Hello to all who stop by and read this. I hope you are having a great day. 

In my last post I had just started my bucket garden. So far everything planted in the buckets and temporary growth containers seems to be growing pretty good. The onions also seem to be going on strong. We did have to cover them a few days ago as we got some snow. Thankfully it wasn’t cold enough to freeze anything and the snow didn’t stick for more than a few minutes. So no having to drag buckets and containers inside. 

Today I decided to get my mother some flowers for Mother’s Day. I went to the nearby store and got her some pansies, violas and snapdragons as they are her favorites. While there, I couldn’t help myself in getting some more items for my garden. I got some hand tools to make smaller work easier, a strawberry plant (who doesn’t love a fresh strawberry), some seeds, more on those later, some pots and planters, and some more garden soil and potting soil. 

I got home, ate some lunch and then dove into taking all the flowers and the strawberry plant into more permanent homes. Those homes being the planters that I got at the store. I unfortunately didn’t take photographs of the process as I was excited to the the flowers ready for my mother. Anyway, I put some of the two soils in the bottom of the planters, gently worked the flowers out of the growing containers and placed them in the pots on top of the soil. I then took a mixture of the two soils and filled in the gap around the roots of the flowers. After about half full around the sides I watered a bit to settle the soil, filled to the top and watered then topped off the soil if needed. I did the same thing for the strawberries as well. We also had some flowers growing in some weeds so I gently dug up the bulbs and replanted then into some pots. 

Moving onto the seeds. I purchased carrot seeds, green onion seeds and radish seeds. I got a long rectangular planter box and some other inexpensive pots. As per my usual I mixed the two soils and put the mixture into the planters, the containers I grew the potatoes in originally and reused the growing containers that the flowers came out of. I filled them mostly to the top and wet it. I made shallow divots in the soil with my finger about 2 inches apart in the planters and put carrot seeds in the deeper planters. As I was doing this the packet of seeds was knocked over by a small gust of wind and I lost a good portion of the seeds. I also followed this process for the other seeds (some of the green onion and radish seeds). When I had seeded the soil I then took a mixture of the soils and covered the seeds to the depth described on the seed packages. 

I still had seeds left and I didn’t want to let them sit as I would either forget about them, accidentally throw them away, or, somehow they would go bad on me knowing my luck. By where I planted the onion bulbs there was more of the yard where I had very little to no grass growing. I decided that was the place I would make my initial garden and see how it works. I figured if it didn’t work well I could always move my garden to another part of my yard the next year. Since the area had little growing currently it did make my task a bit easier. I raked up all the stuff laying on the ground into a small pile in the corner of the yard by the fence. This could be some starter for a compost possibly it just might have weeds in it but we will see. Then, I went through and started removing all the weeds, stalks and roots of last year's weeds and clumps of grass that were going to be in my way. I threw all of this into the pile that I had raked up. My onion patch is also now connected to this new gardening area. 

My next step was to loosen all the dirt in the area to get rid of any other root systems that I had missed and make it easier to seed and for the seeds to hopefully grow. I also moved dirt away from the walking path as it has sunken in in some places. Before getting ready to plant I took some rocks from around the yard and lined them up along the cement to create a barrier so I could try to level out the ground as I got the soil ready for planting. I also used some firewood to line the cement path. Now I didn’t use all new gardening or potting soil as I want to see how well things grow in the soil already there. I evened out the dirt as best as possible and then used my fingers to make a small indent in the ground about 2 inches apart and then placed a seed, sometimes two as they got stuck to my fingers, and put them in the indent. I did this for the rest of the green onion seeds and half of the radish seeds left. For the other half of the radish seeds ( there were quite a few in the package), I sprinkled them on the ground to later cover with soil as I want to see how they grow with this method. When everything was sown, I then put a layer of gardening soil over the seeds I had made an indent for and regular backyard dirt on the other ones. Again I want to test how well the regular dirt grows plants. I also placed a line of smaller rocks between the established onion patch and the new gardening area. 

Let’s hope it all goes well and that most of the seeds turn into small sprouts that then thrive into a great vegetable garden. 

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll post an update when something new or exciting happens.