Saturday, November 20, 2010

We christened it...

(by "it" I mean our little plot in the community garden)...J&M's Mini-Farm. Or The Mini-Farm for short. Yahoo!

J and I began work on our plot 6 days ago. Here is a chronicle of the events:

Step 1: Bought all of the seeds and took hours planning where each plant should go. See my last post for all of the details.

Step 2: Measure and mark off the the 1 foot by 1 foot squares using stakes and twine.

J tying twine to a stake

The grid takes shape

 Step 3: Study the "map" and start planting!

 The map. A little hard to read, but you can sort of see that I have a place for each crop and how many of each crop can grow in a square foot. The map is based on the websites I shared with you in my last post. 

Step 4: Get really bummed because I forgot that some of the seeds had to be soaked overnight before going into the ground. Hence the beans, peas, beets (much to J's disappointment), chard, and parsnips had to sit out planting day. Boo! 

Step 5: Shrug it off and plant the rest of the crops. Leeks, carrots, kale, broccoli  and turnips are in the ground! 

Step 6: Water, water, water. 

a watering pro

Step 7: Go home. Place the beans, peas, beets, chard, and parsnips in ramekins of water and let soak.

Top row: beets, peas, chard
Bottom row: Beans, parsnips

Step 8: Return to plot a day and a half later, plant the remaining crops, now happily primed for germination. 

pea in a hole

Step 9: Water, water, water. Then proudly stand over your plot, beaming in the sunlight. Photograph it.  

  The Mini-Farm. In all of its glory. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, those two craters you see in the front corners of the plot are where the leeks are planted. As the leeks begin to grow, we'll fill in the dirt around them to blanch the stems.

So, there you have it! Our first planting endeavor. I went to water the Mini-Farm yesterday (which would be Day 5 post planting) and I saw little turnip sprouts! So far, so good!

Will keep you posted on the Mini-Farm's progress. 

Blessings, 

 
 

1 comment:

Sis said...

Cool!! You'll have to show it to me when I come down over spring break :)