Garden 2012...there is a plan!

We have had three beautiful sunshiny days here in Oregon...all in a row!  This meant that Joe and I took advantage of the weather and did a lot of work outside.  We rented a power washer for 24 hours to get the driveway and sidewalks.  Once we realized we needed to do it WAY more often than once every 5 years we opted to purchase one.  I guess you don't really see how it builds up over time but all the rainy weather takes a toll on a clean sidewalk.

I have been stretching my knowledge of everything outdoor.  I had really tried hard to make mowing the lawn and all the other things that go with it a "boy job" (a phrase coined by my friend Heather and quickly adopted by me) but Joe isn't much more outdoorsy than I am.  Then once labeled a "boy job" he rebelled even further, taking it a little too far I think with the whole "I need to have back surgery and can't do it..."  Oh wait...that was real.  Anyway, whatever the reason, I have started to take on more of the responsibilities outside because I didn't want our yard/house to look like it actually belonged on Boone St. in Spokane.

Thankful my allergies haven't been too bad and the work has been paying off.  The yard looks better than it has in awhile (my neighbor told Joe it looks the best it ever has....I am not so sure about that) and I am even expanding my horizons a little with the idea of a garden.  I wrote here about the building of the raised beds and it was clear then I didn't have much of a plan.  Well, I am happy to report that there is a plan...and there is dirt!

It may not seem like much, but it was a lot of work to haul all that soil.  After a little bit of math that I was sure was faulty, I bought 10 bags of vegetable garden ready soil.  Each bag had 2 cubic feet of soil and those things were heavy.  I barely got them into Joe's car and then I had to haul them to the back yard.  It probably would have been cheaper to have soil delivered, but I don't have (and didn't want to buy) a wheelbarrow and frankly that seemed like more work than I wanted to do.  I didn't balk at the price per bag so that is what I went with.  The chicken wire is a temporary hold until I can figure something else out to prevent my stupid cat from using it as a litter box.  (Lorie...you need to hurry and move out here somewhere...the cat misses you.)

More exciting than the dirt actually in the raised beds, is that I have a plan.  I used a website that I found through Pinterest (of course) that was amazing!  The website is www.smartgardener.com and once you sign up (at no cost), the website takes you through building your garden.  I entered my zip code and the dimensions of my raised beds and then it had a calendar with the recommended plants for me to browse.  It warned me if I picked something that wasn't optimal and I was able to play around with how I wanted to set it up.  It showed me which plants work well together and those that don't.  I has a calendar of when I need to plant and a whole lot more than is beyond what I am really going to pay attention to this first time around.

Here is the plan the website generated for my two raised beds based on what I told it I wanted.  

 In the first bed, it will be all tomatoes; beefsteak, cherry and roma tomatoes all for different reasons.  I am determined to learn to love tomatoes in more forms than I currently do.  In the second bed, there will be bush beans, spinach, radishes, yellow peppers, carrots, leaf lettuce and green onions.

I don't intend on growing them all from seed.  The tomatoes, beans, and peppers for sure will be purchase already growing.  The rest I think I will plant from seed and see what comes of it. Luckily, because of this great website, I will have some guidance on when and how to do all these things that otherwise would be left up to chance.

I won't be planting anything for a couple of weeks but it is exciting to finally have a little bit more of a plan.  Taelin is excited because we have been reading a lot of books on gardens and plants growing and talking about it even more than that.  Once I get things planted, I will officially consider "start a garden" complete although hopefully my work will be far from over and we will be enjoying the goodness from the garden come fall!