Planting Begins For The Organic, Heirloom Gardening Wannabes

I told you when I started this gardening venture that I would share with you the successes as well as the mistakes we make a long the way. We'll I've already made plenty of mistakes with this garden. The first one being that I started seedlings in my house (some of which I could have sown directly into the ground). I lost the broccoli, cauliflower, and basil when I tried to slow down their rapid growth (they were getting leggy) by putting them outside one day (hey, the sun was shining, it seemed safe, NOT!). Then I planted my pea starts (picture above) the day before we had a blizzard and temps in the 20s. The other mistake was letting my toddler "help". Josiah snapped the picture above of a very irritated mama who turned around after planting some pea seedlings (yes the seedlings that died in the blizzard) and discovered that my daughter had pinched off the stems of all my watermelon, cantaloupe and some of my bean seedlings that I wasn't planning on planting yet but had brought out with me to the garden because they were all in the same flat. Urgghh!   The thing I AM happy about is that I finally got my garden completely "pinned down". Our remodel has taken precedence over our garden. Michael didn't want to spend the money to buy the metal pins, so he kept using make-shift wooden stakes. Every time I turned around our garden would be flapping. Can I say another, "Urgggh!" here? Just keepin' it real. Well Michael was at drill this weekend so I snuck down to our local farm store and bought over 100 metal pins to stake down the plastic. Yeah, no more flapping! So worth the $11 bucks I spent on pins. Shush, don't tell my hubby ; ) Here is a picture of the garden after Josiah and I finished pinning everything down and placing the last of the newspaper (unprinted roll) and straw down the rows where we walk.  

Yesterday was finally nice, so I decided to get brave and plant some of my cold weather seeds directly into the ground since I haven't had much luck with transplanting seedlings. Josiah thought it was great fun to put the seeds into the ground because he got to use Dad's special knife to cut the plastic where the seeds were going to be sown. Yes, I was watching him closely.

For the smaller seeds like carrots, radishes, lettuce, onions and turnips, I decided to cut a slit down the row and then pin the slit just slightly open. I know I'll probably have to do some weeding (the thing that has always stopped me from attempting to grow a garden in the past), but I'm hoping the weeding won't be too bad.Here are what is left of all the beautiful seedlings I  showed you in a post a couple of weeks ago. Basically, all I have left are 3 bean plants, one very sad-looking pea seedling (lonely, I'm sure, since all his friends died in the blizzard), celery and three varieties of peppers. Some friends gave me the tomato plant for my birthday. Hopefully I can keep it alive until it is time to plant the warm weather stuff (not for at least another month). I'm certainly learning a lot. Thanks for all your advice! Somehow I still managed to mess up, probably because I got impatient. Who me? I can hear my husband laughing in the distance.

It was nice to take a break this weekend and garden instead of exclusively working on the house. The only thing I did for the house was attempt to clean it and stain our new fiberglass front door which was a huge "nail in the tail". It is super hard to stain fiberglass as it doesn't absorb the stain and takes forever to dry when it is cold. I finally got the thing ready for Michael to hang tomorrow. So darn excited to have a front door again. Now we just need steps and a concrete floor to actually be able to use the door. At least we won't be keeping the weather out with blankets, plastic and a board. We're slowly gettin' there. Thanks for all your sweet and encouraging comments. Keep 'em comin'! They're getting me through these extremely busy, sometimes stressful days.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

God Bless,

Jackie