Building New Boxes & Lettuce

So I've been complaining recently that I don't have enough space in my square foot garden for all the wonderful veggies that I'm growing this year . . . So Cam, being the amazing person that he is, has built me two new boxes that are twice the size of the old ones.

The original boxes were 4' x 4' (if my memory is correct), and the two new ones are 6' x 6'. I was very happy to see Cam working so hard building these boxes.

I'd like to say that I helped, but that would be a lie. LoL. I am useless when it comes to building things. I just sit on the sidelines and look pretty. =)

Below: Cam bought some nice cedar planks at Home Depot for the new boxes.



The finished product looks amazing. We used untreated wood last year, so the old boxes look really crummy compared to the new boxes. But that's OK. I am not going for architectural look of the boxes, but more of the usability.


As you can see above, we're attempting to gather together the mix for the new beds. We are using Mel's Mix, but having a very hard time finding Vermiculite. Garden centers and the big box stores just don't sell it anymore. And if they do, they sell it in tiny little packages.

Grr...

Anyway, the boxes are pretty huge compared to the old ones, so now the challenge is going to be how do I reach in and harvest veggies that are in the middle of the box? That is the dilemma!

In between all our boxes, we're going to put in a stone walkway. I think it'll look very pretty when it's all said and done, and we won't have to mow in between the boxes. That will save us a lot of time!



I'd like some more boxes, so we may be building more later this season. Since it feels like spring weather outside, I think it's not too late to start planting lettuce and other leafy greens!

We bought these lettuce heads at Whole Foods in Franklin, TN the other day. We're going to make a delicious salad with it, and also plant it in our new beds. Doesn't it look yummy?

I wonder what type of lettuce it is. It's definitely not head lettuce, which we grew last year in the garden.


We also bought this greenhouse-type thing:

It was on sale for $25, and the shelves are removable.

I can't wait until the weekend to do major work in the garden!

** Update 2015 **

I no longer veggie garden, and now currently running a baby boutique called Preggie Baby Boutique. Thanks for visiting this blog! It's wonderful to see that I'm still getting visitors regularly. 

Replaced Cucumbers, Growing Bell Peppers, and Updated SFG Boxes Photos

Thank you to everyone who commented and gave me advice about the cucumber and squash dilemma. Eleutheros mentioned I should wait a week or so to see if the plants continue to grow. I was planning to listen to his advice… until this afternoon.

Cam and I had business lunch near Mt. Juliet, and Cam suggested we visit some of the nurseries afterwards. So we did, and we ended up doing more than just “looking.”

Above photo: We ended up buying way too much, but we couldn't help ourselves! It's so addicting!

We had never been to any of the fabulous nurseries in Mt. Juliet (a suburb of Nashville), and boy was I shocked at the awesome merchandise and healthy plants we found. I’ll go into more detail about all we bought in a post later this week. But for now, I’m going to focus on the cucumbers that we bought.

We found a package of small cucumber plants that were flowering. They looked so much healthier than the cucumbers we had planted, and I highly doubt our old cucumbers would have ever flowered like the new plants.

Below: The new cucumber plants



I am positive that we will have new cucumbers in the coming weeks (or at least healthy plants that don’t look diseased). I followed my father’s advice and planted the roots deeper than I did last time. After watering, the cucumber plants looked perky and happy. Not like last time when they just flopped over… and stayed flopped over until I decided to pull them all out.


Above: A close-up of the new cucumber plants

I'm pleased to announce that the bell peppers in the SFG boxes are still doing well. I was concerned this weekend because it didn't seem like they were perky, but now that the sunshine is back, they look better than ever! I don't think they're a fan of the cloudy and windy weather. They looked just awful yesterday... The flowers were so droopy; the plant looked sad.

But today, the sun was out and the bell peppers were back in the swing of new growth!

Below: the yellow bell pepper is in the beginning stages of fruiting. Look at the teenie baby bell pepper that's forming!


Below: The green and red bell peppers in the back are also in the midst of flowering and giving birth to tiny peppers. It's really pretty to look at the flower blooms.



Over the weekend, I was getting a little concerned about the purple bell pepper. It was starting to change color on me. Notice the dark spots on the green pepper below.


I had never heard of purple bell pepper before, but I know that with the red bell pepper, it becomes a large green bell pepper before it ever ripens and turns red. I was concerned with this purple bell because it's still somewhat small in size. It's not tiny, but not as large as some of the bell peppers you see at the store. But I guess the purple bell grows differently. It still looks healthy, so I'm not going to be too worried yet. I can't wait to see how it looks as it continues to grow in size.


The front bell pepper is still growing strong. I'm disappointed that it's an only child because the plant isn't flowering and has no hope of flowering.

Below: Front bell pepper (variety: red bell)

The pepper is getting so large that it's making the plant tip over, so I straightened it with a little stick. Hopefully that will keep the plant from falling over into the soil. It also makes the plant look more aesthetically pleasing.


On a final note, I thought I'd post individual photos of each square foot garden box in the back. Each box is growing very nicely and filling out. Cam and I are in talks to build 3 more. I know it's getting late in the summer to continue buying and planting new plants, but it's our first time, and we're experimenting!

Lettuce and Strawberries

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday about the mushrooms. The advice was very helpful. I dug up the mushrooms to see what the soil underneath them looked like, and this is what I found:



Directly underneath the mushrooms, I found an ash-gray color in the dirt. I dug up the dirt where the mushrooms had not appeared, and that soil looked dark brown and moist. So I took it as a sign that those areas are safe from mushroom infestation. I'll keep my eyes open for additional mushrooms.

In the front yard, we didn't do the traditional SFG. We used the dirt that was there and added organic top soil to it. We should have probably done something else to the dirt, but we are beginners. Next year, I will probably need to figure out how to keep that area healthier. The front vegetable bed is also shaded for several hours in the afternoon, so this may have something to do with the mushrooms.

So far, the lettuce in the front is doing much better than the lettuce in the back. Here's a wide view of the front vegetable bed.


Above: We used to have spinach, but we didn't pick the spinach leaves until it was too late. The spinach plants had started to flower, and when it flowers, the plant basically dies for the season. Maybe next year we'll have better luck.

Below: More close-up pictures of our lettuce heads. They haven't formed into heads yet, and I wonder if they ever will. They are getting pretty large.


On another topic, Cam and I went to a nursery yesterday and found two everbearing strawberry plants. They were on sale, and one of the plants already had 2 strawberry fruit on it. I decided to do an experiment. I potted one of the strawberry plants (the one without the fruit), and I planted the one with fruit in the SFG box in the back. I'm going to monitor how each one does over the course of the summer.

Below: potted strawberry plant


Below: strawberry plant in SFG Box # 2. This was taken yesterday after it stopped raining.


I'd love to have tons of strawberries, but the season for strawberries (well, the June-bearing variety) is coming to a close. May is strawberry season, I believe. But we'll see. It'll be a fun and delicious (I hope) experiment.

Above: the strawberry plant today. You can tell one of the strawberries is gaining more color.

Does anyone have experience with growing strawberries? If so, I'd love to hear your tales.

Concord Grapes

When Cam and I bought our two grape plants last month, they looked dead. They were both on sale, but we didn't have much hope for them. They looked like sticks in a pot. We took a chance, and we planted them. Amazingly, they started to flourish within a few weeks. The below picture is of our grape plants 2 weeks after they were transplanted.



The right plant looks much healthier than the left with its beautiful green leaves. You can tell the left plant was starting to form leaves. (Bottom center of the photo: there's something green that's growing near the grape plant. We didn't know what it was, and we were afraid to uproot it. Does anyone know what this is? Is it a weed that we need to get rid of?)



In the above picture, the right grape plant continues to grow at a steady pace, and the left one is beginning to catch up.

Above: Our grape plants today. You can't even tell where one plant starts and another ends. Their leaves have overlapped beautifully. Unfortunately, there are no grapes yet.

Below: In the middle of the photo, we think that is going to grow into a grape bunch, but it's growing so slowly that we're beginning to get concerned. Does anyone know how long it takes before the grape bunches to start form?


The leaves on the grape plants are still climbing grape trellis, but only the left plant (the one that grew very slowly in the beginning) has started to form the grape bunches. I'm not sure if I need to be concerned yet, but I think I'll need to do more research. I really would love a productive plant.

In Vietnam (where I was born), my parents made and sold grape wine. I'm hoping that if these grape plants are successful, I can learn the trade and make my own grape wine. Not for commercial use, but it might just be something fun to learn to do.

SFG: 1 Month Later

Cam and I officially began our Square Foot Garden about a month ago. While our first SFG box is flourishing, the other boxes in the backyard are taking a little longer to catch up.



I think this box (above picture, box #1 ) is doing so well because of the type of vegetables we chose to grow. We've had a very long and chilly spring season, and this may have caused the vegetables in the other boxes to grow very slowly.


But now it's the end of May, and the weather is starting to warm up. In the last week, it's been incredibly hot and humid. Of all the veggies, I think it's helping the tomatoes grow two times as fast.


In the above picture, one of the tomato plants in box 1. The beautiful yellow flowers mean that this plant is on its way to having beautiful cherry tomatoes! I've been doing the Square Foot Gardening Method of Pruning (I'll write more about this method in a later post). But basically, I've been cutting off any side shoots and suckers that are not part of the main stem. I may have been doing this wrong in the beginning of the process; think I cut off the leaves instead of the shoots.

I must have done something right because a few of our tomato plants are bearing tomatoes!

Front Yard

In the front yard, Cam's late mother had built a beautiful brick flower bed. We decided we would use it to plant additional vegetables.
In the beginning, we planted spinach, lettuce heads, and a bell pepper plant.
You can see the baby lettuce heads at the top of the photo, and the spinach at the bottom. The sole bell pepper plant is left of the lettuce head, but the sunlight makes it hard to see it. Here are a few close-ups of the plants.


Above: the lone bell pepper plant. Cute, isn't it?


Baby lettuce heads. They look messy and limp...Spinach after it was transplanted.

My SFG Garden Beginnings (Back Yard)

In April of this year, my boyfriend, Cam, and I decided to start a square foot garden together. I had just gotten laid off from my publishing job (The economy, structural changes, etc.), and I was about to start freelancing writing and editing full-time. I was coming over to Cam's house more often, and it seemed to be the perfect time.

We had talked about starting a square foot garden in the winter. We're both into eating more organic foods and enjoying what God has blessed us with. (We're Christians, by the way). A SFG seemed to be a perfect fit for us. Cam lives in a subdivision, so we don't have acres of land to work with. A SFG was the most convenient in terms of space.

So in the middle of April, Cam went to Lowe's and purchased untreated wood boards to build the square foot garden boxes. He built three in total. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photographs while he was building it, but here's a photo of me standing in front of one of them. (This was at the beginning stages of our garden. Only one SFG box was in use at this time.)


After Cam finished building the boxes, he and I went to Lowe's and Home Depot to buy small plants and seeds. We wanted a vegetable garden, and it was definitely a challenge to find a variety of vegetables. It seemed that all the lawn and garden stores had rows and rows of tomatoes, but not much else. But eventually we were able to get the variety we wanted.



We started with concord gapes and a few tomato plants. Then we moved onto lettuce, carrots, onions, bell peppers, oregano, zucchini, watermelon, lettuce.