Preparing the Garden

Knowing that the weather was going to be poor this weekend, I took a 1/2 day of vacation and did some work in the garden. I prepared two containers for planting. I had to remove the grass and level the ground.

Once the ground was level I added some pre-plant mineral mixture.

I then mixed up some soil and added it to the container.

I added another application of pre-plant minerals and our weekly fertilizer mix.

At the end of the day we have 5 containers in their places, and one planted with our strawberries. We should be planting sweet peas this weekend if it is not too horrible.

Working in the Garden

Today we had great weather and so we were out working in our garden. I dumped out and mixed up some more Mittleider pre-plant mix because I think I messed up on the measurements. This time I am sure that the ratios were correct.

I mixed up some Mittleider weekly feed. We purchased some triple phosphate to add to our 16-6-16 fertilizer to bring it up to 16-16-16. We did not purchase 13-13-13 fertilizer however it may be the less expensive route.

We placed 3 containers in their locations, leveled the ground underneath, applied pre-plant mix to the soil, filled the beds with our soil mix, then applied pre-plant and weekly feed to the top and mixed it in.

For our soil mix we used peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. We will have to be attentive to salinity issues with our plants given that there is compost plus Mittleider feed.

I was not very impressed with the Scotts brand compost. The compost had a very strong smell. We purchased manure from Lowe's and that didn't smell. That was a minor issue. The reason why I am not impressed with the product is that it is one dense clump. I had to break it up to try to mix it in with the other components. We have purchased a different type of Scotts compost two years ago and had similar issues with clumping. Their compost always seems like it was damp when it was packaged and has never dried out.

Mixed Mittleider Pre-Plant Mix

Tonight I mixed up two batches of Mittleider Pre-Plant Mix. Our box of Borax was clumped together due to the humidity of our basement. I may have added a little too much to the mix. I am excited to apply it to our garden!

Starting New Seedlings

Today we started some seeds. We sowed eggplant, bell peppers, and sweet peppers. We sowed the seeds in left-over MiracleGro potting soil. The soil is in newspaper pots that we made. We placed the seeds in a container and covered them. Since these plants like warm soil we put the container on a heating pad set on the lowest setting. The soil temperature was about 80° F.