First Raised Bed of the Season

I know it's a little late getting my raised beds planted, but this is my first year. My plan was to have six raised beds 4x8 ft long and 20 inches deep built. I found some great videos on how to build raised beds on youtube by The Garden Girl/Patti Moreno. I had my husband watch the videos and then very nicely asked if he would make them for me. He started out by making 2 beds. He bought 12 2x8x10 boards, 2 2x2x8 (for reinforcement inside the box), and a box of 3 1/2 in deck screws. He and the kids were able to construct them pretty quickly in one evening. He did cuss a bit about a few warped boards, so look for the straightest boards you can buy! We placed them in our backyard so we could look at them from our kitchen window up above.

I thought I'd get these filled in no time! I started with a layer of horse manure, then shredded paper, old produce from the grocery store, straw, more manure and then topsoil and compost. 20 inches tall doesn't seem like much until you are trying to fill it. Once my husband saw how much it took to fill it, he wanted to compromise and only make two more beds and do two next year. I already have my garden graphed out, so I went for 4 more beds 10 inches deep. He doesn't have to know now, that we'll add another 10 inches next summer.

Aren't these beds lovely? I didn't put a weed barrier on the bottom for two reasons: I thought the beds are deep enough and I want the worms to be able to get into my beds. It's their garden too and I need their help.

This is a picture from the deck on the back of our house overlooking the gardens and pond. Myron built the arbor and swing and we love sitting there watching the wildlife and fish. We like to build a small fire pit close by to enjoy smore's in the evening.

Here's Trooper. He LOVE's to garden. As you can see, I marked off one foot sections with string for square foot gardening. It really does make it so much easier to plant.

This is my bricked in garden that I use for herbs, cut flowers and whatever else I need to put over there.

This year I'm trying potatoes in a bag and also cages. We'll see which they prefer.

Here you can see my six beds, not all quite ready. Ty and I filled two more of the smaller beds last night. We carried 40 40lbs bags of topsoil and compost. They didn't quite finish off the two beds. I think 25 bags per bed will do it. I keep telling Jon that next year will be much easier. We'll start making our own compost this year. So moving forward we should be pretty self-sufficient.

This year I've decided to purchase only heirloom seeds. I'll see how they grow this year and start collecting my own seeds. It's not as easy as I thought, so I'll start with baby steps. The first bed is filled with transplants I started in my grow room. The lettuce looks pretty good. We've got Simpson, mascara and lollo lettuce, brussell sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower planted.

Spring fever in January

So in January, when I could hardly stand it, I begin reading through my gardening books and internet articles. I stumbled upon topics such as Heirloom seeds, sustainable gardening, survivalist living. I was intrigued. I decided to commit to an organic Heirloom garden this season and see what all the fuss is about. As you get older and think of the earth you are leaving your children, you begin looking at living in this world differently. How can you do the things you do with less of a hurtful impact on the earth? This is what I want to find out. It was still January and I couldn't go outside and get dirty so I decided to order my Heirloom seeds. After reading many reviews, I ordered from Baker's Creek Heirloom. I went a little over board, but all my reading indicates that I need to help the world of seed savers keep these seeds going.... I'm just doing my part.

I ordered:

Old Homestead (Kentucky Wonder) Bean

Scarlet Runner Beans

Bull's Blood Beets

Chioggia (Bassano) Beets

Detroit Red Beets

Calabrese Green Sprouting Broccoli

Long Island Improved Brussell Sprouts

Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage

Perfection Drumhead Savoy Cabbage

Snowball Self-blanching Cauliflower

Danvers 126 Half Long Carrots

Atomic Red Carrots

Lunar White Carrots

Amarillo Carrots

Muscade Carrots

Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn

True Gold Sweet Corn

Delikatesse Cucumber

Wonderberry

Tom Thumb Lettuce

Forellenschluss Lettuce

Henderson's Black-Seeded Simpson

Iceberg

Dark Lolla Rossa

Lollo Rossa

Mascara

Kansas Lettuce

Blue Podded Peas

Sugar Snap Peas

Purple Jalepeno Pepper

Emerald Giant Pepper

Early Scarlet Globe Radish

Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach

New Zealand Spinach

Winter Luxary Pie Pumpkin

Green Zebra Tomato

Spear's Tennessee Green

Kentucky Beefsteak

Brandywine

Cherokee Purple

Beefsteak

Red Grape

Flame (Hillbilly)

White Zebra

Egg Yolk

Long Milky Way Moon and Stars Watermelon

Cilantro

Dill-Bouquet

Parsley-Giant of Italy

Russian Tarragon

Basil

Coffee Filter Seed Starting

The kids and I are going to start our seeds today using coffee filters. I set up a seed starting station in the kitchen. Each child has coffee filters, a plate, a bowl filled with water, ziplock bags and a permanent marker. The dip a coffee filter in the bowl of water and then lay it flat on the plate. They drop a bunch of seeds on one half of the coffee filter and fold the filter in half. Then they put it in the ziplock bag and label it. Voila!

From there they go under the grow lights. It takes about one to two weeks to sprout, but it's like magic to the kids. Once they are sprouted and have the first true leaves, we gently transplant them into seed pellets.

Seeds that were started by the coffee filter method:

Beans

Broccoli

Brussell Sprouts
Cauliflower

Cucumbers

Parsley
Peppers

Pumpkin

Tarragon
Tomato

We don't use the coffee filter method for lettuce since the seeds are so tiny and when they do sprout they are too tiny to pick off the filter without damaging them. To start lettuce we use recyclable containers (such as cool whip, cottage cheese, or yogurt) and seed them pretty thick. Once they grow up couple inches, we transplant them directly outside.