Project Garden Noob - Year 6

I expect to be planting in the garden tomorrow (onions, asparagus, potatoes) and getting our cucumber trellises out.  Yes, there will be lots of updates next week. With all that action planned for tomorrow I thought last night might be a good time to take care of Mr. Stump . Remember Mr. Stump? I marched back there, lighter in tow and tried to set him on fire.  It didn't work well.  Hubby then added lighter fluid.  Better.  We have fire.   And then the fire died out, after like 3 minutes.  Hubby then started digging.  He was all, "I got this." I watched my husband dig around the stump, use an ax on the stump, use a sledgehammer on the stump.  I watched him for roughly 20 minutes.  While he was doing that, I was clearing out some grass he threw in the garden ::gasp:: and started to notice something. Our soil is supposed to be clay-y.  Ok, not supposed to be, it is.  But it wasn't until hubb...

My husband isn't working.  It sucks.  It sucks for him, it sucks for me, it just sucks  But in spite of all the suckage, life moves on.  And god bless my husband, he likes getting stuff done around the house, so he's using this time in his life wisely - looking for a better job and doing some serious manual labor on our house. Remember my post last week, with the one fence side from stuff laying around the house?  Well, we went ahead and got the rest of the supplies to finish it up.  And my husband finished it up in ONE FREAKIN' DAY.  I come home Friday, it's freezing outside (impending storm), and there he is working away with his beanie on. Please excuse all the snow, that kinda happaned last weekend. And here's a close up of the fence Hubby still has to reinforce the chicken wire a bit, but since he's having a dental crown put in today, I think he's gonna be out of commission for a couple days, which is good.  Break time! We are...

It's spring in Colorado, which basically means wild temperature fluctuations and what others might consider odd weather. It was 60 degrees last Thursday. The day I'm writing this, a whopping two days later, we have 8-10 inches of snow. It's been blowing snow and ridiculously cold. Our high tomorrow, March 24th, is 28 degrees. Amidst all this weather, Tagawa Gardens was hosting a root vegetables class during the heinous weather. It was a fight, but I got my husband to un-hide the car keys and come to class with me. We learned a lot in our little class. Like that carrots and parsnips do not like to be transplanted and should be started directly outside. Oops.  That we should already have our asparagus in the ground.  Oops. Potatoes should also be started already.  Oops.  And onions are best planted in fall.  Oops. Given all those oopses, we loaded up on Saturday.  We grabbed a potato kit (details later), some more carrot and parsnip seeds (they will ...

If you happen to live in the Denver area, you know we have plenty of bunnies.  These bunnies: Which on my cute, let's-make-baby-sounds-days, I like to call bun-buns.  As a matter a fact, we found abandoned baby bunnies in our yard last year, despite our best efforts at bunny-proofing. Outside of the baby bunny incident, we had no bunny impresses last summer.  Winter hit and bam, bunny tracks.  My husband located our vulnerabilities and is currently fixing spots in the overall fence to prevent bunny impress (yes, I love the word impress, I just imagine little bunny spies). On top of bunnies, we have the aforementioned dogs (aka da babies).  I can just see them lovingly digging up tomato plants now. My husband and I have been discussing (read: arguing) about the fence for a while now.  I want something nice looking, but also cheap, which doesn't exactly go together.  I also have no conceptual idea of what building a fence entails....

The strawberry/herb pyramid is done! Ta-daa! It looks just like the picture in the plans, but you know, minus the plants. Why I say kinda done is since we should probably get some dirt in this bad boy. So that's the next step. I think we'll make that happen in April.  The garden activities are really gonna get going here soon.  I'm excited and exhausted just thinking about it all at the same time. And for some random cuteness, this little guy visited hubby while he was working away. Thank you love of my life for helping SO MUCH with my crazy garden dreams.

Seedling thinning is causing great strife in my household lately.  It goes something like this: Hubby: We need to thin the seedlings. Me: I did! Hubby:  Not enough! Me: They'll be fine! And thinning is stressing me out.  I decided to take a moment today and reflect on why.  I think the heart of the issue is that I've grown seedlings before, and most kinda just stop growing. Now, I've never put quite so much effort into my seedlings before.  We have lights, seed soil, I need to run and get some kelp fertilizer (watered down mind you!).  I see the patches of carrots and it breaks my heart to thin them down to two or three per square. Alas, it has to be done.  Here are some pictures of our recently groomed seedlings. Before thinning: After thinning:   I know I could/should remove more.  But I'm kinda refusing until they get bigger.  We've recently experienced some little guys falling over which could ...

As I've been swooning over the various garden catalogs in my mailbox, I've also noticed a whole bunch of fun garden gadgets I would like to get.  Some are just for fun, others I actually down right need, but they are really future me's problem. Let's start with need: We do not have a garden hose for the back yard.  I said it.  It's shocking I know, but we have a sprinkler system and it just wasn't a necessity.  I was at Target the other day and saw these guys, coil hoses, in many lovely colors, of which I will be asking my dear husband to pick up one up for me - Orbit 50' Coil Hose and Sprayer   It's become apparent to me that I would like to have a pair of pruners, so I stop ruining my regular scissors cutting greens.  A pair like these Gardener's Pruners would come in handy.   Something I already have (Thank you Aunt R and Uncle K)..... Rapitest Soil Test Kit .  I'm curious to see what a winter of "rest" and ...

Recently, my hubby lost his job.  It sucks.  But to quote the cliché, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.  The nice thing about having hubby home is the honey-do list. Lucky for me, he's taken an interesting in building stuff since we bought our house in May 2012 and since he has time on his hands, I'm keeping him busy. Right now he is working on this awesomeness:   It's technically a strawberry pyramid. I've already been warned that strawberries might not fair too well here (sage-like grandpa wisdom again). So I've decided to devote one side of this bad boy to strawberries and the other sides to smallish produce.  The herbs, maybe some green onions, shallots, etc... Here is hubby's current status on the pyramid: It's coming together! I cannot wait for this yard to start greening up a bit!  We have so many plans for our yard this summer, I'll admit I just want to get there already.  Alas, patience has never been my strength. ...

We started our first round of seedlings (carrots, parsnip, basil) on the evening of February 23rd.  Within a few days, we had this: This would be the first glimpses of baby carrots.  Yay, something grew. Then this weekend (March 2-3), we now have this: Holy moley carrots!  We are getting a little nervous, like maybe we shouldn't have started carrots inside.  And maybe we need to thin them.  Right now, I've decided to roll with it.  If they don't make it until transplant time, maybe we'll put them in pots or we'll start a batch directly outside.  All we are losing is $1.50 in seed.  No big deal. Oh, and here is the basil. We started some new herbs on Wednesday? Thursday?  I don't know.  Rosemary, Oregano, and Sage I believe. So far, not a peep out of the parsnips or chives.  They better get on it. We learned it might be best, in the future, to put plants will similar germination times in the same cont...