Gorgeous!!!

Banishment of the Cat

(Above, our soda bottle tomato pots..)

I have enjoyed the company of our cat while I've been working outside. She follows me around and watches what I'm doing, sniffing here and there. Fun. However, there have been a couple places in the empty beds that have been used for a feline toilet. Yesterday morning when I went out to check on the newly planted bed I was horrified to find a huge mound directly in the center of it. Then I realized that it was in the ONE spot that I hadn't planted on that end of the bed because I'm saving the space for a bigger plant to go in. Still, I grounded the cat indoors until my plants are up and bigger. It's a long time for her as she loves being outside.

Per the Farmer's Almanac, I should plant most of my vegetables around May 15-19th. This is their best recommendation based on frost dates and the phase of the moon. I had no idea that the moon phase made any difference in how well your plants do! That's a little over my head. In the experimental spirit of this project, I'm going to go ahead and put all my transplants out at the end of this week and shelter those of them that are not cold hearty and then plant the rest of my seeds around May 15th.

I really want to plant potatos this year but don't have room in my yard. I'm going to try to find a place where I can plant a couple rows of them. There is a community garden about a five minute drive from my house I will look into or I might plant some in my sister's garden.

Yay for the rain today keeping all my little germinating seeds moist!!!

Planning and Planting

The picture directly above is of Patrick listening patiently while I excitedly rave about all my gardening plans and adventures. Today it was about the beautiful apple espalier tree I found (Can we plant it in a wine barrel so we can take it with us?) and the heirloom apple tree orchard I want to put in at our next place (Suuuure..That sounds great. ) Chickens, Apples...variety is good and dreaming is fun. :-)

Also pictured is the Sweet Woodruff I picked up today in honor of May Day. I have grown this before and love it because it is such a beautiful green color and easy to grow (but spreads, so I'll have to choose a good location for it.) Woodruff is used traditionally to season white wine, (Alsace) on May Day. Maybe we'll try it. Miraculously, I didn't buy anything else while I was at the nursery though was highly tempted. I have so much luscious space to plant in now BUT when the plants grow to full size, our space will seem much smaller.

I've been planting a little each day. Sunday I planted some herbs, as well as three varieties of lettuce, leeks, carrots, arugula, onions, and spinach. Eventually that bed (the fern bed) is going to be my perennial shade plant bed so I left some room to put in some hostas and other shade plants. This year is a learning year to find out what grows well where, so I'm trying a little bit of everything, and hopefully next year we'll be able to plant more for beauty as well as a good yield.

I realized yesterday that the leeks I chose have 150 days to grow until harvest. I love leeks but have only planted about half of the seeds I bought so am going to plant the rest of them today for harvest at the end of September. If they do well and we don't have an early frost, I'll be looking for a good leek soup recipe....

Phew! All In And California Poppies all around..

Today was a gorgeous day for finishing up our flower beds. I ended up even having a little compost left over so I mixed it with some Miracle Grow potting soil and started six 3ft by 1.5 ft. experimental beds in the back 40, or the secret garden as the kids call it. I planted 3 varieties of lettuce, Parisian market carrots, spinach, arugula, plus some flowers back there. If they grow, bonus! Also put in two wildflower beds, sweet peas, california poppies, columbine, snap peas, and a catnip bed. This weekend we will plant the rest of our cool season veggies. I called the neighborhood nursery about the frost date and they said it would be May 15 or 17th. Yikes! I can't wait to get all my tomatoes, squash, peppers and nasturtiums going.... Our backyard feels so peaceful now. I like being out there. Can't wait to get some patio furniture! And more plants to keep our little fern company.

Tonight was an interesting adjustment for the kids (and dog) learning about the flower beds. Patrick was sitting on the front steps and told Lucy to go in the house and she went over and through the large planter. It never occurred to me that would possibly happen. The cat, well, we pretty much have a kitty spa around our entire house. We met a couple of our neighbors because we were all outside in the early evening, a fun bonus to gardening more!

Hopefully I'm not getting in over my head with all this. It's going to be a huge amount of work this summer. But very rewarding... My favorite parts so far are the "secret garden" and planting my favorite flowers, CA Poppies, something I've never done before. Yay!!

Planters, Ready to Go!!

More Photos

Here is a little more about the process. I love working outside! Looking forward to seeing our back yard when it's all done. Next time I'll pace myself a little better on the yard work. Now I need to find when we will be safely past frost. It should be soon!

Crazy Day

I am so immensely tired. I worked really hard today, first picking up the ingredients for the soil, then mixing it all together one tarp load at a time, then shoveling it into buckets and hauling it to the front of the house to fill the planters and the front beds. I was afraid I would get rained out so I actually ran part of the time when I was bringing the empty buckets back. After three hours of that, I lost steam and had to push pretty hard to wrap up for the day. I finished all the front beds and containers and got started on the back. Am 3/5ths of the way through the soil. (36 cubic feet). Tomorrow I will finish off the last 2/5ths, if I can move! Then I need to figure out what to plant where. I had it all drawn out but it doesn't seem quite right. All that planting space suddenly available feels overwhelming. And then there's this question: Will the plants actually grow and produce food? I can't believe it's going to happen. Like having a baby, you don't do very much, just provide good conditions and wait. It's amazing to me.

Baby Steps

I want to plant some good fruit producing trees and plants on our property. I have learned that many fruit trees and plants don't actually produce fruit for the first year (or couple years) so I want to get mine started as soon as possible. I put in two self-pollinating Blueberry plants (above), some Strawberries, and want to find a couple fruit trees to plant.

Back 40 (Feet)

It's actually more like 75 feet, but I have this crazy small fenced area on the west side of my house that, until now, has been used only for growing wild blackberries. When I cleared the blackberries out a couple weeks ago I realized that the soil was very fertile. I decided to experiment and put in 17 square feet of mostly shade loving plants to see if I can grow anything back there. It would be so great to use the space. I'm only using about a 7th of the space for this experimental garden so it could be a potentially productive space if it grows anything.

Madd Awesome Garden Girl

Before photos:














My sister Jo gave me the MAGG title since I have so enthusiastically leaped into gardening my very small back yard and home. I am a complete novice but enjoy every moment I spend outside learning about the earth and growing things. This blog will chronicle my adventure in learning how to be more self-sufficient and in touch with nature.

About a month ago I decided to stay home with my kids, ages two and four. To save money, be more self-sufficient, eat healthy and just to have fun, I decided to convert as much space around our home as possible for growing food, herbs and flowers. It has become an exciting challenge to see just how efficient we can be with our space. We have been growing seedlings (over 500 of them) and this week will be putting in 60 cubic feet of good gardening soil in our back yard and front porch planters. Posted above are the before pictures of our backyard, very small. We will be using the square foot gardening method to organize everything.