How my garden grows...by the square foot this year.

So I'm really excited to get my spring garden growing.  I choose to get heirloom seeds this year from Baker Creek.  So far. so good.  Only ONE seed didn't germinate and that really made me happy.  I wanted to get a jump start even though we have an early frost date (March 1) I'm just impatient like that. lol  I wanted to use grow lights to help, but holy cow are those growing set ups expensive.  So after a little forum research I decided on the thrifty method.  I purchased a $10 grow light at Wally World and and made an "adjustable" stand by stacking jelly jars.  Added an aluminum hood and Viola!

 The picture above was taken on January 29th  and three weeks later...

Yeah.  Can't wait to get planting. It's already getting late for the broccoli & garlic for my region, but last year I had good results.  I use a drip irrigation system (easy to build) and that seems to make many plants less temperamental.  It's hard to see but in the photo, but i'm planting tea herbs this year including hibiscus, chamomile, and mint (in a small pot away from everyone else-he is too bossy and doesn't play nice with others-lol).  I'm also trying sweet potatoes this year-we'll see how it goes.  With the addition of R2D2

I should have lots of good compost to hill the potatoes and making small batches allows me to tweak the pH as needed for the different plants. I have build two of the 4' x 4' boxes for my Square Foot Garden and have 2 more 4' x4' and 2 or 3 2' x 4' still to build.  I also need to get the conduit for the melon trellis.  I'm planting Charentais melon & Piel De Sapo (toad skin), also need to build more stacking boxes as the potatoes will be grown vertically. That being said i'm off to get some more done, hopefully i'll update this blog more frequently this year...we'll see.