Playing in the Dirt

With this wacky weather we've had lately, it's been hard to really get into gardening, but I am happy to report our first vegetable crop has been planted in the sandbox, a.k.a. alpaca poop transport box that Neal found. We planted onion bulbs!

We used soil from our compost bin, some alpaca poop and some regular soil from our yard, all tilled and mixed together, as our growing medium. We planted one full row of bulbs very close together to give us what we hope will be an abundance of green onions to snip off and use in cooking. The other three rows we planted further apart to allow the bulbs to grow into fat, juicy slicing onions. Germination is supposed to take place within 7-14 days and I feel like a kid eagerly anticipating that first green sprig that will pop up into the world!

The plan is to put some fencing around the onion box, as well as the other square foot gardening boxes we will use for the rest of our crops. For now, however, the above piece of fencing is doing a wonderful job of keeping the cats and squirrels out of the box and off of our tender bulbs!

Indoor seedling update: Everything is doing really well. It's been six weeks to the day that we planted our seeds, and watching them grow and take shape has been so exciting. I've been researching how to get my tomatoes to be as productive as possible, and it appears the little buggers really needed repotting AGAIN. They were becoming "leggy" and apparently that is not good. They needed to be potted deeper, with the soil covering at least the bottom set of leaves in order to encourage the roots to grow along the stem, thereby increasing production. The garden center told me that all the little hairs that we see on the stems will develop a stronger root system if buried deeper into the soil. So, today I repotted 41 tomato plants, along with a few miscellaneous seedlings that had outgrown their original containers. If everything that we have currently potted- along with some additional seeds we will sow directly into the ground- produces a harvest, we will have more than our share of fresh veggies this season. Whoo Hoo! But, I am not getting my hopes up too high. We are still very "green" at gardening. Not only do we have our high altitude, short growing season to contend with, but our own ignorance as well!

Because the seedlings are set up in a room where the cat litterboxes and food bowls are located, it was not possible to just close off the room, so we've tried barricading around the table to keep little paws away. Our efforts were working pretty well for a while, but apparently all the new pots and fresh dirt proved too tempting to someone. I almost had a heart attack when I noticed a complete tomato seedling had been plucked from the pot and kitty footprints were discovered in my lettuce pot! See what's left of the evidence in the round pot, left foreground. Damn cats!