It's officially a garden!

When I bought the plot of land from the city of Columbus back March, it looked like this:

It looked like very nice dirt.  When I went back last week, it looked like this:

Just a few weeds had decided to pop up.  I hear that weeds are a good sign because it means at least something will grow.  But it meant that I had to do a fair amount of work before I could get anything planted.  I spent last Thursday working the land and was able to get two full rows sewn.  I planted the beets, onions, carrots, radish, spinach and musclun mix.

Side note: I found this tee-shirt this weekend but didn't buy it. I may have to go back.

I returned to the garden on Sunday and planted two more rows.  This time, I was joined by my faithful hedgehog, Pumpkin.  She helped by, errr, fertilizing the soil...

On Sunday, the buttercrunch, salad bowl and romain lettuce went it.  Also the herbs (oregano, cilantro and parsley).  I also got one tomato plant that was pre-started by the lovely people at Lowe's.  His name is Mr. Stripey, and no, I didn't come up with that.  Finally, I set up a pea trellis, but didn't plant any peas yet.

 I was accompanied by guest gardener, mom! Thanks mom!

 Today, I returned to the garden and found these little guys! They are little spinach sprouts.  Wahoo!!

More seeds! More seedlings!

All my seeds arrived!!  It was a very exciting package to receive.  At first, I was a bit surprised to see the coriander and a bit sad to not see any cilantro. Then I learned that coriander is cilantro.  My mind was blown.

I consulted my plan and started some more seeds.  I started the eggplant, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, bell peppers and cucumber (4 pods of each).  Pictured below, in row 1, columns 1-4 are the eggplant (which are slow bloomers). In column 5, rows 1 through 4 are the cabbage. In row 5, columns 2 through 5 are broccoli.  Row 1, columns 2 through 5 are the hot peppers (which have finally sprouted!!) In the center are the currant tomatos, crowder peas and okra (in rows from left to right).  Did you follow that? The plum tomatos, squash, zucchini, peppers and cucumbers are in different boxes.

There have been two fatalities on the farm.  One artichoke and one brussel sprout.  The artichoke may or may not be dead, but he looks pretty sad.  The bussel is a goner.  But life must go on. 

The winner so far has been this crowder pea.  I don't even know what a crowder pea is, but this thing has been growing like crazy!  Almost an inch a day!  

Below, on the left, are the okra.  They seem to be doing quite nicely.  On the right, from the front, is a squash, a zucch and cuke, all of which were transfered today.  

Finally, my friend Brad started too many beefsteak tomato plants, so he gave me 4 seedlings. Success!

And the mushroom log just looks moldy :(

Seedlings!!

I have my first seedling!! I am pumped! The brussel sprouts popped up first, followed closely by the artichokes.  I had planted two seeds per pod, so when both sprouted I picked which one was my favorite and plucked the other. While I was away this weekend, they grew like weeds. I propped up the brussels with some skewers because they had all flopped over. Not sure if this is what was supposed to happen, but they look healthy!

The peppers are taking their sweet time, but that's okay.  I can see a little bit of growth, but I am going to leave them in the greenhouse a bit longer to give them time to mature.

Since the brussels and 'chokes had pretty much outgrown the greenhouse while I was gone, I decided to transfer them to peet pots.  I put down some dirt and a little bit of organic fertilizer (which smells like you think it does) and dropped them in.  I also watered them pretty heavily.

Since there was now more room in the greenhouse, I decided to start some more seeds.  As luck would have it, my mom gave me some new fun seeds this weekend.  Currant tomatoes, Brown crowder peas, and Perkins long green okra! The okra suggested I soak the seeds over night and plant them in the ground, but I just dropped them into the seed starter pods.   The tomato seeds look fuzzy, which was fun. The pea seeds look like dried peas. 

More seeds should be arriving tomorrow! Wahoo!

Planting seeds

Today I planted my first seeds!  The kit of seeds was delayed but the hot peppers and brussel sprouts and artichoke seeds all arrived.

I am using Jiffy seed starter pellets.  They are a little strange in that they expand like a puffer fish.  I've read good reviews for them, so hopefully this will work.  I planted 4 pellets with brussels, 4 with artichokes and 1 for each pepper, with 2 seeds per pellet.

I covered the pellets and will check in a week or so to see if I have any baby seedlings.  Hopefully by the time the rest of the seeds get here these little guys will be ready to be transferred to pots.

Also, today I decided to soak my mushroom log.  Not really "gardening", but it will be (hopefully) adding to my home grown food stuffs, so I decided to add it here.  After a full 24 hour soak, it supposedly will start producing Shiitake mushrooms within 2 weeks.

We will see...

The Plan

Here it is.  The layout of my future garden plot.  It's even to scale.

The color code is based on timing. Yellow gets started indoors and transplanted near the end of May.  Blue can go in right around the final frost date (April 17) and green needs the soil to warm up a bit (middle to end of May).

I even tried to separate the vegetables that don't like each other. I hear tomatoes and cucumbers are like crips and bloods.  But thats just what I hear.

A bit of history

I have decided to take on a challenge, and that challenge is producing produce.  I attempted this last summer by buying two tomato plants, a planter, an "upside-down" planter (so the two plants could duel) and ended up with this:

The two tomato plants dueled and cumulatively produced one tomato.  It was delicious, but I was hoping for more.  I also had some herbs (seen on the right side) which I also bought pre-started, which did fine, but weren't much of a challenge.

This summer I am, in all likelihood, biting off more than I can chew.  But I like to dream big.  I have rented a 45' by 22.5' plot from the city of Columbus, IN in the community garden.  I think part of my epic failure of last summer was due to the fact that my small patio only receives sunlight for 2 to 3 hours a day.  While the community garden is more inconvenient than my back porch, it is necessary if I actually want any fresh produce.

One big change from last summer will be that I am attempting to start my plants from seeds.  I've done a bit of research on this and thought I'd give it a try. If all else fails, I can always go buy starter plants again, but I hope it doesn't come to that.

A Groupon came up yesterday for this kit and I decided to go for it.  I've also purchased some additional seeds and starting materials.  So far, including the land, I've spent $95.  Who knows, maybe I'll grow enough veggies to start selling my extras! At the very least, I hope to be canning some of them to be better prepared for the apocalypse.  It is 2012, you know.