Garden Challenge~Status Report and Giveaway!

Coloring flower pictures from our garden.  I made color sheets for the different flowers that we are growing and we talk about the flowers and then color them.  The girls LOVE this!

Why we haven't kept up on the blog...  This area was all grass a few weeks ago

The wall to finish for an additional flower bed... :)

To be planted in additional bed.

Perennial bed by playhouse, growing up nicely.

Herb garden filling in nicely.  We planted our lavender, chamomile and echinacea that we started from seed.

The iris and asparagus bed.  The iris are just starting to bloom, and the asparagus has gone to seed (second year only, so still another year before harvestable)

The girl's hanging baskets (baskets and liners at the Dollar Tree), trailing petunias.

We planted the border of marigolds yesterday.  Dahlias hanging out in the greenhouse waiting for the weather to improve.

Square foot garden, tomato, peppers and onions planted.

A dish???  We enjoy eating all of the things we grow directly out of the garden fresh.  But we will probably use the fixins for salad, and add the peppers and onions to chicken to make kabobs.
What I learned is that no matter the size of your garden, it's still a lot of work!  Also, I've tried to follow my book's advice and plant things on overcast days or when it is cooler in the evening, as not to stress the plants more than necessary.

***Giveaway***

I have too many Dahlia tubers (bulbs).  I will mail a handful of tubers to the winner.  

To enter simply comment on this post!

Extra entry to those who follow Mommy and Me Gardening, post a separate comment letting me know!

This giveaway will end on Memorial Day and tubers will ship out on Tuesday when the post office reopens :).

The handful will be a variety, but if you google dahlia images you'll get an idea of what you'll get.  The tubers will have eyes or sprouts, but probably not leaves (so they will survive shipping)

Pill Bug

We found a pill bug in the garden and tormented the thing for two days!  

 Selena with her "pet"  Pill Bug, Rose.

 Rose with Belle

 Rose's House

 Rose on the table

 Rose's Food Dish

 Goodbye Rose!

 Released back into the wild.

What Happened to the Front Yard??

 May 10th, planning stages

 May 17th, "island" done, and under budget... so onto the next :).

 May 24th, side grass removed, 2 yards of fill, perennial planting (all plants bought on clearance).

Rocks collected by us :). 

 Pathway is creeping thyme thinned out of the back garden.  

Total cost of new front yard garden, $115.  All plants bought on clearance, rocks collected for free.  All labor free because it was done by me (except for addition to the retaining wall, thanks to my husband!)

Still to do~
Divide up the iris in the front corner
Spread the additional pile of soil
Level the island a bit to match the other beds elevation
Plant dahlias when weather improves
ENJOY! 

Update~ Planting our baskets

Reading in the Garden

Seed / Tuber Starting

I get a lot of questions about where we start our seeds. 
Two years ago I had my husband nail up a shelf in our unfinished basement, and we hung a fluorescent light above it.  This worked, but I wanted more space.
Last year we enclosed a little "seed propagation room" in the basement.  The space is under the stairs above, so it's out of the way.  We insulated and sheetrocked the walls.  The floor is bare concrete, we were going to put some insulation foam/pad thing down, but decided it wasn't too cold.  I just put a floor mat down and it is just fine. 

We put in a little 4 shelf indoor/outdoor greenhouse in the room and a radiant heat panel.  My husband wired the outlet for the heat panel to a thermostat, and it comes on and goes off according to temperature.  I up the temp in the morning (to between 70 and 75) and drop it at night (between 60 and 65).
Instead of the traditional fluorescent grow lights, we had read a bit about using LED lights and decided to try them out.  They are really something.  They really work (and they make the room look so pretty!).  The combination of red and blue LED's make a full spectrum light source.  The lights are on a regular wall timer and set to come on at 6 am and go off at 9 pm. 

After starting all my seeds and getting my dahlias potted up, we realized we needed more shelves, so I moved in this wooden shelf that we weren't using other than for storage.

Then we figured out that there still wasn't space for all the dahlias, and now there is a large greenhouse outside for the dahlias...

And next year, we will probably decide that it isn't big enough, and need to upgrade again... :)

Measuring the Seeds ~ HSV

Today we got all our seed trays out of the green room and measured how tall they've gotten.  We planted all our seeds on April 1st.

 Herb tray and Vegetable tray

 Corn and Zinnia tray

One of the trays of dahlia tubers

We've been excited to watch the seeds growing, and the corn has gotten really  tall!  Our tallest corn is 13 inches tall already.

 Measuring the growth

 Charting the growth

 The "Rainbow Seeds" aren't doing well :(

 "I'm a Seed!"  Great book!

No picture, but this week it RAINED a lot every day, broke each days record rainfall (by about double!)

 Last week....  It snowed EVERY DAY!

 The week before...  Had one nice sunny DRY day!

Worms!