GREEN Part 2: Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

GREEN, Part 2: Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

 

 

It's been quite some time from when I started part 1 of this mini blog series, partially because I was a bit busy, but mainly because I haven't done that much.

 

In the spring, I had great expectations of coming home from a run or bike ride and working on the garden.  But then I always seemed to be behind on things or have something going on in the evening.  Plus, I really didn't know what to do after I planted the seeds.  

But, I (and Steve) have done a few things since May:

One:  I bought my organic seeds at Krieger's and did some planting!  I had to pick plants that only needed part sun, so I went with: kale, chives, parsley, and cilantro.  I also ended up buying some tomato seeds, but I don't know if that is going to grow as they really need full sun.

Two- Not knowing how often I needed to water the plants, I started to water them.  However, in the past month or so, we have had enough rain every week where I haven't had to worry about it.  (If I ever do become a gardener, I may invest in a rain barrel.)

Three- Once we has a few plants starting to sprout, we put the chicken wire around the garden box! Otherwise the deer would have gobbled everything up.  We still did this a bit late however, as a certain furry 4 legged, black, white, and grey creature with, lucky for her, and adorable face, decided to play in the garden box and scattering some of the seeds.


It's tiny, but there is something growing!

This required me taking yet another trip to Home Depot to buy more stakes.  (We only bought 1 at first, not really knowing what we needed it for.  As it turns out, we needed one for each side of the box- I should probably insert a "duh" here.)

Then came the fun part of cutting the chicken wire to wrap around the stakes...it was not that easy.  (I am determined to believe it was not the lack of strength in my hands, but a dull blade.) 

This is where I came to my dilemma.  I couldn't get the silly chicken wire to stay straight as I was trying to wrap it around the stakes, meaning it would crush the precious few sprouts we had growing.  So, I laid it down and waited for Steve to come home :)

Eventually, we got it done! Steve isn't exactly happy with it as it's not the nicest looking thing in the world, but after checking out other people's gardens and their fences, ours really isn't that bad.


Pacer checking out what we were doing outside without her...





 

After a few weeks of not doing much, I had some things growing. The problem was that I didn't know what was a plant and what was a weed, so I left it for another few weeks. 

(The big green thing in the corner is an organic mint plant...I totally should have bought all plants for my first time around.)


 

This leads me to step four- weeding.

 

I still really wasn't exactly sure what I was growing, but I had an idea at least of what were weeds at this point.  So I pulled those out, tried one plant that I was fairly sure wasn't a weed, found out it was cilantro and tasted pretty good, and dug out my note card that I had written earlier that told me what should be growing where.

 

I'm pretty sure at the far right end of the box I have some kale growing, though I think it should be bigger by now.  A few of the leaves looked like they had some bug damage, so I made a small spray of water with dish soap to spray on them.                                                                  Then I figured I might as well use up the leftover seeds in the packets I had to fill up some holes.  Whether they grow or not, I figured it wouldn't hurt as the seeds would be no good in a year.

 
 

And from here, I will continue hoping and praying that something grows and Steve and I didn't waste a ton of money on buying all the materials and organic dirt for a box. 

It's right under the window to my dream room, so it should be getting some good, positive energy! 

Hmmm...maybe I need to pick up my meditation practice more.... (it has definitely been lacking).



I guess we will see what happens in the next few weeks.  I'd really love some kale!



 Peace. Love. Grow.

-Rachel, the Green Thumb Wannabe




Extras:

It looks like the flowers in my shoes died...the smell must have been too much for them.

Pacer, on the lookout for squirrels and deer...I also gave her a bath after I was done gardening.  She promptly ran away in the middle of it rolled around in the dirt, and then inside the garage.  Eventually I got most of the soap off her.

 

 

 

GREEN: A Beginner’s Guide to Organic Gardening (Part 1)

GREEN: A Beginner’s Guide to Organic Gardening

            I’ve been wanting to garden for quite some time now.  Two and a half years ago, my mom got me a potted herb garden for Christmas…I kind of tried, and very much failed.  Last spring, I had every intention to start a garden.  I even dragged Steve to a gardening club talk at the library to learn more.  But after still not really knowing where to begin, those ideas went nowhere.

Then last fall, we moved.  With the house came a big, beautiful backyard complete with lots of trees and a marsh in the back (so no one can build behind us!).  After a trip to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to get some stuff for the house, we also bought our first trash can compost with the idea of having some great soil to add to our garden in the spring  (that part didn’t work so well as none of it decomposed enough to use, but anyway…).  I skipped the building the compost part, but have nice little pile going in the back.

This spring, I was determined.  I would start small, but I would do it. 

Unfortunately, our big backyard did not provide a great space for gardening as there are so many trees.  Then Steve gave me a kind “no, maybe next year” to my request of using the only decent spot of at the landscaped/flower area that actually gets sunlight in the back.  This left me to a spot next to the house that only gets sunlight for part of the day.  But hey, I could work with it!

Phase One: Planning

Okay, so I had the location picked out (or, approved of by Steve).  With that came the question “Now what?”.  I still didn’t know where to begin.  So I threw out the question on Facebook  (I love Facebook for questions…I have some very intelligent and informative friends!).  My one friend told me all he did was throw some soil on the ground and add seeds.  Maybe I was making thinks more difficult then they need to be?

 

I did some other research on the computer too.   I found some plants and herbs that could grow in partial sunlight…thank goodness kale was one of them!  I also looked up a few videos on how to build a garden box…Steve was not a fan of the idea just throwing organic soil on the ground.

Phase 2, Part 1: Implementation-Building the Garden Box

Finally, it was time for some action.  One Friday evening as Steve and the kids were shooting hoops outside, I took a shovel and started to churn the soil where the garden was to be.  I really ended up churning a bunch of clay.  I thought it would soften up, but it did not.  In other words, this ended up being a complete waste of time.

 

We also measured how big our garden box would be.

A week later (after visiting a garden store, I found out that I was way ahead of schedule and even they have very few plants available), Steve and I took a trip to the Home Depot to buy the lumber to build our garden box, plus organic soil to build it up with.

After walking around the garden center and pretending to look like we fit it, we started asking the employees some questions. Soon, a very kind young woman pointed us to a garden box kit, where all a person needed to do was slide the wood into slots.  I kind of felt like this was cheating, but Steve was sold-plus, he was the one paying for it.  It wasn’t the cheapest thing in the world (I think around $90), but it was really easy to put together and looks quite nice.  (I would have been much less elaborate, buying some would plans and nailing them together.)

Before checking out, we picked up 4 bags of organic soil and some chicken wire (We get a lot of deer where we live.  While I love them, I do not want them eating my food).  The bill was well over $100 dollars, in case anyone is working this into their budget in the future. 


We also took a few minutes to take silly pictures (further proving to anyone watching that Home Depot was not a natural hangout spot for us)

Then it was back home to start building!

But not so fast…we realized we needed to first level the spot where our garden was going to be, so we had to shovel out the dirt/clay into a big pile. Our first thought was that we were going to be able to put some back in the garden box with the organic soil.  Once we got honest with ourselves, we realized that was definitely not an option.  Nothing was going to grow from that dirt!
 

We put together our garden box with relative ease, pet Pacer for a bit, and filled half the garden box with our 4 bags of soil...

...which meant we had to go back to Home Depot for 4 more bags (plus a tiny “top” piece for the aesthetic nature of the garden box that was missing.)

Home Depot , Take 2

With that, we drove back home, filled up the second half of the garden box, put in the final screw (after looking around for it for 5 minutes) and were done for the day! 

(I somehow managed to forget to take a picture of the finished product)

While this really only took a few short hours, we were still pretty tired so took some time to relax with Pacer:

 

I then talked to some friends and realized I shouldn’t plant anything until mid/end of May to assure there would be no more frost, unless I wanted to star growing in pots indoors (I did not).  So the garden box has sat untouched (except by Pacer) for the past few weeks.

I hope to start planting this Sunday if I have any energy left after the Girls on the Run 5k, so hopefully Part 2 will be coming soon!