Project Veggie Garden, Day 3

We are taking the plunge! (No, not that one.) This weekend will mark our second springtime in this house (third summer), and we will FINALLY have that backyard vegetable garden we've been talking about since we bought the place. Neither of us have any significant gardening experience, so odds are we'll make all sorts of mistakes along the way and you'll get to chuckle at our mishaps. With some luck, we'll end up with a bounty of organic vegetables for a fraction of the grocery store cost. Working off some serious calories in the garden would be a nice perk, too.

So here's where we are. Last week we purchased USDA certified organic seed packets at $1.50 a piece at Walmart. We chose basil (can't wait for piles and piles of basil pesto!), red leaf lettuce, spinach, eggplant, bell peppers, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, and carrots. We also want tomatoes, but are likely going to purchase starter plants from a local greenhouse when they open shop. My amazing coauthor, Acacia, pointed me in the direction of gardening blog You Grow Girl, where I found this fantastic seed starting chart. The same post also gave me the idea to use toilet paper rolls and egg cartons as seed starters. Cardboard is free (included with purchases we already made) and breaks down in soil naturally, so you can plant it right into a transplant pot (or right into the garden, depending on the size of the plant) without having to touch the seedling.

The farmer's almanac's Frost Chart lists our frost-free date as April 26th. Based on that, our current planting calendar is as follows:
3/13: We started seeds for eggplant, lettuce, peppers, and basil.
4/5: Plant spinach directly in the ground. Start cucumber seeds indoors.
4/10: Move lettuce to the ground.
4/12: Plant carrot seeds directly in the ground. Start zucchini seeds indoors.
5/1: Move basil to the ground.
5/3: Move cucumbers to the ground.
5/10: Plant beans directly in the ground. Move zucchini to the ground.
5/15: Move eggplant to the ground.
5/22: Move peppers to the ground.
Schedule for tomatoes is TBD.

We're building up compost to treat the garden soil. We have organic soil and organic pest spray. Next up, we need to find some tools (thinking Ollie's Bargain Outlet) and get the backyard prepped for spinach. Hopefully we'll start seeing happy little seedlings poking through the dirt in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed.

Anyone with vegetable garden advice/experience, please comment or email me. We need all the help we can get.