The zucchini is growing strong! Two shoots have popped up in the last few days and are looking strong!

We also have also added another 12 Pole Beans in the last few days. I was doing some browsing on Craigslist and found a posting from a lady here in Green Bay that had planted too many beans and was giving them away to anyone that wanted them! I sent her an email on Wednesday and she told me that I could stop and pick them up after work. When I got to her house, I found a ziploc baggie taped to her front door with several small bean plants! It's always great to find stuff for free, and this way we also saved her from just wasting these great little plants! There was 13 plants in the bag and we planted 12 of them (the last one looked pretty small and it probably was not going to make it) These are now taking up the 3 boxes in the back corner of the garden so that we can utilize the fencing to help give them something to climb as the grow.

The broccoli that we planted is really starting to grow and look great. We have realized that next year, we need to plant the broccoli in the outside boxes, closest to the fence as it is going to get a lot taller than Darrin's pepper plants! Lesson learned...

We have Beans!

Overnight, the beans have popped up! So far there are only 2 of the 8, but I am figuring that the other 6 are not far behind!

Garden Update, week 1

One week after planting...

We have green! A few of the plants have started shoots already! WooHoo! The Cucumbers have popped up, as well as the zucchini, lettuce and beans.

The plants that were added last week as quickly taking to their new homes and have appeared to get bigger already. We have had fun checking each day to see what new green is arriving in the boxes. So far so good!

We have about half of the garden planted so far and next weekend we will add more carrots, lettuce, cucumbers and zucchini. No point in having it ALL ready at the same time! We have also realized that we forgot to get any peas for this year... guess those will have to wait until next year. We have enough going so far this year.

At present count, we have:
4 tomato plants (3 in the garden and on on the deck)
4 banana peppers
2 hungarian Sweet peppers
3 red peppers,
6 broccoli
9 carrots
1 bib lettuce
8 beans
1 cucumber
1 zucchini

I an sure that the counts will grow as we add more over the next few weeks.
Just not sure exactly what else we are going to plant in the remaining squares...

Planting time

With the boxes finished and filled it was time to do some planting and put up the fence.

Part of planting was done from seed, part of it from transplants purchased from various places. I figured that since we got a later start on planting this year, instead of doing it all from seed, we would get some started right away with plants.

The next step was to figure out where we were going to plant everything and how many of we were going to plant in each square. By looking at how far apart the plants need to be "thinned" to when from seed, or how far apart the transplants need to be planted, we were able to figure out how many in each box... tomatoes - one per square. Carrots, 9 per square. But then we had to keep in mind those plants that needed extra support or something to climb up would need to be planted closest to the fence. Too much to think about!!

While I started some of the planting from seed, John tackled trying to get the fence post put in so that we could get the fence up. Best to get that up BEFORE we actually get the other plants transplanted - leave it open overnight and the deer will have a feast in my backyard. I want to feed ME, not the 4 legged critters.

Before long we had seeds planted, the fence up and figured out how to keep the door closed. Next stop - head to the store to pick up the plants that we wanted for stuff that we didn't have time to start from seed. Stops at 3 greenhouses (one just to check out some of the flowers) and Darrin and I were ready to plant! Darrin was really getting into the planting (he didn't get to do any of the seed planting since he was running around with the neighbor kids when I was putting those in earlier.

By the time we were finished we had banana peppers, red peppers, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce and beans. In a week or so I am going to plant some more lettuce, beans and carrots - that way I don't have everything ready to eat at the same time!

For more garden photo's you can check out flickr we will continue to add more photo's there of the garden and it's progress.

Final Day of Construction.... tomorrow we plant!

The final day of construction is here!

Once the boxes are built and in place, it will be time to blend together the "magic mix" that was recommended in the "Square foot Gardening" book. No dirt involved. The boxes are filled with a blend that consists of equal parts compost, peat moss and vermiculite. No fertilization needed. The vermiculite was pretty hard to find. On Tuesday afternoon, we started making calls to find it. Most places that carried it, were either out of stock or only had small bags, of which we would have had to by way too many, making it really expensive! Finally, when we called Green Bay nursery, they said they did not have any in, but they could order it and it would be here before the weekend.

So that was the first part of the project for tonight was heading to pick up the vermiculite and check out what else they had at GB Nursery. Aside from the vermiculite, the only thing that we needed was a few more bags of compost. It was recommended that you do not buy all of the same type of compost... but at least 4-5 different kinds. So we pound a few more bags here! Shopping complete!

A quick drilling of the drainage holes in the bottom when we got home, we were ready to go. Time to figure out exactly where we were going to put everything. Better decide that before we fill all the boxes!

We figured that Darrin would have been all over helping us combine the mix for the garden, but not tonight. Oh well, more fun for us! LOL

We quickly decided that there was no way that our tarp was big enough to mix everything all at one. So we opted to do half at a time. This was the easiest way to divide it up as we had even numbers of bags to work with.

What a mess! It became evident why they recommended spraying a light mist of water over the mix once you have everything poured onto the tarp - it is very dusty!

With everything mixed together, it was time to fill the boxes. Funny thing, even though we checked and double checked out math to figure out how much of everything we would need for the mix we ended up with A LOT of extra. Granted, we knew that we were going to have a little leftover, but we only needed about 2/3 of what we mixed! Works for me - now I have some of the mix that I can up in my potted plants!!!