Spring is Nearly in the Air!

This week it has really warmed up here in the Treasure Valley of Idaho.  My girls are itching to get down and dirty in the garden so we prepared the raised bed in the back yard and got started!  They have been busy looking over the transplants and seeds available at the local stores and picked a few things out.  For the instant gratification part they choose- peas, bare root strawberries, and cabbage starts.  They decided that the best part of gardening was pulling up the root veggies so they also picked out- carrots, watermelon radishes, and beets. They also felt it was important to encourage the insects and birds to visit the garden and choose nasturtiums, cosmos, zinnias and forge- me-nots.  They say that the sunflowers and morning glories probably seeded themselves so they will wait and see what happens with them this year!

They picked out lots more things than will fit in their tiny plot but we also have the community garden to expand in so I let them choose seeds at will.  We decided to make our own seed tapes and because we are doing a quasi-square foot garden we made seed blocks.  I marked the paper towel with little pen dots and the girls dotted on glue and added the seeds.  I think they turned out great and we won't need to thin anything!

After turning the soil and adding the bag of compost I let the girls plant our transplants with some help.  G who's 2 planted the peas in a nice row along the back of the bed under the trellis and C planted the strawberry starts.  W, who isn't mine but who stays with us most days during the week planted the cabbages.  He's afraid of worms so this was very comical for the girls and me!  Didn't they do a fantastic job?  The black fencing is to keep the dog from trampling what we have planted- a fence will go back up in a couple of weeks.

We had our second community garden meeting last night and I was able to get a better read on what everyone wants to grow this year.  We had a great group of new members who have some fantastic ideas for the future. Ideas that were tossed around include a permaculture area for dwarf fruit trees and berries, an herb garden, painting the tool shed, and building a greenhouse.  This year we are using a black plastic mulch system with drip irrigation.  We expect to have much less trouble with weeds and watering schedules as a result!

I know we are all getting excited about the growing season over here! What are your plans?