The focus this week has been on getting our garden in the ground and growing. I am proud to say that we actually got most of it accomplished.

First is the map I worked on Monday and Tuesday night

I have 100 corn seeds planted in addition to the 100 squares above. The blank box will be sweet potatoes. I am trying something new this year and growing our own slips for planting. Currently they are sitting on the kitchen cabinet and look like this.

We have tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, green beans, snow peas, red and yellow onions, lettuce, jalapeno peppers, sweet peppers and banana peppers, watermelon and cantaloupe. If you look closely you can see where we attempted to use seed pods to start some of the plants.  I have spent right at $100 between seeds and plants so far this year which is less than last year with almost double the amount of items.

Today we used the sprinkler to water everything. I hope to get a good harvest this year and also do some steady pictures over the next two months so I can see what worked and what did not.

• I have been able to finish up fairly early at work the last two days, which has given me the chance to spend some time outside working on the square foot garden and other needed yard activites.
• Yesterday, I spent the majority of the time working on moving hostas  from the spot where we have plans to place an rain barrel. Next I needed to plant flowers purchased two weeks ago. I am very hopeful that our last frost has pasted. The official date is April 30th.
• Today, we mowed the yard and spent the majority of our time working on our square foot garden.
• Matt has help me to develop a drawing of the garden that will be reuseable for the next several year. I need to sit tonight and figure out just what plants are going where and what will need to be purchased. I will be using a spreadsheet to get a fair count on what all we need.  The goal is to plant everything but sweet potatoes this weekend.
• The sweet potatoes have started to spourt and I am excited to see if this experiment is going to work. Not spending even $7 on new sweet potato plants is a savings.
• We are expecting to plant around 100 stalks of corn. In addition I have 100 other square to plant.