Gardening and a new project!

Last fall I decided I wanted to plant a garden and because I’m a crazy person, I kind of became obsessed with it. I tend to focus on something and get a little obsessed with it for a while, and then I either move on to something new, or stay interested but not as obsessive after a while. Food storage is a good example of this. At first, I was really obsessive and focused on it, but now I have scaled back and I’m still very interested and continuing to focus on food storage and emergency preparedness, just not obsessively!

Anyway, I decided to do square foot gardening and I read the book about it by Mel Bartholomew. It was really interesting and I got really excited. I learned a lot and planned a lot in the fall/winter and I was ready to go when spring came! Our backyard neighbors (we don’t have a fence behind us yet) have a bunch of raised square foot beds and they do great so I asked them a lot of questions too. I used the site My Square Foot Garden a TON and it is an amazing resource. I basically read every single article on the site! I wrote my garden plan and even posted it on her site for a guest review and got some feedback which was helpful.

We decided to start small and see how things go this year. Dan built me two beds that are 4 feet by 6 feet each. He used 2x12 boards and it was pretty cheap for everything. We stained them and moved them to the yard where Dan had pulled up some grass. We put down a weed mat and then mixed our own “Mel’s Mix” which is 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost and 1/3 peat moss.

I drilled screws in the top of the boards and used string to make my squares. This helps with planting so I can plant certain things in each square. Some squares I will plant several seeds and some squares will have only one. For tomatoes and zucchini, I will cut some of the string to make more space since those plants need more space. We will also be adding some trellis supports for the beans, tomatoes and zucchini so they spread up instead of out. This will save space and hopefully go well!

This year I’m planting the following: peas, beans, onions, carrots, cilantro, parsley, garlic, basil, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini (only 1 plant because they take over!), spinach, lettuce, celery, and cucumbers. I have no idea what I’m doing so it could be a total flop. I have planted a few things that can handle the cool weather and my onions have already started popping up so that is exciting! I will continue to update with some garden posts and hopefully we will have some fresh vegetables to enjoy in a few months!

And my next big project is to start working on an extra bedroom that we haven’t touched since we moved in! It is going to be a future nursery (no I’m not pregnant…) and I figure I might as well get started with paint and some other things since it’s going to be very gender neutral and I just can’t handle the nasty purple and green walls with fairy stickers everywhere! I have a lot of big plans for this room so I’m glad that we can take it slow and hopefully it will look great! The room below is my inspiration picture and I love the colors and everything about the room.

Below is my inspiration board with some ideas that I like. I’m going to do white board and batten on the bottom 2/3 of the wall. Instead of the tan grass cloth wallpaper, I’m going to paint the top part of the walls a pretty blue/green/gray color. There is also an awesome big arched window that I love but I’m not quite sure how to cover it yet. And I’m going to have Dan make me some built in bookshelves and a window seat on either side of the window! I am really excited about that.

    

Dan has already peeled off the horrible fairy stickers and patched and sanded the walls. I have picked out a paint color and I started ripping out the baseboards last night. I’m going to start painting tonight! Hopefully it all turns out as great as I’m hoping and I’m excited to get started!

UPDATE: I found a few pictures of the future nursery in it's current state. Brace yourselves.