My First SQF Garden!

I've made some mistakes along the way and it isn't perfect but we made do with whatever we could find! I noticed a lot of people didn't dig out the grass before they placed their weed cloth/beds down. We did and it was hard work as we had never done it before and it made the beds kind of sit down lower than the surrounding area but I suppose that is ok. We got some garden fencing today because we have rabbits that hop through our yard - there was one waiting on us today when we came home, so we are glad to have it up even though we have to move it to get into the gardens.

The lath boards didn't fit as they are too small, we just sat them on top and put tacks to sort of hold them lol. In the other box, I used yarn and it seemed to do the job for now.

Looking good, keep it up.


Kay

I finally have my first sprouts for the carrots, leaf lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, kale and sugar peas! The strawberries have finally started to bloom as well! This is so exciting for me because we have had such low sun the past 10 days but they still sprouted, so hoping for the best. Now I just have to figure out what you do after they start sprouting.... Here are a few of the sprouts/blooms:

We also dug out the grass (which I agree was hard work!), so our beds sit down a little so it appears that we don't have enough soil. I dug down in today to plant my tomatoes though and there was plenty of depth. Good luck!

Homekeeper said I finally have my first sprouts for the carrots, leaf lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, kale and sugar peas! The strawberries have finally started to bloom as well! This is so exciting for me because we have had such low sun the past 10 days but they still sprouted, so hoping for the best. Now I just have to figure out what you do after they start sprouting....

Sit back and Grin like a crazy person.

Furbalsmom wrote:

Homekeeper said I finally have my first sprouts for the carrots, leaf lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, kale and sugar peas! The strawberries have finally started to bloom as well! This is so exciting for me because we have had such low sun the past 10 days but they still sprouted, so hoping for the best. Now I just have to figure out what you do after they start sprouting....

Sit back and Grin like a crazy person.

LOL, been there done that already!

Just want to show off how quick things are growing! So excited!

Sugar Snap Peas


Spinach:



Mustard Greens:

Lookin' good! Are you still grinning?

Furbalsmom wrote:Lookin' good! Are you still grinning?

My neighbor thinks I'm crazy now because I start getting excited and jumping up and down when I go out and see something new in my garden lol. Who knew this would be this thrilling and the sprouts feel like my babies.

Congrats on your First SFG. I have been gardening for many years and the excitement never goes away===it's always there.

Congratulations on your first SFG and welcome to the forums! Ah, yeah, that smile never goes, even when the sinuses start to kick in from all that pollen. Looking good so far!

this is my second year to garden but im new to the forum ......my poor hubby get's drag out daily to see what's growing.....LOL....he says things like.....has it really changed that much in the last couple of days i can count on my kids though....they are just excited as i am to see sprouts coming up!

love your garden!
hugs
rose and dj

I just can't believe how fast things grow!! So amazing...... I'm sure my neighbors still think I'm crazy as much as I go stare at my garden






We finally got a broccoli head starting:



Spinach is growing really well:





Mustard Greens:




Kale (not sure why there are no sprouts in one of the holes yet)

HomeKeeper

I think we all are a bit crazy, it is so amazing to see the changes in the garden and the anticipation of fresh veggies is overwhelming.

Keep it up!

Besides the onions, strawberries and broccoli (which were transplants), I planted everything else just 6 weeks ago and look at them now! The spinach was plucked off last week, a bowl full and its already grown back - I love gardening, except for the pests lol! The transplants (onions, strawberries and broccoli) have grown fast as well! I must have got some good ones, although one of the strawberry plants didn't make it and a few of the onions. We still have empty squares - so I need to get to planting some summer crops soon!

My goodness those are realy beautiful looking babies. Is that peacock kale in the last pic.

shannon1 wrote:My goodness those are realy beautiful looking babies. Is that peacock kale in the last pic.

Never heard of peacock kale, so I googled it and then I realized I had my kale and mustard greens mixed up LOL! I got the seed packets and what I thought was kale in my garden is actually mustard greens (red giant) and the other is the kale (red winter). I'm so glad I found this out now, so thanks for asking that question lol!

Well it is just beautiful. So is it mustard?

shannon1 wrote:Well it is just beautiful. So is it mustard?

Yes, the last pic is the red giant mustard greens, they are supposed to taste really good, so we'll see when I have enough to make for dinner!

I think it just won a place in my fall garden.

Had to show off my babies! We harvested the broccoli today and then we are on week 3 of a steady harvest of spinach and I'm loving that! The onions are pushing through, the strawberries are finally getting bigger and so is everything else. I'm thinking of harvesting the lettuce, since it has been almost 8 weeks now and its grown SO slow, kind of disappointing that out of the 4 squares I planted, only 5 actual plants made it. We checked one of the carrots today and they are growing good, so we will give them till they are done, which is about 3 more weeks. I really need to get a cage or something for our sugar snap peas, they keep attaching to the fencing, which we put there to keep the rabbits out and move when we mow in between the beds.

Now, what do I plant next?? I need some summer crop ideas, probably some tomatoes.......hmm...











Yummy harvest today.....

My oh my, do I love this gardening experience! I haven't updated in a while but here are some pictures of our lettuces before we pulled them up - they were full of slugs, of which I had no idea were in there until we pulled them out. It was gross and I couldn't bring myself to eat them, even after washing but my neighbors didn't mind so they got a huge container full.



We have been getting about this much sugar snap peas every few days for weeks now, but they are starting to slow down:



I don't know what to do with the Kale yet but I did pull the biggest one and the others are wilting....any ideas to use up the Kale?



Here is a shot of the sugar snap peas and the strawberry patch:



This must have been the mother of the slugs! She was under the leaf lettuces and then in between the lettuces were the baby slugs GROSS!!





Today, I finally planted some tomato plants and pepper plants since they were on sale for $1 each. It has been cool here but finally warmed up to upper 70's the past few days, so I'm trying them out to see how it goes.



We plan on building the trellis for the tomatoes tomorrow, they are all vine, I got 2 German Striped, 1 Black Krim and 1 Big Rainbow.



If you look closely on the next photo, you can see a tomato already!



I also planted 2 pepper plants, Anaheim Chili and Jalapa Hot pepper:






I also planted 2 more squares of carrots as we eat so many, we will have no problem using them up!

We made kale chips tonight for the first time using this recipe.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/baked-kale-chips/detail.aspx

It was a hit and inhaled by the family. Hopefully our CSA box will have more in it tomorrow. The kids liked it so much they asked if we could plant some in our SFG.

JustMe wrote:We made kale chips tonight for the first time using this recipe.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/baked-kale-chips/detail.aspx

It was a hit and inhaled by the family. Hopefully our CSA box will have more in it tomorrow. The kids liked it so much they asked if we could plant some in our SFG.

That is the only way I know to use kale is kale chips! I may just end up doing that for all of the kale but I was wanting to figure out other ways to use it too.

Homekeeper wrote:

JustMe wrote:We made kale chips tonight for the first time using this recipe.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/baked-kale-chips/detail.aspx

It was a hit and inhaled by the family. Hopefully our CSA box will have more in it tomorrow. The kids liked it so much they asked if we could plant some in our SFG.

That is the only way I know to use kale is kale chips! I may just end up doing that for all of the kale but I was wanting to figure out other ways to use it too.

I blanch and freeze it.