Monday, April 30, 2012

Operation green thumb

Out garden is mostly planted. We still have a few small things to get (and a few repairs to be made to Jeremy's self watering setup), but we are close to seeing the fruits (err... vegetables?) of our labors.

Bed 2 contains a row of broccoli and a row cauliflower.
The middle row is half and half.

The pepper plants. We have them planted really thick right now
but they consist of 12 sweet bell peppers, 6 jalapenos, and 6 pepperocinis.

The other half of our peppers.

6 tomatoes

6 cherry tomatoes

4 hills of cucumbers. We will put up a trellis for them soon.

Our salad bar - lettuce, romaine, spinach, carrots, beans and peas.
At this time, we only have a few lettuce plants showing as we didn't
give the rest an early start.

We really wanted to get some watermelons and cantaloupe this year, so we have 6 hills of each...

This bed has 4 hills in it - 2 zucchini and 2 yellow squash.

The girls favorite bed consists of 4 pumpkin plants that were started inside.
They are flowering already, so we will have to keep an eye on them.

This bed contains two hills of acorn squash and two of butternut.

We still need to plan our corn and sunflowers, but right now our garden is starting to come together.


Jeremy has all the beds set up to be self watering, but when he tried to start the water tonight, we discovered that the hoses do not stay on securely as advertised. He is going to pick up a few things tomorrow and see if he can get it working.

The Wall

Any psych major can tell you that putting up walls is a bad thing. However, Jeremy has a thing for building retaining walls. At the old house, he (along with some help from brothers and brothers-in-law) build a wall across our entire backyard. At our new house, he (with a lot of help from his dad) is putting in not one, not two, but three walls to turn a big slope next to our walkout basement into a terraced yard. With the help of a little tractor that we borrowed from Jeremy's Grandpa, we were able to get the first two tiers done. Unfortunately, we underestimated how big we would need to make it and thus ran out of blocks. Jeremy is hoping to complete it soon, but here is the current state.

This wall is the middle of the three tiers. It will be about 2' 8" tall.

This is the other half of that wall. We currently have gravel piled
to backfill the middle wall and the bottom wall (when it gets done).

This is the whole middle tier. If you look really hard you can see the top tier behind the air conditioner. There will be a small slope from the top to the middle and then from the middle to the bottom. This will allow for adequate drainage and for us to have grass in between.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Nearing planting

With some help from a small tractor, we were able to get the beds installed and filled. In between you can see the mulch that we are using. We went with a hardwood mulch to help defray the costs as cedar can be expensive. However, we will soon add some cedar mulch around the beds to help with pest control and to give the garden a nice aroma.



Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Operation Green Thumb - Take 2

Getting ready for this dream garden, we planted a number of plants in early March so that they would be ready to transplant in mid-April. As soon as the garden is ready, we have lots of plants to move.


Cucumbers and pumpkins - probably should have waited a little while
 on these as they were ready to go out about  3 weeks ago.

From the top:
2 rows Cherry Tomatoes
2 rows Big and Beefy Tomatoes
1 row jalapeno peppers
1 row Bell peppers
1 row assorted (when thinning, we transplanted some)
1 row cantaloupe
2 rows blank (pumpkins and cucumbers have been moved)
2 rows broccoli

We also planted Strawberries, pear trees,
a couple types of flowers (for the girls),
Then we have 2 rows of watermelon,
a row of pepperocinis,
a row of sweet peppers,
and 2 rows of cauliflower

Our big planter.

Before we moved into our current house, we
used this table for our family meals. Now it holds
future meals so they get plenty of sun.

With the arrival of our newest family member, Gabriella, we haven't
made a lot of progress on the garden. Jeremy and the girls were able to
get the fabric down and half of the boxes. Another nice evening and we
might be able to fill them up.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Operation Green Thumb - Take 1

We are putting in raised beds in our garden this year.


Each one is 10 feet by 3 feet.


They are built out of decking lumber and reinforced. (This one is currently upside down.)


We are putting in 10 of them which will make our garden more manageable.


Clare can't wait to get started planting.

Neither can we.



Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Almost a year...

It has been a busy year for us. We have been loving our new house. We haven't done a ton of things, but we have added pictures to the walls, curtains over most windows, and a few other small touches. We are working to put the finishing touches on the master bedroom (we have a new bedroom set, a nice reading couch, new lamps, and our curtains). We've partially finished the prayer room: laying carpet, hanging some pictures and shelves, etc. It is hard to believe that a year ago we were painting...

Now that spring is upon (and our little addition is soon to arrive) we are working on some outdoor projects. We hope to post soon with news of our revamped garden, our retaining walls, and a brand new lawn. However, we will be very busy over the next few weeks, so forgive us if we are late with posting them.