2011 Garden

Neil and I have been working on getting our garden ready for this year's growing season, and we're so excited! We wanted to use as much recycled/reclaimed/FREE stuff as we could find to minimize the impact on our pocketbook and the earth. We <3 Craigslist.

When we moved in, there were three large planter boxes up against the house that had cherry tomatoes, zucchini, stevia, and lavendar growing in them.

And the back of the property, where we relocated the boxes and are setting up the new garden, looked like this... lots of weeds and unused space, and a couple of small, bare concrete slabs.

Now we've got the three big boxes filled with fresh compost and planted with all different kinds of beets, onions, carrots, and garlic, and they sit on one of the slabs which should help warm the roots. We planted all that about two weeks ago, and the onions were the first to sprout, followed by the garlic and beets. No carrots yet.

We read that potatoes grow really well in a system of stacked tires, so we've been on the lookout for old tires we can use for that. So far we have six, and we'd like another six for three stacks.

Neil built more planter boxes and trellises out of free wood scraps found off Craigslist - the long one we've planted peas in (sugar snap, Oregan sugar pod, and umm... Wanda peas).  Neil insists on having twinkle lights on when he does woodworking.

Next to that is a square one for cucumbers (lemon cucumbers & pickling cucumbers).

Between the compost & the peas, Neil tilled the soil and plans to build a box for squash (zucchini, acorn, butternut) - we're not sure if it's a good idea to grow stuff so close to the compost, so we'll see how that goes.

Neil also tilled the ground for where the two big/main planter boxes will go, and then we measured and staked them out so we could get a better idea of what it'll look like. The boxes will be made from railroad ties (we found a local place that sells them for super cheap - $2/each!), and will contain peppers, green beans, brussel sprouts, lima beans, celery, and five million varieties of tomatoes. I'm particularly excited about the German Lunchbox, Cherokee Purple, and Golden King of Siberia varieties. Creeper dog alert.

In the other rear corner, we made a place for the corn (SugarPearl and Bodacious) & strawberries. That and the squash boxes will have a railroad tie frame as well.

That's about all we can do outside until we figure out how we're going to get the railroad ties to our house. We'll continue to make trips to the free mulch give-away site provided by the City of Los Angeles in the meantime for mulch to mix into the soil.

Inside though, we've been saving our toiletpaper/paper towel tubes since we moved in, and I started seeds in them about a week ago. No signs of life yet, but I'm keeping a close watch!  (I may have planted a few too many)

And finally, a boy and his dog...