Tuesday 12 June 2007

The Garden is Planted!

I think I am about two weeks into the growing season but I finally got my square foot garden planted! It was neck-and-neck there for a while, between me and the mosquitoes, to see who would prevail, but I did it!

I first laid down two layers of weed barrier cloth, and then started mixing up my soil. I think I finally ended up with about 1/3 compost which we made ourselves over the past two seasons, 1/3 dirt that our local ants dug up for us, 1/6 coconut fibre (instead of peat moss) and 1/6 vermiculite. It reminded me of my old Tree Nursery days! Except that I had no fancy dirt-mixing equipment, just a wheelbarrow, buckets, a spade and my two hands.

It took me about 5 1/2 hours from when I started putting down the weed barrier cloth, to when I finished planting 14 of my 16 square foot sections. I have no idea if I've planted the seeds too close together or too deep, but I guess I'll find out. I'm not sure if the soil is deep enough either, but I will wait and see. I don't want foot-long carrots anyway!

The two sections with no label on them are for pre-sprouted lettuce I will buy from the Root Seller and plant there - it's cheating a bit, but what the heck, I want something to be growing. I do have two kinds of parsley, thyme, oregano, rue and chives growing already in my little flower bed beside the house, which I can harvest already (a bit at a time).

Here is the grid/list of things that I have planted:

Sugar Sprint Peas Rainbow Chard Senger Farm Spinach Leaf Beat
Red Comet Radish Slobolt Cilantro Feverfew Lettuce
SF Nantes Carrots Italian Sweet Pepper Glacium Flavium Lettuce
Chanteray Carrots Cutting Celery Basil Thyme Catgrass Oats