Gardening Day!!

Our Garden (Riley likes to chase lizards in our bonfire pit...stinker)

Our new composter

Tomato plants

Potatoes and broccoli

Trellis the peas will grow up

Compost bin with leaves and dirt

Compost with veggies fruit that went bad

Seeds planted and in our butterfly house so the squirrels can't get to them (tomatoes, beans, peppers)

Our butterfly house

We did get our garden planted today...yea!!! We planted cantalope (a last minute thing we added...saw the seedlings at Home Depot for $3.00 and couldn't resist), peas, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes (lots), potatoes, peppers, beans and I'm just waiting on the Buttercrunch lettuce seeds in the mail from Bountiful Gardens. Those will be planted right away when I get them. We transplanted the pineapple plants today, as well as transplanted some other flowers and herbs. I've been rotating some things around and was really pleased with how it turned out today. I was especially pleased with how my husband built us a composter that rotates! I found THIS WEBSITE that shows you how to make one from scratch for a fourth of the cost of other rotating composters, so he built one in about an hour. Fertilizer is essential for good veggies/fruit and it can get quite pricy when you buy it (not that I'm not a Miricle Grow fan. I am. It's just expensive.). So, we made our own and it works wonderfully. Go Rob. We had another compost bin (shaped like a house that opens from the top), but it was VERY difficult to churn the compost and we never got a good compost crop out of it. I think next year, I'm going to try some algae. It's from Norway and Bountiful Gardens sells it. You add just a small amount to the soil in the garden and it's amazing (as so my dad says, and he's used it before and swears by it).

Even though we do have the garden "planted", it's not finished. We'll have another smaller planting day in a few weeks when I transplant all the seedlings (beans, tomatoes and peppers) into the big garden. I can't wait to see results in a few months. I was smarter this year by planting some seedlings that were pretty big, then some smaller seedlings and then using seeds. This way, we won't get a huge crop of one particular veggie/fruit at one time. They'll be spread out. I plan on doing this with the lettuce too. Carrots are great to freeze if you get too many. You can also freeze the broccoli. I can't wait to start walking out to the garden to pick produce for dinner.

If you've done your own planting, I'd love to hear about it. Even if you've just used some simple barrels or buckets on your porch. Take some pictures and share. =)