Saturday, April 05, 2008

Our Vegetable Planter

Be prepared to be amazed...

This morning Edward and I went out to a plant nursery to take a look around and then came back to construct our planter. I'm proud to say that I did most of the construction. Edward held the wood for me and supervised while I screwed it together. He helped a little bit, but I'm pretty proud of myself. After it was all put together I took him to roller hockey and then stapled some weed mat on the bottom so that the soil won't flow out when it rains and weeds don't ruin my hard work. Then I hauled two bags of gravel that the landlords had left and dumped them into the planter for drainage. Next I hauled out the five sacks of top soil from the trunk that we got from the nursery into the backyard and proceeded to dump them. We wanted to use Mr. Levie's compost so I layered the topsoil and his compost in four layers...like a cake. It was a huge pain because the compost bags were soggy and broken from the weather and were falling apart. First I tried to bear-hug the bags to give them support while picking them up, but that didn't work. I had to use our snow shovel (we don't have a regular one) to scoop compost into the planter until it was light enough for the bag not to rip. I tried to salvage as much as I could, but it was hard. I was probably entertaining the neighbors if they were looking out of their windows. I was singing and dancing around while I was moving stuff around. Sometimes I think it would be better for us to have a wooden fence that people can't see over.

I haven't planted anything yet since I have to do some work on my Southern Women Lit. paper (the first draft of 20 pages due Thursday) and my friend invited me to a sushi eating party. I don't actually like sushi, but I always complain how people around here are so antisocial. If I don't go then I'll only be hurting myself. Hopefully Edward will be able to go, but he gets pretty tired after playing four hours of hockey. I think I'll go out there tomorrow and plant my vegetables. The envelopes said that they need to be in by April, and as this is the first weekend of April I want them in.

If this planter goes well, we're thinking of making a tall one to plant potatoes. We might put our carrots in there too since we're not sure there is enough soil in this planter for them to grow well. We also want to make a little 2x2 planter so that I can have a little strawberry patch.





I bet I'm the most lady-like person you'll ever know...


Emmy was very interested in something and we thought that it was really cute that she wanted to stay with us on the deck while still being a nosy little girl.



I wanted to use the planting soil that was left here while it was nice and soft from the rain. I filled a few pots so that I can plant my flowers in May. Even though I got rid of three bags of compost soil and that dilapidated bag of potting soil, it still looks like a wreck out there.



Look, my Rosemary grew! Just kidding. We got these for $2.00 each at the nursery. One transplant only cost $0.75 more than the seeds that didn't grow. I probably should have just started with transplants to begin with, but then I wouldn't have as much fun doing my Asian squat to see if anything was emerging from the dirt.

1 comment:

The Bowers! said...

Your planter looks so nice!