Revisiting Nerd Gardening

The garden is coming along so nicely!!! I'm ridiculously excited. This weekend, Hubby and I fenced off the section of yard around the garden beds to keep all our four-legged snackers and diggers out.

Keeping the critters (mostly domestic) out!!

We also got some more seeds planted and some goodies in the ground!! So far, we've got tomatoes, hanging and traditionally planted, romaine lettuce, cabbage (YEA! Sauerkraut!), and broccoli actually planted.

Square Foot Gardening! And Hanging Tomatoes???

Seed-wise in the garden, we've got yellow and red onions, spinach and snow peas. We've got more seeds going in the little greenhouse beds so that they'll be ready to transplant when the danger of frost is completely gone. Can't wait! Can't wait! Can't wait!
As it is, the garden center by our house is apparently completely unfamiliar with square foot gardening. They sell all their seedlings in 9-plant containers!! I only need like TWO!
So, Hubby and I have little pots of broccoli and cabbage in the fenced area and also more broccoli, Romaine and cabbage going in one of the flowerbeds. We will likely get nuthin' from the flowerbed ones because of the Brats. As soon as the furbies realize that's salad, it'll be down the hatch, hasta la vista, you only THOUGHT you were getting some!

In other exciting news, I also managed to talk Hubby into building me a compost bin out of chicken wire yesterday. Once a week, you pull the bin up, dropping everything in it onto the ground, move it over two feet and shovel all the goodies back in, thus circulating it. How I'm going to keep beautiful compost from falling out the sides of the chicken wire, I haven't figured out yet. Ideas? (send 'em to TreehuggingDoglover@gmail.com) This compost pile is separate from the one Hubby uses for the flowerbeds (he uses dog poop - YUCK!)
Can you see Wormie back there? He's to the left of the compost bin.

He likes to "hide" in all my pics! Can you find the other one he's in?
This site might as well be called "Where's Wormie?"

And in one last bit of gardening news, the expanded shale versus seed starting soil mix results are in. Expanded shale SUCKS! Not a single seed sprouted on the E.S. side. We've decided the only thing expanded shale is good for is drainage in the bottom of pots, so that's what we'll do with the rest of it. I dug it out of the greenhouse tray today and replaced half the "pots" with seed starting soil and half with straight vermiculite (vermiculite is what the Square Foot guru, Mel Barthalomew swears by). I dropped some more seeds in, so I'll let you know the outcome of that in about 2 weeks. :-)
So that's what's going on in the garden right now...Isn't second hand gardening fun?!