Ta-da!

The beds are finished! Woo-hoo! I spent all of Friday afternoon working on them, enjoying the wonderful weather and listening to This American Life while I worked. (I think I listened to three full episodes that day...)

Power tools and pretty dresses make for a good afternoon.

And now all three are done! They're a little crooked (I learned my lesson about how fast thin boards can warp if they get wet) and not everything lines up perfectly and symmetrically, but I love them anyway.

They're actually not as crooked as they look in the above picture; the ground they're sitting on is pretty uneven, which makes it look worse. Today or tomorrow (or whenever I can borrow or buy a shovel) I'm going to dig them a few inches into the ground for stability and to level them out a bit. That will also allow me to break up the ground they're sitting on so the roots of my future plants will have an easier time of it if/when they get that big.

Alex and I bought several bags of compost at the local garden center yesterday, so all I need now is the topsoil. I'd hoped to get that yesterday, too, but unfortunately the dirt guy doesn't work on weekends, so I have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to get that last ingredient. But then, it's planting time! Yaaaay!

Impatience.

...and no, I'm not referring to the flowers.

I've decided that there aren't enough hours in the day. The garden beds are still unfinished, my seeds still in their packets. I finally have all the boards sanded and the supports cut, so maybe, just maybe, I'll finish building them today. There will definitely be pictures if I do.


In the meantime, I'm still taking care of my little mini-garden out on the back steps.

It's composed of succulents that I collected when I was out west last fall (and then subsequently dragged back across the country packed in a spare shoe), as well as a bucket of pansies that I rescued from the big box store. They were pretty bedraggled-looking when I bought them for 15 cents each, but they've flourished and are really doing well, as you can see.

That's all for now. Hopefully there will be exciting news of the "I planted stuff!!!" variety soon.

Special Delivery!

The seeds have arrived! Woo-hoo! Opening up the box and seeing all the crisp little white packets brought back memories of gardening with my Mom when I was little. I was always disappointed that the Johnny's seed packets didn't have pretty pictures on them like the ones at the hardware store did, but that doesn't bother me now. It just lets my imagination run wild, making up my own pictures of huge zinnias, cosmos as tall as I am, and purple bell peppers. I want to plant them all right now!

...Unfortunately, the beds aren't ready yet, so I have to wait. I did figure out where I'm getting the soil from, though, which is exciting. Originally, I thought I was going to have to get bagged topsoil from the big box store on the other side of town. That stuff was nice, but it was about three dollars per cubic foot, of which I need 17 or so. Then I found a local landscaping places that sells topsoil in bulk. When I told the guy who runs the place that I needed 17 cubic feet, he said it'd cost a grand total of $15. Sweet! All I need to do is show up with my truck and a shovel. Then into the beds it will go, mixed with some nice compost, and I'll be able to start planting!

I did run into one little snare with my planting scheme. Apparently, even though the county extension website says that peas and carrots can be planted in March, it's at the very tail end of the season and they really might not do well if it gets hot early. Once again, I launched into some research, culminating in a call to Johnny's to ask their advice. The verdict? The carrots should be ok if I plant them really soon, but the peas are, in the words of the very nice lady I talked to, "a crap-shoot." I think I'll plant a few anyway, just to see what happens; this is an adventure, after all! Then in the fall, I'll plant the main pea crop. Sugar snap peas in December? What a novel concept.

And we're off!

It's officially Spring! And for once, it actually feels like it. While there's still snow on the ground back home in Wisconsin, here in Florida there are flowers blooming, trees budding, and birds singing. Sorry, Midwestern friends, I'm not trying to be smug, I've just never lived in a climate like this before, and it continues to amaze me. Spiderwort blooming in March? Really?!

A little Carolina Wren has taken up residence somewhere in the area. I see him most mornings now, sitting on the porch and singing his tiny heart out. I'll post a picture of him if I can, though he doesn't usually stay still long enough for me to find my camera and snap a portrait. Instead, here's a picture of his twin, who is painted on the circuit breaker box in our kitchen.

According to the signature at the bottom, this was painted by Kathy Ward on September 11th, 1986.

Yesterday morning, I set myself up at the kitchen table with tea, markers, paper, my computer, and the Johnny's seed catalog. The next several hours were spent planning, doodling, and cutting out little pieces of paper and arranging them in pretend garden beds (I'm a visual person).

After several calls to both parents to ask various garden questions ("Mama, how big to green bean plants get?" "Papa, do you have any basil seeds left over from last year that I could have?"), I was finally ready to order seeds. Now, I'm not usually big on brand loyalty, but both my Mom and Dad have been buying seeds from Johnny's for as long as I can remember. My Dad always used to wear a Johnny's baseball cap, until they stopped sending them with commercial orders. When I was little, I used to spend the winters paging through the Johnny's catalog, marking all the plants I wanted to grow by drawing a circle around each one, with exclamation points added for emphasis when needed.

I used that same method this year, too. It took a while to narrow down the list of what I wanted to plant, which is to say, I wanted to plant everything, but I knew I couldn't. After all, this is my first solo garden, and I don't have all that much room to grow things. While I would love to grow big plants like sweetcorn, giant pumpkins, and watermelons, those should probably wait until I have more than three 3'x3' raised beds and a few small containers. Likewise, I'd love some blueberry bushes, but I'm only going to be here for a year, and blueberries are a little hard to uproot and carry cross-country on a regular basis.

My 'want to grow' list went from having something circled on almost every page in the book (which has over 200 pages...) to a short list of 28. That was still way too many plants, so I narrowed it down further still to the final 16. That is still a lot of different types of plants to grow in my little garden, but hey, go big or go home, right? Right! Besides, I reasoned that I'd store the seeds well, and would probably be able to use the leftovers for several years before they stopped germinating properly.

So the seeds are ordered and on their way! No turning back now. I'm surprisingly nervous, considering nothing major is really riding on this. I'm not trying to make a living by selling what will grow in this garden, and Alex and I won't starve if it fails. But I want it to be a successful garden; I want to grow happy plants. I feel like I owe it to them to be the best gardener I can be, and take care of them as best I can. So while I wait for my seeds, I'm doing as much research as I can. What is the best mixture of topsoil and organic matter to fill the beds with? How do I test soil pH, and how do I fix it if necessary? How many carrots can I cram into one square foot of garden space? Luckily for me, between the internet, my farmer Dad, gardener Mom, and the local garden center, the answers to these questions are readily available. Full steam ahead!

Here's a recap of the work that led up to yesterday's seed purchase:

1. When we first moved here, I was excited by the amount of southern exposure and direct sun our yard got. In Philadelphia (our most recent home before Florida), we got no direct sun whatsoever, and didn't have much of a yard anyway. The few plants I tried to grow anyway were not happy. So seeing sunlight and open space here got the gardening gears turning in my head.

2. At first, I was excited by the idea of growing a few potted plants and maybe some carrots in a bucket. Then the topic of raised beds was, well, raised, and my imagination took off.

3. Our landlord granted us permission to make raised beds. I started to believe that this might actually happen.

4. Much design research took place online. Should we buy pre-made beds, or make our own? (That was an easy question to answer.) What kind of wood should we use? Etc...

5. Alex and I spent an afternoon sketching out our final design, then bought the materials to make our three little raised beds.

6. Construction of the first bed took place:

7. Seeds were ordered. I realized that I am actually, really, and truly going to have a garden this year. Much happy-dancing ensued.

So that's where we are now. The other two beds will be made this weekend, and hopefully I'll fill them and start putting seeds in the ground soon after that! Yee-haw!