This post would be great to show your six-year-old son.

We received a few inches of snow today. It should all melt in a few days. Chris spent most of the day today outside shoveling dirt… I helped for a couple of hours, but I have a slight foot injury right now which prevented me from doing too much work.

Following is a fun little gallery of pictures of our compost delivery. We received three truck loads (30 cubic yards total; 10 fit in one truck). Click on a picture to enlarge.

I’ll try to snap some pictures of the snow tomorrow… when the sun turns back on.

In April, 2010 we ordered two truck loads of compost from a company in Elk River, Minnesota. They helped the garden quite a bit. This fall, Chris decided to order three more truck loads (30 yards) before it snows, to give our garden an extra jump start next spring.

Puck checked it out. He approves. (This is him sitting in front of one truck load, 10 cubic yards).

Chris is putting in a new garden section, so this should help with that. We also cut out quite a bit of sod and top soil to prepare our current garden – and I put in a bunch of concrete block raised beds, so this black dirt will be nice to fill the rest of those in. It’s going to be a lot of work incorporating this, and hopefully the ground will stay free of snow for a couple more weeks so it will get done!

Actually, winter is fast approaching with the first snowflakes falling in our area today.

We ended up neglecting this blog (and the garden a bit too!) this year, as life quickly got in the way of leisure time. Chris and I were married in September – we had a pretty fun wedding with some of our homegrown sunflowers, great vegetarian food from Holy Land, good friends, a beautiful day for an outside wedding, and a mime to entertain our guests! I’ll put up some pictures of the day eventually. I figured the blog deserved a small garden update first, though.

There are still Brussels sprouts out there, and Puck munches away on them whenever he gets the chance. We’re hoping to order another truck load (or two) of compost this fall, and prepare the beds for spring – but that will depend on how long the snow holds off.

You can see the concrete block bed in front – I did manage to fill that with strawberries this fall, so hopefully they will get a jump start next spring!

Our yard and garden (and the entire neighborhood!) is being taken over by crab grass this summer. The stuff is awful – it spreads through the roots, goes to seed quickly, and takes over everything.

Today I got sick of pulling it out of the rows in the garden, so I decided to smother it with black plastic instead. Take that, noxious weed!

I hope this works, and then I’ll plant clover in the paths. Or maybe I’ll just put down patio blocks and be done with weeding between the beds. (That’s a tempting thought!)

Today… here’s Puck:

Checking things out. He stays in the paths (mostly).

“Broccoli…. cauliflower… kohlrabi! My FAVORITE!!”

Enjoying his garden

We’re finally seeing spring days in the 60s and 70s, with beautiful sunshine. But the temperature at night is still dropping into the 30s, which means that our nightshade plants are still traveling between the deck and the kitchen every day.

Tomorrow I hope to put in a good chunk of tomatoes. I’ve had problems with transplants dying off the last few years – not sure if it’s due to planting before a big rain, cutworm, or something else – but recently about 1/3 of my tomatoes’ stems have broken off right above the soil line after planting. So I have a few extras, and will wait to plant a handful for a week to see if I need to replace them with others. I have some large pots that the extras can go into, and a bit of extra space in the garden.

If the forecast looks good on Thursday, hopefully the eggplant and peppers can go out then!

I spend my days being a semi-nerd by profession.

In my spare time, I garden. And just to tie the two together, I make spreadsheets.

Here is what my garden looks like now:

And here is the sunflower planting schedule, so we are guaranteed to have flowers in bloom on September 10th:

I realize now that I am addicted to growing cole crops. I have 18 tomatoes, 16 peppers, 8 eggplants, and a variety of melon/zucchini seeds that I wanted to plant. I need a bigger garden!

My my terrific brother picked up three loads of these 16″ blocks for me at less than $1 per piece. There are 26 blocks per bed, bringing the project to a grand total to $52 for the frame. (Well, plus labor… but I needed the exercise!) Not too bad. The garden is on a slight hill and so they aren’t perfect. The beds are planted though! They are about 15′ x 4′ each (inside measurements 13.33′ x 2.67′).

I’m holding off on strawberries this year. Inside the beds are catnip, sage, thyme, chives, daisies and artemisia. I may have to move the artemisia out of the beds in a couple of years as it could get too large.

In the back of the bed, I planted alternating holes with last year’s onions that we missed. These will grow tall, and produce beautiful flower heads. I put basil in alternating holes around the rest of the bed, and plan to seed sunflowers in the other holes later this summer. The sunflowers need to be in bloom for cutting mid-September, so I won’t put those in until July.

I finally started hardening off tomatoes and peppers this week. Last year I decided to start fewer plants inside, and purchase more at the local greenhouse… but I ended up buying seeds anyway. It is just so hard to resist starting plants inside! I already put in all of the cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi – and seeded radishes and carrots. The rest of the garden should be seeded within the week, so all that’s left will be tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

They look pretty good; if the weather patterns hold most of these should be able to go into the ground next weekend. I do have a row cover and some fabric in case temperatures drop into the 30s later this May.

The smell of young tomato leaves in mid-April is hard to beat. It’s funny how that smell can be so nauseating in September, yet delicious in spring.

If the weather patterns had mimicked 2010, these cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts seedlings would be long planted in the garden. But with temperatures barely above freezing, and snow predicted through the end of this week, the garden is doomed to have a late start this year. All I can do now is sit in the spare bedroom, gaze at my young vegetable plants, and dream of sunny days ahead.

Last year I put up a flimsy wood fence to add some definition to my garden’s border. It barely survived the summer, so I wanted to think of something different (and more permanent).

I have been reading a lot of garden blogs this spring, and saw pictures of some great beds formed from concrete blocks. I decided to give it a try, so this year I am putting in two beds lined with the blocks at the front of my garden.

These will be planted with perennial herbs and flowers (mostly transplanted from other areas in our yard). I am also going to try growing strawberries and basil in the holes.

… Also, this post is coming at you from my WordPress for Blackberry App! I can sit in the garden and blog now – woohoo!