Time To Grow!

We have finally finished getting all the raised beds built and installed! I have everything planted except the basil which will go in this week. Here is the BIG REVEAL of our finished garden!

The picture above shows one corner of our yard with four 4'x4' and two 2'x14' (joined in an L-shape) raised beds. We used a red mulch between the beds both for contrast and to help keep weeds down.

One side of the L bed with cucumbers and tomatoes. We will be using the fencing to help support the plants as they grow. The cucumbers were grown from seed and the tomatoes were purchased from a local nursery as transplants.  We do plan to grow tomatoes from seed next year once we get a better setup for the greenhouse.

The other side of the L bed with all tomato transplants. We have a total of 26 tomato plants in 6 varieties. We have slicers, bite size, and sauce tomatoes. Hoping for a good year in growing!

The nearest bed is broccoli. We were pretty late in planting the broccoli, but still hoping for a successful year. The far square bed is the kiddo's garden. He planted lettuce, carrots, cherry tomatoes, a Better Boy tomato, and ground cherry.

The nearest bed has a plethora of plants. We are have lettuce, peanuts, purple bell peppers, borage, onion, and habanero pepper.  The far bed has onion, green bell pepper, carrots, beets, roman chamomile, and habanero pepper.

This is the other corner of the front yard. No L-shaped bed on this side, but we do have a small lemon tree in a pot.

The near bed has corn muskmelon, pumpkin, and zucchini. The far bed has peas, beans, ground cherry, pumpkin, sunflower, woad, and flowers.

This side has corn, watermelon, honeydew, and muskmelon in the near bed. We have watermelon, flowers, sunflower, beans, and ground cherry in the far bed.

We have potted herbs galore! The green pots have eight different kinds of mint. I might have a slight obsession with growing mint. The blue and red pots have all different kinds of medicinal and kitchen herbs.

Our square pots have raspberry, blackberry, elderberry, boysenberry, goji berry, and (surprise!) two varieties of cotton! I wanted to try to grow the cotton as an ornamental plant. We will see how that goes.

The front porch flower bed has raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry plants from last year's plantings.

Also from last year's planting, we have the garlic doing quite well. Garlic was planted in October for a (hopefully) June harvest.

Lastly, we have our potato hills. I am quite please with how well they seem to be doing so far.


This is the garden for 2014!  Now we wait for the plants, sun, and water to do their thing. Hope your garden is growing well too!

Another Beautiful Weekend

We have had gorgeous weather this weekend. I didn't get a whole lot done on Saturday, but I did manage to get quite a few things done today.

I planted out 30 strawberry plants of two different varieties. I had waited a bit too long to get them into soil when I received them which resulted in about a 40% loss of my starts. However, those that did take seem to be doing pretty well so far.

The seed potatoes have all been planted too. Hoping for a bumper crop of potatoes this year, but zero experience with them. Guess it will be a learn as I go part of the garden this year.

We also got a little excited since we started seeing some sprouts from the lettuce that was planted on 4/8.

I just love my "fancy" plant markers!


Finally, I got a few more herbs planted in their pots.

I plan to give you a run down of everything that has sprouted next week, but until then, here are some of the starts that are still in the greenhouse for now.

Until next week, Happy Planting!

I'm back!

First, let me apologize for the long delay between posts! I know I have missed three Sundays in a row. The first Sunday I missed was a girls' weekend and nothing got done in the garden. The second Sunday was a fun weekend in Chicago to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday.

Here we are celebrating with Breakfast on the Ledge at the Willis Tower Skydeck.

What a treat that was for us! We actually had the entire 103rd floor of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) all to ourselves for two whole hours. It was an amazing experience.

The last Sunday I missed updating the blog was spend frantically catching up the garden tasks that I neglected for two weekends. Of course, by the time I was done, I collapsed into bed and failed to make a post!

So here is where we stand so far! We have one corner garden area completed and finished out with mulch and everything.

The grid is missing on two of the bed, but that is an easy task for later. We have peas and corn planted so far. Much more to come soon.

I did go a little crazy with the potted plants this year too. Mostly because they are perennials and easy to take with us when we move next year. Here is the progress so far in the potted plants:

We have raspberry, blackberry, elderberry, boysenberry (gosh, hope everyone likes berries!), catnip, valerian, sweet marjoram, english thyme, french thyme, lavender, and feverfew in the pots so far. There will also be some pretty blue pots added with a few other herbs hopefully next week.



My Tennessee Beauty Strawberries are starting to produce strawberries now. I know that you are supposed to pinch off the buds and not let them fruit until the next year, but I want strawberries now! I never claimed to be a patient person. Hopefully, gardening will teach me to be patient eventually.

I have at least been very patient with the garlic I planted last October.  It seems to be doing well, but I have to wait until the leaves start to turn yellow and fall over. I have read that is when it is ready to  pull and cure.

The beds that have been planted the most are in the opposite corner of the yard, but don't have the mulch around them yet.

We have lettuce, onion, carrots, and roman chamomile planted out in those so far. They all seem to be doing fairly well too.


So, now you are up to date on the garden for now. I should be back next week with more updates and lots more planted!

One Lovely Saturday!

Hello all! What a beautiful Saturday we had this week! We started the day with a quick trip to the Friends of the Library Used Book Sale where I found a set of gardening encyclopedias from 1964. I bought the whole set and some other wonderful gardening and home books for $10. What a find! We then went to Lowe's to get the materials to make two more 4' x 4' square foot garden boxes. Seems like we will never get done building these things, but the end result will be worth it.

Here are the two boxes we built, but haven't placed yet.

If you aren't familiar with the square foot gardening method, I recommend reading Mel Bartholomew's book All New Square Foot Gardening (affiliate link). He details a very easy method of building the boxes like those picture above. We just used two 2" x 6" x 8' board cut in half to make the box itself. You don't have to worry about your existing soil being poor either. He recommends Mel's Mix which is a blend of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite. However, I have found that the organic garden soil from Lowe's works just as well for growing and is a blend of compost, peat moss, and perlite.

We spread out a healthy layer of that garden soil in the "flower" beds across the front of the house to get it ready for planting this year. We plan to put potatoes in the largest section of the bed. Last year we had put in a blackberry and raspberry. I also had some extra strawberry plants last year that we just sort of tossed in the mix. They seem to have mostly survived the winter and that awfully cold polar vortex. Sadly, my lovely rosemary may have bitten the dust. I am just hoping the roots are still alive and might come back.

The neighborhood kids also brought us some wonderful bamboo to use as a pea trellis. We went with a teepee style. Just have to add some circular supports to the teepee during the next week.

You can also see that we have the grid in place for the beds that are in place now. I thought the hot pink was fun and super visible!

I am in the process of making some large planters with a variety of strawberries for the front porch. So far I have the Alpine Strawberry seeds planted in one pot and a variety called Tennessee Beauty (pictured below) in another pot. We should have two more varieties soon.

We seem to have mastered the heater to maintain proper temperatures in the greenhouse now. Pretty excited about that!

Hoping to have some good weather this coming week as the carrots and a few other things should be ready to plant! Join me next week for another update!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Anyone else ever wonder why weekends are so short? Seems like I just can't get everything on my list done. Ever!

The good news is that I did manage to get a few things done though. First thing on Saturday was a trip to a giant rummage sale hosted by the Junior League of Knoxville. I was primarily looking for garden stuff when I found this lovely stack of pots!

They gave me a great deal on them when I finally made it to the cashier. Only $1.00 for the whole stack! I was super excited. Who doesn't love extra pots?!

After I left the sale, I made my way to the Winter Farmers Market hosted by Nourish Knoxville. I bought some lovely eggs from my favorite farmers at JEM Farm, then found some wonderful mint plants that just had to come home with me. Unfortunately, the Polar Vortex killed all my other mint plants and a lovely rosemary too. This time I am planting the mint in pots to allow me to take them with us when we move next year. Here they are in their new homes. We have Spearmint, Peppermint, Chocolate Mint, Apple Mint, Variegated Pineapple Mint, and Orange Mint. This was the Sunday evening project. I had a baby shower to attend for most of the afternoon for a lovely young lady.

I also found a few more strawberry plants to add to my collection. This is Tennessee Beauty Strawberries.

My wonderful husband also got two more 4' x 4' squares built for me this weekend too. Soon I will get to plant in them!

To round out today's post, here are a few more pictures from around the house and garden. The garlic seems to be thriving now. I can't wait to harvest it! We also have corn sprouting and soon to be ready for transplant. This is an experiment to see if it is possible to start it indoors to make an early harvest. And lastly, we were able to maintain a pretty decent temperature in the new greenhouse after we put an actual heater inside.

 I look forward to next weekend when we can really get some work done in the garden. See you next week!

Best Laid Plans

I had high hopes for this weekend. I really did. However, I did not get nearly what I wanted done on my list. Saturday ended up being a shopping day instead of a working day. We did manage to get some great deals on some unexpected purchases though!

It all started with an email from Big Lots for 20% off purchases on Saturday with their Buzz Club rewards card.  I had wanted to get a cheap hose nozzle like the one I got there last year that was left under pressure in freezing temps. Totally looking at you Mr. Howell. Then we decided we might need a few other things. We ended up coming home with the hose nozzle, a new hose, kitty litter, duck tape, a walk in greenhouse, three large planting pots, and 40 square feet of interlocking wood tile to make a little patio area.  Whoops! The rest of the day was tied up with a community event.

Today was far more productive! My son and I had an early lunch with my mother. By the time we came home, darling husband had built the fire pit we purchased a few weeks ago from Lowe's. Next, he and the kiddo (plus a neighbor kid) put the patio tiles together.

This was half way through the project, and I love it!

While they were concentrating on building the patio area, I worked on building the greenhouse. The kids then helped move all the plants from inside the house to their new home in the greenhouse. Everyone got a good drink of water! We placed some buckets of water in the greenhouse to act as heat batteries for the cold nights ahead too.

After that we relaxed with a small fire in the fire pit!

Thankfully, I checked the weather and became concerned about the incoming storms and cold temperatures. We decided to add a small heat lamp to the greenhouse to protect the plants from any potential frost. We included a temperature and humidity monitor that we can check from inside the house to be sure that it doesn't get too hot or too cold for the plants with the new setup. Here is hoping we don't have to move everyone back inside!

No new seeds planted this week. Join me next Sunday for more updates!