We grew this pepper:
I couldn’t help myself. I had to do this:
Isn’t that the “hottest” pepper you’ve ever seen? She’s winking at you, in case you couldn’t tell.
There’s been a lot of chaos in my life lately; finances are tight, vehicles are broken/breaking, and business is slow. As such, some things have fallen by the wayside. One of which is documenting our square foot garden. I sorely wish I had kept better track of what we have done and when, as it would serve as a vital guide for next years plans. We finally got our trellis netting up on Sunday.
I know we did a lot of things wrong. We clearly started our tomato and pepper plants too early.
The tomato got nice and big, but is still fruiting too soon.
The pepper plants are pretty sad. The peppers look nice, there’s just so very few of them.
The one bursting with pale yellow peppers is a mere 14 inches tall. I’m not sure that the peppers are even the correct color. We tasted one that fell off a few days ago, though, and it was pretty darn good for an unripe pepper.
A lot of our various lettuce transplants died when we had a scorching day and no one was home to water them. We reseeded some squares (which? I don’t know. I really should … Read the rest
Finances
0
Tax season is tough for most small business owners, right? I know it is for me. Paying the government, along with an accountant, is a lot for a business that consists of 2 people (myself and my husband). As such, our finances are a bit tight. We’ve had to put some things on hold. I haven’t been baking as much, we haven’t been able to finish the details on our garden construction, and we haven’t been able to buy more soil.
It’s planting season, and we have terrible soil. So a few days ago we just went ahead and transplanted our peppers and tomatoes anyway, right into it. What else can we do? We can’t just wait until it’s economical to spend another $100 on soil. We’ll attempt to grow in it this year, and see what we get. By next spring, we’ll have plenty of compost to mix in, and that will help.
Since we’ve never gardened before, it’s been overwhelming us. Of course, if we had started small it would have been easier. My husband is not the start small type. He likes to go full on into everything he does. This causes frustration sometimes, but more often … Read the rest
Swindled
0
As I have mentioned before, when we bought our soil we got swindled. It is mostly clay, full of small rocks, and it turns into a brick when it gets wet.
The only way we can amend this is to get rid of some of it, and replace it with better soil.
Unfortunately, finances are currently impeding the process. Until we get new soil, we can’t plant our seeds or transfer our seedlings into the beds. We can’t plant our hops rhizomes, so we haven’t even picked them up yet. Since we’ve already spent $200 on soil it really hurts to have to spend even more.
Luckily, the deep parts of our beds won’t need to be altered. And really, plenty of people garden in 6 inch raised beds. That means we don’t have to do a whole lot to get them into shape. We’ll scrape off the top 3 inches or so, till up another 3 or 4 inches, then hopefully it won’t be difficult to mix the bad with the good.
Grass!
0
I’m seeing some grass growing, finally. It took 3 full applications of seed, but it’s starting to come in. I’ll be getting more seed, since it seems like it’s still pretty thin. I’m just happy to have a start. I hope by the end of summer to have an actual lawn.
It’s so simple! Simply look at the back of the seed pack. Ignore whatever it says about row spacing, and instead simply focus on the plant spacing. If it says “Plant 3 inches apart” then you simply have to plant your seeds/seedlings in a grid, where they are all 3 inches apart. If you followed their rows, you’d get 4 plants in a square foot (4 plants, 3 inches apart, in rows that are never less than a foot apart). If you do it this way, you’ll get 16 per square foot. Really!
If you’d like to learn more about square foot gardening, you should check out Mel Bartholomew’s books or Emily’s blog. She has all sort of useful things, including spacing for common plants and a really handy companion planting guide.
The image at the top of this post was taken from a google image result. That’s because I don’t have any pictures of my finished garden yet! If it’s your photo, and you’d like me to link it or remove it just let me know!
