups. A few of the tomatoes and the broccoli have gotten tall enough now that they’re falling over, so I rolled up some paper around the cups to act as support for them. This was really just a quick and dirty way of adding support, and thinking more about it, I may add just add some chicken wire instead, so that I’m not limiting the amount of light hitting the plants and the soil. I did adjust the original light fixture, positioning it directly over the plants now, and added a 2nd light above the original tray that still has some stragglers in it.

It’s been over two weeks now and the seedlings are doing really well. I transplanted a few of the taller ones over to individual containers, just to give them a bit more breathing room and make it easier to transplant outside when it comes time to do so. Just about everything has sprouted at least one of its seeds, including an apple seed. For some reason only one of the banana pepper seeds has come up so I’m not sure what’s going on there. Oh, and no luck on any of the pear seeds yet.

Found this little guy on the side of our house just a few days ago. He’s only about 4 or 5 inches tall.

Wow… This was a bit unexpected. Two sets of the romaine seedlings have already germinated as well as one of the cucumbers…

My daughter and I sowed this year’s seeds in a starter tray this afternoon. I’ve got them sitting in my studio under a 75 watt fluorescent light bulb on a timer that will stay on for about 16 hours per day. If all goes well, in about 6 - 8 weeks they should be ready to be brought outside. The tray has a clear plastic dome lid that sits on top and is able to turn the thing into a mini greenhouse. I’m hoping I see a difference in these seedlings from the ones I started last year in just a simple foil tray without the enclosure. I also used a couple drops of Superthrive in my spray bottle and filled the tray liner with about 1/4″ of the water/Superthrive mixture.

Of the seeds I kept from last year, we added the cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and the cucumbers. I’ve got two other varieties of tomatoes in there as well as another cucumber. I probably didn’t need to start the cucumbers at all, seeing as how last year when I first tried my hand at this, I threw them into the containers outside around May and was picking huge fruit just a couple months later. There’s also broccoli, romaine lettuce, and banana peppers in there. Of the herbs I wanted to try this year we added basil, parsley, and rosemary.

I started looking through and sorting the seeds for our garden this year. Over the holidays I had picked up a handful from Burpee, but I also kept some from last year’s yield. The last frost around here should be somewhere between the end of April and beginning of May so getting them started indoors this week should give them plenty of time to sprout and get situated. For giggles, I recently kept some pear and apple seeds to see if I can get them to grow. The likelihood of them growing is probably slim, and even if they do, the likelihood of the trees bearing fruit is even slimmer… regardless, it’ll be fun to see what happens.