From Seeds to Harvest

This looks like a fun blogging world challenge and one I have already started. Check it out here, From Seeds to Harvest.

As I mentioned Monday, I am trying the Square Foot Gardening this year. My wonderful and handy husband built me a couple 4x4 boxes already. We are waiting for the vermiculite, one of the Square Foot Garden ingredients and then we will be ready to fill the boxes and plant away.

I am still not 100% sure what we are planting. I am thinking of flowers, herbs and vegetables though. I thought I might start with some of what Mikah gets in his "blends" everyday and expand from there. Carrots, tomatoes, kale, broccoli, chard, other lettuces. Maybe some basic herbs, basil, thyme, parsley, sage. Some marigolds, I love how they smell and they remind of when I was a little girl and my mom and dad had a fairly large (it seemed large anyway) vegetable garden. Zinnias and sunflowers. I guess just a mix.

I am planning on trying the Square Foot Gardening method of growing any vine plants, cucumbers, squash, melons, tomatoes, vertically instead of horizontally by putting a trellis in at least one of the beds. I also have a Clematis vine that we tried to kill last year and guess what! It didn't die! I will transplant it and put it in a corner of one of the boxes next to our deck.

Ellie seems to be excited and she has already asked what she can grow. She wants to grow marigolds and she has helped me start a compost pile. She loves running food scraps, napkins and toilet paper rolls to the compost pile. Actually, she found it quite amusing that toilet paper rolls could be added to the compost pile :) Now I just need a little compost bin or bucket for adding scraps to throughout the day in the house so we aren't making a trip outback every 5 minutes.

This year we are following the directions for Mel's Mix for ease of getting started. Next year though I would like to try the Lasagna Gardening method of layering with stuff found in our backyard. These authors both wrote wonderful books on their methods which will be some of my next purchases for my own personal library.

I also read in the No Greater Joy magazine recently that Mama Pearl has her own Heirloom Seed collection through the Bulk Herb Store. Something I have yet to look into but definitely peeked my interest for seeds to buy.

Happy gardening!