Hello, Cutie.

Hey!  So glad you could make it!  Come on in....I mean up! Wow, little Rattlesnake Bean, you are not shy, are you?

 Awww... Have you ever seen anything so sweet?

Baby Zuchinni is one of those really, really agressive kids.

Little okra, you steal my heart!

Update on the Raised-Bed Square-foot Garden

This, right here, this goofy little plot, is  my 10x10 "Square-Foot Garden".   I'll tell  you  about some of the steps we went through to make if you're interested.  If not, pass on by to Fried Chicken.
Below is some of the stuff, er.. .amendments, we put in the soil; peat moss, and vermiculite, and I don't show the kitchen and yard compost I made last year but we put that in as well.

Below is how the garden turned out with all the amendments dug in and  covered with weed blocker.  You can never have too much protection.  Against weeds.
I also consumed some medicinal tequila later to loosen up my back.
The roof tiles were there to make the soaker hose behave.  I removed them later.

Then I covered it all with a bale of "hot" hay that my neighbor kindly gave me, also some insides from some evaporative cooler pads, (left over from another idea) and got started putting my old collection of picket fence around it, mainly for vine support but also just to be funky.  I am planning to make a bigger support trellis for the beans later on.

And...then I had this idea about the "squares" in the square foot garden.  In order to be able to have two (admittedly) narrow walking paths through the garden, (the burlap) I bought lath and made it into long T's with cross pieces.  Each one of those rows is 20 square feet.

This was actually fun to do, mostly because  I got out Left Brain's skill saw out to cut the 2 foot pieces.  Wow!  I love power tools.  Left Brain just hates it when I use his tools.

At this point,  I needed some help to make the "gates" into the "walkways' and Left Brain got out his own power tools and made me two lovely little gates that just stick into the soil.  Waaaay cool.

Now that I have all the soil ready and the plan laid out, I sketched out my spaces and had fun figuring what to plant where.  I have 60 square feet to work with!  These are the plants I will plant, either as seeds or seedlings:
Red Ripper Cowpeas (isn't that the coolest name?  My dad told me about them.)
Black eyed Peas
Rattlesnake Beans (who could resist this?)
Okra
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Eggplant
Bell Pepper
Jalapeno
Poblano chile
Cucumber
Cantaloupe
Beets (Beets?, really?)
Pumpkin
Radishes
Greek Oregano
Fennel
Watermelon
Tomatoes

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you reading this are laughing out loud at the idea of all those plants in this little space, and you are probably right!  But this is experimental, and however it turns out, I'll show you the results.  I just could not resist all those lovely little seeds.  I'm missing my Mom, and this helps.

However,  I do have to admit that my funny little mother never made such a to-do out of a vegetable garden.  She just put seeds in the ground and out they came.  She would probably have laughed at this. But I have never had her luck or skill.  This garden is actually my most all-out effort at a vegetable garden.  So wish me luck, por favor.

Raised-Bed Vegetable Garden, the Easier Way

There are a million schemes for raised-bed gardens, and if you are going to put yours on an unleveled spot, it can be tricky.  Pioneer Woman's is a good plan, but takes a lot of leveling of dirt.  That's hard!  And Hard Work!  My garden bed plan was based on one I helped build for St. Clement's School, and the 4th graders grow some beautiful flowers and vegetables, and have learned so much about gardening.  What you do is make a real....bed.  With legs.  you can level it easily by digging under the legs, not necessary to level the entire ground under it.

This plan  is easy and only took myself and Cerebro Izquierdo 2 hours to put together, but that was using some power tools, a saw and a drill, to be specific.  Here are some of the hand tools you will need.
I decided to use 2x12x10ft. boards.  They were about $8 apiece.  I also bought a 4x4 inch post which was also around $8.00.  The Square Foot Gardener says that you only need to use 6 inches of soil, so you could use 1x6's.  Also, using 10x10 is going to cost me about $100 to have filled with a soil compost mix from a local materials outfit.  You figure 27 square feet in a square yard of soil, and since I don't want to fill it to the top, and I'm going to amend the soil some, I need 2 yards.  All together this garden is going to cost me around $200.00.  However, it will be moveable if I need to, and it's very large. That's a ton of vegetables, and over the years....what's that word?  Amortize?

You will need 16 bolts, like this, 3/8x6,
and washers and nuts to tighten them up.
I realized that if I set the boards up on the posts with some space underneath like a real bed, we could easily dig holes under the posts to get the top level, which is what we did.  We cut the 4x4in. posts to 18 inch lengths, giving ourselves a 6 inch leg to use when leveling. If your space is not as sloped as mine was, you could leave less space on the "legs".
I made two templates with drill marks spaced so the bolts wouldn't hit each other.

We marked the posts with the templates like this, and then used the drill to make a 3/8 (the same size as the bolt) hole through the post.

We then set up the boards and posts on the ground and held the boards to the posts and used the drill to mark where to drill on the board.  Then we drilled holes in the boards and used the bolts to connect the pieces.  Voila!!  Then we used the level to check which sides were uneven and dug underneath the high posts until the level was happy.

I decided I didn't need the bottom of the boards to touch the ground, and I'm using some left over vinyl flooring that I used for the chicken coop to close the larger openings, but I'm not sure I even needed it.
Now for the dirt, the peat moss, and the vermiculite. Hmmmm.  Seeds or plants?