Square Foot Garden Boxes

If you don't know about Square Foot Gardening, you can do a search on Google Books to see a limited preview of Mel's book. It is an interesting book and I think it should be a pretty good way for us to do things. I guess we'll find out by the end of the gardening season!

Yesterday we built the boxes. Here they are in our yard, waiting to be placed strategically.

Today we mixed up the ingredients to make Mel's mix. This book says to make your own soil instead of trying to improve on what you already have. So we did exactly what Mel said. We bought a tarp and mixed up vermiculite, peat moss and compost.

We found places for the boxes and we started filling those bad boys up. I think they look nice and I hope that it will really help to cut down on weeds. Oh, I sure hope.

Oh and Onions! We planted these last summer and they are sprouting now. Hope they turn out tasty!

Composting Fun

Here is Mat, hard at work on our compost bin. Since we have decided to create a larger garden next year, we thought we would try our hand at a compost bin. Mat did a great job and created the largest compost bin I've ever seen. Maybe not ACTUALLY the largest, but it sure seemed big after he was all finished.

The boards off to the side actually slide in the front as we get more materials in the bin. You can see what we have already composting here:
Looks fun, huh?
And here is our lovely little pumpkin gradually turning orange. It hasn't grown much larger, so I guess it will just be a tiny pumpkin. It is still pretty cute though!

I'm back from my conference and I sure am glad. I'm not the biggest fan of being away from my wonderful hubby for 6 days! We're going to spend the next couple days together and then I'll go back to work on Tuesday. Until next time...

I Heart 3 Day Weekends

It was so nice to have a three day weekend! I felt like Mat and I actually had an entire weekend together. Since he works on Saturdays, it seems like we really only get Saturday night and then Sunday together. So it was mucho fun.

We did a lot of work on our future garden. Mostly research work. But we did take some measurements and decide where all of our raised beds are going. Mat also started on our compost bin. We bought the materials for that, but decided to wait until next weekend to buy more supplies. The idea is that we'll build everything now and it won't be so hard financially in the spring to start up the garden. We'll have to buy seeds, plants and soil, but at least we'll have the basic design ready to go.

We haven't actually mapped out what will go in each raised bed yet, but we did list out everything we would like to grow. We'll keep working to find out what can go where and how it will all fit together. I didn't realize how much really goes into this whole gardening thing. Not only do you have to think about what plants work well together, you also have to think about what you can plant with your veggies to keep bad bugs away and good bugs to come in! The nice thing is that we can plan what is going in the ground all winter. We just want to get a jump start on the beds.

We now have two pumpkins! One is teensy tiny and the other is growing at a nice steady pace. I don't know if either of them will be big enough for us to carve, but I can sure hope. We might even get more!

I'll try to take some pictures next weekend as Mat continues his work on the compost bin. He's just my little carpenter!

It's starting to get cooler here and I sure don't like it. I don't really mind fall, but it does mean that winter is on its way and our winters just last forever. The one thing to look forward to is all the new shows coming up! Mat and I looked through my favorite tv website (The Futon Critic)to determine what we'll try out for the fall. I'm sure we'll end up throwing some shows out after we try one or two episodes.

I've got a big conference coming up in less than two weeks. AAH! Is it really that soon? I'll try to get some posts up here, but after staring at a computer for 9+ hours, I usually don't want to come home and get on ours again. I'll do my best though!

Oh, the Shame!

I haven't posted in forever! Work is crazy the last week. I had events after work and by the time I got home, I did not want to look at a computer! So that's that!

I'm ready for a good, long weekend. Mat and I are hoping to do some more research on our garden for next Spring. We want to get most everything ready before winter hits, so next Spring all we have to do is wait for the ground to warm up and plant some things! So I might head to the library tomorrow to look for some books on gardening.

I am also hopeful that Mat and I could get out and do some photography. We have been wanting to do some practicing with everything we learned from our camera class a few weeks ago.

But you know what? If all we do is just hang out and enjoy each other's company, I'll be more than okay with that.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Labor Day!