Lettuce Test

Let me start off by saying, I lost my photographer.  She's just too busy for me so you'll have to put up with my Blackberry photos!  :*(
As you can see, I was supposed to have five lettuce plants (plan calls for four but, I'm living on the wild side!)  I planted them in a die number five pattern.  (Is that how you spell it??)  Since it rains and during watering, I don't know how to keep the seeds still.  Since I had so many left over rooter plugs, I decided to start some lettuce inside, then add to the garden.  I figured I could have my lettuce planted perfectly!  I know, I'm a Type A personality and stuff like this matters to me.

Here are my dried up plugs.  I cut them apart and added water and they were like brand new.

I'm planting spinach, red sails, and Simpson.

I have been at a total loss for my spicy lettuce mix. I have Googled every site and forum known to man to figure out how in the heck you handle a seed mix in a square foot garden.
Since you're only supposed to plant so many plants per square and since this is a variety of many seeds, do you just plant randomly and see what you get?  I don't like that.
I ended up using a square for only the mix variety.  I acted like I was row gardening and made two tiny rows in my square and planted through the entire row.  I will thin out as it comes up.  This way, I get all of the varieties.  We will see how this works.

Here are my five lettuce brownies.  I can't help calling these brownies.  Every time someone sees them, they think they are brownies.  Look how I can arrange them perfectly in my garden.  Happiness!

Now look how nice this turned out.  I'm just curious the difference in how they will grow.  Will the lettuce struggle in the plugs?  Will the seedlings freak out because their first few days of life were inside under my lights and now everything changed?  If you know me, I over think EVERYTHING!

New Compost Bin

My husband's cousin bought me this Geobin composter for my birthday.  It came rolled up pretty tight in a small box.  I laid the plastic in my driveway for an entire day to heat it up and flatten it out.

On a side note, My lawn looks horrible right now.  It's just now starting to green up from this winter.

Assembled

The garbage can has now been replaced

You can see it has a lot of air holes and top and bottom is open.  I like the bottom being open so worms can make their way into the compost.  I'm just unsure what will happen when it rains and snows.  I'm sure I'll cover it in the winter.  Anyway, I started collecting my leaves and my neighbors' leaves last fall.
 I mow my lawn with a mulcher blade which is great for my lawn but does not allow me to collect grass clippings.  I asked my neighbor and he said he would start giving me his.
When I cleaned my garden this spring, I pulled all of the dead plants and added it to the pile.
Now I can add it to my compost...so this is my initial layer.

Kitchen scrap layer - I saved my kitchen scraps and paper towel and toilet paper rolls.  A lot of it has already started to breakdown that's why you can't recognize everything. 

My husband's cousin also got me these free coffee grounds from Starbucks...super cool.

Coffee Layer

Alpaca poo layer - then I watered everything a little bit

Final brown layer.  I added A LOT to this bin and it's barely halfway full.  I'm excited about how much space there is.  I plan on checking the temperature in a couple of days so that I know it's heating up properly.

My kids, especially my son, think I'm crazy that I think compost is cool.  LOL  When I was young, if my mom was into this, I would also think she was crazy.  I don't know why I like all this stuff so much, but I do.  :)

Indoor Plants April 7 Update

You can see my mixture of nice pots and red solo cups.  I actually don't mind the cups at all.

Remaining cups which don't fit in the large container 

My two shop lights, thermometer (husband keeps getting upset because it's really meant for cooking...sorry, honey!)  Plants are on top of a heated throw and you can see the edge of my fan on the bottom right of the picture

Outdoors - April 5th

 I started my compost last summer.  I started in a five-gallon bucket.  I filled that bucket up more than ten times and it kept breaking down.  I thought I would never fill that bucket up.  It was amazing.  I almost wish I could see how big of a pile everything would have made before breaking down.

I didn't want to spend $100 on a composter so I used a garbage can.  Holes were drilled throughout and on the bottom.  Before I planted in my garden I sifted my compost.  This is what was leftover.

I ended up with about a five-gallon bucket of black gold.

Here are my leaves I collected last fall to add to the garden.  I attempted to make an area to save the leaves so they would blow away or get peed on by my dog!  :)  I left it open because I was doing a terrible job.  Jeff is going to have to make this right.  Once it's done right, I'll share it.

The black bag next to the leaves is Alpaca poo.  There is an Alpaca farm near my house where you can shovel the manure for free.  They will only give you the old stuff which is good.  The fresh stuff has too hot and would kill everything.

I added the molded leaves, old Alpaca, and my compost to my three 4X4 Square Foot Gardens.

Here are my three Square Foot Gardens.  The closest one has not been divided yet, but you can see the other two have been.  I only divided two because I'm only planting my cool weather crops right now since my 50% last frost date is May 6th.

When you divide a Square Foot Garden, you create 1X1 squares to plant in.  You don't plant in rows.  Each plant type you have to look up to see how many plants you can plant per square.  You can actually get more produce in a smaller area because you don't have rows and you don't ever step inside the garden.

This process also makes it to where you pretty much never have weeds.

Here's a closer look of the sections.

If you look really close.  I mean really, really, really close.  You can see some of my Bok Choy.

So far I've planted:  2 squares of Bok Choy - 4 plants each for a total of 8

I have 4 squares for Spinach - 9 plants each for a total of 36 plants.  I'm succession planting so I'm planting 6 plants every 1-2 weeks

I have 4 squares for Lettuce - 5 plants each for a total of 20 plants - I'm succession planting so I'm planting 5 plants every 1-2 weeks

I have 2 squares for Peas - 8 plants each for a total of 16 plants - I'm succession planting so I'm planting 4 plants every 1-2 weeks.  I need to build a trellis for my peas to climb on.  I bought some cedar and tomato netting.

I have 1 square for my Onion sets - 9 plants each for a total of 9 plants.

I have 2 squares for Carrots - 16 plants each for a total of 32 plants.  I'm succession planting so I'm planting 8 plants every 1-2 weeks.

I have 16 squares per garden totaling 48 squares.  I've accounted for 15 of the 48 squares totaling 121 plants.

You can see how you can have a lot of garden in small spaces if you use the Square Foot method.

Transplanted Tomatos, Basil, Oregano, and Rosemary

I moved all of my plants in the basement and added a second set of lights over my plants.  I have limited space and discovered that I will not have enough room to transplant all of my plants.  What do I do?  I can't throw any of my plants away.  I guess when you're planting everything in the first little green house it's hard to believe everything will grow and get big and need room.  I planted double of everything I needed in case some didn't make it.  I'm going to give my father-in-law all of my leftovers so he's excited.

Since I promised him my leftovers, I can't throw them out!

I did the math and the pots I bought for the peppers and eggplants won't all fit under the lights...so...I bought red solo cups. (red solo cup, I fill you up, let's have a party!)  If you're not familiar with the song, you need to go to YouTube and search for it.  It's so funny.

So this is how I transplanted my remaining plants.  I wanted to show how long the stems were before planting.

I cut each cube out of the rapid rooter mat.  They look like brownies!

I poked holes in the bottom of the cup, then labeled the inside, filled part way with dirt, added the Mykos (white granules), placed the plug on the Mykos.

I planted deep so that the stem would root.  My 1-1.5" plants will now be barely above the dirt.

Final product!  I transplant 27 plants.

The photos in this post were all taken by my daughter using her iPhone (except for the first one).  She says her photos are better than my BlackBerry so she is now my official photographer.  

Check out the photo she took of my peppers!

We didn't take a final picture of all of my plants since I had to leave suddenly to take my daughter to buy hair dye!    I'll take a photo of all of the plants another day.  I'm excited to say that all of my plants fit under the lights. 

You can see how much bigger they are getting!  Every day they are noticeably bigger.  I'm starting to believe this is all going to work.  This has been so much fun!