Wowee!

I just looked at my list of what I've started already and the things I want to start, and I think I should knock down the garage to make room. Eek! Going to work on some square foot gardening principles, companion planting, and succession planting to get it all in there!

Are any of you Chicago gardeners growing grapes? We'd like to give it a try, but space is at a premium and I'm wondering if it is feasible to train them on our back fence or if that is a poor idea?

Hmm...

Jump starting the garden season (hopefully!!)

From one of the gardening blogs I follow (see sidebar), I linked through to a site about Winter Sowing seeds in plain plastic containers. Mr. BrownThumb also had a great post about starting plants from seed in 2 liter soda bottles. As one of my issues EVERY season is starting too late or letting seedlings dwindle away because I don't have things ready for transplanting, I thought maybe I'll give this a whirl. Plus I like to make my backyard and garden look as completely white trash as possible.


Mission accomplished.


For the record, I LOVE that Mr. BrownThumb calls these "ghetto greenhouses"

Anyway, it was simple as pie, and I'm hopeful for great results. My husband was, I think, a bit put out that I put a "2 liter bottles ONLY" rule into effect for soda consumption the past month or so, so tons of healthy transplants would be the only way to compensate for that.

Check out the links above for details on how to do this, but I had 14 bottles (2 liter soda bottles, translucent milk gallons, and juice bottles) to work with today, and had to fish around for seeds that I wanted to start. See, unprepared! Plus it was really odd to have my hands in soil since we just had about 3 inches of snow dropped on the Chicago metro area over the past day or so.

But I digress. Here are the seeds I went with for round one. I put them all out today, February 21st, and plan to do more once I get my orders in at the seed shops. I've got so many pages dog-eared in all the catalogs I have, it is ridiculous, and at this rate I will need to demolish the house to make room for more garden space!


Basil, Broccoli Raab, Lavender, Swiss Chard, Bush Bean, Broccoli, Leaf Lettuce (2 varieties), Spinach, Carrots, Garden Peas, Zinnias (I told you I had to scrape for seeds to fill up the bottles I had on hand), Sweet Pepper, and Cauliflower
ADDED 2/24: Chives and Onions

So hopefully that'll be a good jump start. I'm going to try to get the rest of my seed orders in tomorrow or Monday and maybe start some more seeds next week. My only real fear, is that the nemesis of my garden, the hound from hell, will leave my bottles of goodness alone! Because, you know, she looks a lot less evil than she is, and I just hope that she'll behave herself, resist the temptation, and not force me to pen her up outside so she can't get into it. If I sound bitter, it is because I busted her several times last year eating cucumbers from the vine, running around the yard with a raspberry cane in her mouth like a bone, and digging through more beds than I care to recall.


Fingers crossed!!!

2009 Green Goals

OK, I've been thinking of some things that I want to accomplish this year in the garden and yard. As usual, I'm going to put it on a blog, because then I feel more accountable, and more apt to actually do something.

- Get a composter and start composting
- Get rain barrels and put them to good use
- Put together a solid plan for the garden, including succession plantings so I have good stuff coming up all through the season with no empty/dead zones
- Keep close track of how much produce I'm yielding through the season
- I'd like to go without purchasing ANY produce this summer - grow what we'll use, and use what we grow
- Set up a seed-starting table inside, and use it
- Build my cold frame (we have lots of old, lead-free windows)by late February/early March
- Build my garden boxes/beds well in advance of planting outside
- Get a decent canning system and book, and use throughout the season

So that's it for now. I hope to be able to check most of these items off my list! Anything I should add?

2008 Garden: A Year in Review

So since I'm just starting this blog and the idea didn't really occur to me until recently, I didn't purposely take great pictures of the garden through the season, and a lot of the pictures I took were on my camera-phone and thus deleted and un-findable (Sorry, sunflowers!).

However, I was able to locate a lot of them, and put together a flickr slideshow of different spots of the garden through the 2008 season:



Our primary garden areas are as follows:
(Pictures are by group/area, with progression through the season, first pictures are from mid-April, last ones are from early November)

* 2 4x10 raised bed boxes for vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, lettuce, cucumbers, beans, peas) and bushels with herbs
* Back fence with muskmelon and watermelon vines
* Along the side of the garage - honeysuckle, violets, and mini-roses
* Fence by the garage - in the yard - raspberries and mint
* Side fence - Sunflowers, strawberry patch, butterfly garden, cherry tree
* Fence - outside of the yard - Miscellaneous flowers

Soon, I'm going to post our goals and what we'd like to do with the garden for 2009.

Thanks for reading!

Another day, another blog

I've found that keeping a blog is an easy way for me to stay on task with various goals and to-do lists. It is also a great way to gauge the progression of projects - household things, kids growing up, etc.

This past summer I dedicated a lot more time to our small family garden than I had in previous years, and I want to document the progress of a full season. My goal with this blog is to track what I've done to prepare the plot, what we plant, when it grows, what we harvest, and what works for us.

I've been stalking a lot of local garden blogs, and love gleaning ideas from them, so I'm hoping that some of our family's ideas and activities will help someone else who is just venturing into gardening.

I finally get why gardeners are passionate about their gardens...There is something so fulfilling when you look outside all summer long and see fresh vegetables and fruits that you can pluck and eat, or can and enjoy through the fall and winter, or share with neighbors and family. I think it is wonderful for our kids to see how things grow, to see butterflies congregating in our mini-butterfly garden, and to watch our baby cherry tree grow and grow (Can't wait for fruit from that!!). Mind you, there's also the defeat of yielding 3 strawberries all season, and zero raspberries after the dog made the raspberry zone her napping area, and the time I thought we had a ton of beans growing, but it was some kind of weed. Oops.

Anyway, it's all a learning process, and a fun one at that. I hope to encourage everyone to plant something, anything, in their space. Herbs or tomatoes, peppers or flowers, you can do it!

PS The blog title "Our food is fighting!" comes from a WWII poster to encourage people to plant Victory Gardens. Like many people, I've romanticized, in my mind, the sacrifices that citizens made during the Great War, and I feel that enjoying the fruit of your own labor (and going a whole summer without buying any vegetables at the grocery store!) is incredibly satisfying.