Ready, Set, Spring: Let’s Garden!

the first of many, many posts about my new favorite hobby, gardening

Hello, longer days and Goodbye, Seasonal Affective Disorder! Now it is time to get my hands grubby and dig into the dirt. I actual begrudge the time away from my garden to do this blog post. Because I feel behind, already. In two weeks my CSA farm in lower SC will deliver its first shipment; and I’m still starting seeds. Every day now I hear “hurry up, hurry up” in my head.

The first thing I planted: one type of spinach – which I started outside, and sadly, I think I started it too early. It has failed, so no picture. I started another packet of seeds a couple of weeks later (after the last frost) and they have LIVED. See how nice:

Back right, spinach. Middle row, carrots. Front left row, buttercrunch lettuce.

I’m so excited to see these grow. Last year, when I was just playing, I grew only two salad bowls’ worth of lettuce. It was nice lettuce, though. Right after the spinach-that-failed, I started spring onions:

Spuds Galore

But I’m not just making salads. There are also potatoes. I got so excited when I saw a video on growing potatoes in a bucket, that I decided I just had to try it. So, I bought two five-gallon buckets (or maybe they are 10-gallon, spatial abilities elude me) and decided to try it. Soon my shipment of seed potatoes arrived from Park Seed:

Too much is never enough

Why do when you can overdo? I knew I should start slowly, but, after all, Park Seed did send me a LOT of seed potatoes in the package. (I’m rapidly becoming their customer of the quarter, if not the year.) So, I purchased some special seed bags and got busy. Sadly, when I checked the Park Seed site for bags, they didn’t have what I needed, and I had to take my custom to the Home Depot. I got a deal, so I have many more bags than the ones you see here:

Last night, I planted a lot of my herb seeds outdoors in bags – and we’ll see how that works out. No pictures yet of those – I really, really hope they grow! I’m also repurposing the old plant pots. The garlic bulbs I ordered from Park had to go in two of those. And now it is time to go and clean up the part of my raised bed that has the rose bush – there’s got to be room for something. Currently, I stuck the pepper supports there, before I even plant the jalapeño peppers. I hope this works!

As you can see, I really need to clean up this particular bed. And learn how to prune this rose bush.

At this point, I’ve run out of current raised beds. Hence the large plant bag purchase. I haven’t even gotten to buy the tomatoes! Lucky I have more big 10-pound plant bags out of that shipment. Later today my new raised bed will arrive. This one comes from Amazon. I decided I needed it just Thursday night and they do deliver fast! That’s going to be the home of my cucumbers. Just as with the peppers, I bought the support system for cucumbers before I had a place to plant them. Ooooh… I need more topsoil. How do you gardeners handle such an expensive hobby? I can’t wait to the start harvesting … this is going to keep me busy all summer hoeing and praying for rain.