More Gardening – May 5, 2009

First of all, if you are interested in family issues, if you are part of a family, if you have children, if you might ever have children, if you ever were a child (you get the picture), check out this post about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  OK, now that you’re done with your political reading for the day, we’ll move on to being blissfully domestic.  I decided to post on gardening this week instead of cooking because I don’t have any time to cook this week because we’re gardening – and recovering.  The first two posts on our garden plan are here  and here.

Yesterday morning, Mr. Math Tutor and I went on a very romantic date to Fleet Farm.  We came back with everything we needed to build our boxes as well as some compost and our peat moss.  Rosie Girl and I then went to the gardening center for more compost and some plants and seeds.  This ended up being a very productive visit because the garden center folks are very helpful and can tell me what is good to grow in this area and when.  They also saved me some money by recommending that I grow several things from seed.  I thought I would buy transplants, but they said that they usually don’t have them as transplants because they’re easy to plant the seeds right into the garden.  So, I’ve made some modifications to our gardening plan.  The only plants we purchased were strawberries and raspberries.  Later in the afternoon, I went by Lowe’s when we were in Stevens Point to get vermiculite.  They sell vermiculite in rather small bags, so I ended up getting vermiculite and Perlite.  I sure hope it works.

Mr. Math Tutor was in charge of making boxes.  He and Wild Man cut the wood and then screwed the pieces together.  For those of you keeping track, this is our vacation week, so I would like to reassure you that no learning occurred during any of these activities.  The children are really and truly on vacation and letting their brains rot appropriately!

There we are!  Today, we won’t get much done because I’m not feeling great and we have a busy afternoon with Rosie Girl’s track meet.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and the kids and I are going to EAA for a field trip (OK, maybe they’ll learn something there – I scheduled it before I realized when our vacation was scheduled).  But, the weather is supposed to be nice on Thursday so we can level out the ground a bit for the boxes, then put out the weed cloth, make the Mel’s Mix, fill the boxes, sow the seeds, plant the strawberries and raspberries, and then collapse in our beds.

One thing we did realize yesterday was that we have to bring the strawberries and raspberries into the garage every night until they’re planted and make sure we have the wire cages to cover them as soon as they’re planted because we have rabbits in our yard.  I hope we can get them in the ground soon.  Probably should have waited a couple of days on that purchase.

We’re having a blast on this foray into gardening.  Mr. Math Tutor is also very committed to it, so that he can pitch in and do whatever is next even if I end up with a migraine.  Check out I Am Blissfully Domestic for more great domestic posts!