The Start of the Garden
This is my first ever post to a blog of any kind, so I thought the best way to get started was to create one and document my latest hobby... Gardening!
I started out with some Jiffy Professional Greenhouse peat pods that you can get at any Walmart, or Home depot store. I had a great success rate in terms of germination and didn't have any problems with them falling apart. (I have read some conflicting reviews, so I may have just gotten lucky.)
I decided to purchase the smaller trays that yielded 12 each. Purchased some tomato, and green pepper seeds and planted away. Within a few days I had already several pods with little plant lings in them. I was soo excited.
My husband and I built a 16x4 retaining wall garden to put them. It took us about 3 days to build... clearing the area, laying the sprinkler lines, making sure the wall blocks were level, cemented them in and together (we did two layers of wall blocks) and filled it with gardening soil.
We installed three sprinkler heads which are the Mini sprinkler on a Spike by DIG and provides coverage of up to 14' full circle.
I cant forget to mention that we wired up a few lights to go in there as well. My husband thought it would make for a nice accent at night.
Now that the new garden area was all finished the question came up as to when do we plant. I found myself by the end of the weekend with tomato plant information overload. From staking to making sure your pH level is correct to how deep you should plant it to spacing etc. But nothing really in terms of when. So knowing that both sets of grandparents had farmed, I decided to ask my Mom. And oddly enough she knew the answer, and the answer was "the Farmers Almanac". So I did a quick search and sure enough there it was.... The Farmers Almanac Website what days to plant and what days not to plant. Simply amazing... in talking with my mother she said that her parents lived by the Farmers Almanac.
So since it mentioned that March 21-22 is Favorable for planting crops bearing yield above the ground, that is just what I did. I planted my first set of 6 plants on the 21st.... they are looking good right now, it has been raining off and on all day today (I live in Arizona so as you can imagine it is a major event when it does rain here).
I will keep you all posted of the progress and my other findings in the next few days.
