Houston Lawn & Garden

Garden Layout & Seeds

Hi again.  After moderate debate (and a few beers), we’ve couldn’t narrow down our selection to everything we want to grow within the defined space.  I guess the garden is going to expand next year too!  No problems.  What we have decided to do is break out a few planters for some of the smaller items that we want and to leave the garden bed for the kids that need more room to grow.  Here is a picture of the layout and the seed that we will be using in the planters.  You can click on any of these pictures to see a larger version of them so you can better see what is going on.   We are going after Radishes and Spinach in the long planters, and Cilantro and Chives in the smaller ones.

Preparing the Planters

We filled the planters 1/2 way up with regular top soil, then topped off the rest with potting soil which gives us a good 2 inches of potting soil at the top.  The seeds are going an at 1 inch deep so they will have an opportunity to develop solid roots in the richer potting soil.  The long style planter should be perfect for the radishes.  We’ll get a bunch of them going and then when they are ready to pick we can just lay down some more seeds for the next batch.  We’re not as sure about the spinach but we’re going to give it a try.  We like trying new things.  Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t and that’s the beauty of having sites like this so that we can share our experiences.

Garden Layout

And now (drum roll please) here is your sneak preview before the official press release of the 2010 Houston Lawn & Garden Spring Vegetable Garden selection.  Starting from the bottom we are going after Big Boy Tomatoes.  Just give us a little more (make that a lot more) rain than last season and we should have a bunch of ripe juicy slicers ready for mid-summer.  Next comes the Beef Steak Tomatoes.  Just give us a good combination of the BBs and BSs and we should have a nice batch of tomato sauce cooked up and frozen to get us through the winter with enough left over for some tasty salads.  With the early Girl plants that went in the first two rows last week progressing nicely, it will give these seeds plenty of time to mature before they are transplanted.

Bell Pepper Plant after 1-week

Next we have our good friends the Bell Peppers which as you saw from the previous post that we bought as plants and are already in the ground doing nicely.  Here’s a picture for your viewing pleasure.  In the next row comes the fun part.  The plan is to put down a row of Beets for the first part of the season.  After they have been transplanted and have had a few weeks to mature we will plant some Green Bean seeds.  The plan is to pull up some nice Beets just in time to transplant the Green Bean seedlings into that row.  Last but not least will be the Cucumbers.  We’re putting them in the last row so that we can throw up some lattice for the vines if needed.  We’ll surely need it for the Green Beans if everything works out as planned.

Paper Planters

Please don’t laugh too hard because this is our first attempt at making paper planters as described in the video in the last post.  We did some additional research on the topic and quite a few folks question the rate that the paper degrades.  As a result we opted for a sturdier design.  The plan is to strip away the paper before transplanting.  After we put these together and planted the seeds, we read another article that advises ‘do not use paper with colored print’ because it has metallic content.  They say regular black newspaper print is OK because it is soy based.  Gotcha, but this is Houston and you have to have a thick skin to live here.  If I start growing a CAR BUMPER I’ll change it out but right now I’m done for the day.  See ya next time.