The Garden

Do you ever remember having to do things as a little kid that you hated and you swore that when you got older you wouldn't do it. Well one of those things for me was gardening. I hated maintaining the garden and all the work to prep it, and to pick it, and so forth. When we redid our patio several years ago we built a raised planting bed for flowers or whatever. But we didn't touch it for a year.

I think part of the reason is that it was a lot of late nights to finish it since it became more extensive than I thought it would (I have a bad habit of that). But a year later we planted tomatoes and cucumber an it grew!!!

I was happy but that wasn't good enough. This year I took it to a new level (which Liz like to remind me still costs money). I had seen some plans for a self watering "planter" that would grow great plants. I gave that plans to my father and after he did well I wanted to build my own. When we got home Morgan was so excited she helped unload the truck, such a helper :)

So basically these are large storage totes with a water basin in the bottom and the water "wicks" through the soil and so that plants drink as much as they need and you just have to keep the water full. Now just as a note this guy did not design it, he redesigned it from another product. Some people get a little fired up about that. Anyway, the cost on the website is way off. We decided that is cost about $100 per container complete. Now, I have learned a few tricks and ideas on how to shave some of that but no where near the $30 the website says, so if someone figures it out please let me know. We also put them on wheels so we could move them around easier.

So we planted 2 tomato plants in one (1 of them being a cherry tomato), 2 cucumber plants in the other. Now in the bed we planted 2 hills of Zucchini, (Morgan loves Zucchini bread) a bell pepper, carrots, green beans, ans peas. I also installed a soaker/drip system to help simplify and make better use of the watering. And here is what we have now . . . .

Everything is doing well. You can see some of the green bean behind the contain. The barrel is more dirt that is drying out since it got soaked with all of that great rain we got! I think there is still room for more "container planters" but Liz says she has to think about it, she wants to have some patio space for whatever reason :)

The next things on my list:

I have 2 old ice chests that are no good for ice anymore, but I want to turn them into "strawberry patches" this fall.
I want to setup a light bed for starting my own seedlings early on.

I also want grow potatoes, above ground.

And I also want to learn how to grow onions.

It should be fun! Now if I could just figure out how to get Liz to let me, hmm . . . . . . .now that is a challenge :)