One step forward, two steps back

My garden is growing, so painfully slowly but surely. Too slow for me. Much slower than the basil seedlings that my dad gave me. Those are doing great. I will be planting more seeds tomorrow. Some that I bought at Marc's, and some that I got from my dad from his basil plants from last year. I can never have enough basil. Here's my baby tomato plants. I'll have to transplant these soon.

Here is my pallet garden. See the seedlings coming up? The basil in the bottom right corner is from the Tremont Farmer's market that I potted.

Here's an up-close shot of the seedlings. If anyone wonders if there are toxins in pallets, my husband says that the wood from these is not treated lumber. It's not treated at all.

Well, I was so excited that I put mesh over my strawberry patch only to find my method faulty. You see, I was hoping that the mesh alone would be a wonderful detractor of those pesky robins only to find they outsmarted me. Boogers. :/ I draped the mesh over some metal garden decorative posts, about 1.5 feel long each, and each are at least 2 feet apart. Not much structure to it. Then the mesh lamely draped over to the back of the "patch". The robins just step on it until they get their desired strawberry and mutilate it. So now I have to resort to picking the strawberries when they're not quite ripe, and ripen them on my windowsill. I didn't get a picture of the patch, but here's a picture of the strawberries I had to salvage before the robins got to them (and my dad's beautiful basil):

Other than that, it's been raining here and I can't get to more planting. There's not much maintenance at this point. I'm still waiting for things to grow!

I'm going to have to play the "thinning of the plants" by ear (or do a web search). I have no clue what is appropriate spacing for each vegetable. I think I still have the seed packs to refer to. Those don't say enough for a newbie farmer like me.

Make-shifting

When you have a tiny homestead, you have to be creative. I just bought a little tomato plant (I'm so excited!), and plopped it in a VERY old planter that was left here when we bought the place (I like to be as frugal as possible). Our one car garage is holding our small boat (that my hubby built, you can see it here http://johnblazydesigns.com/default2.asp?active_page_id=119. It's the most gorgeous, frugal boat you'll ever see), a frig, and lots and lots of hubby's crap, so there's no space for a gardening table. We have a grill out back, table, chairs and my pallet garden so there's really no room for a gardening table there. So, in his brilliant ways, he told me today, "I'll put your gardening dirt on here so you can pot your tomato more easily". VOILA! I'm so easily impressed.

And here's my newest addition to our family:

Old pot and all.

When you live in a tiny space, you gotta do what cha' gotta do.

Welcome to my micro homestead

I'm always crazy interested in many things. Today's flavor is homesteading. Well, since I don't have any land to speak of, and I barely have room in my condo, I have to do what I can. I've caught the fever of homesteading and I'm running with it. See what I do to make my condo my micro homestead.

I've read a few blogs and have seen some online magazines speak of pallet gardening. Well, of course I'm completely interested in this since I have limited space. So my husband found a pallet for me and sealed the back so I could fill it with dirt. I have some seedlings that I'm nurturing and hoping that they'll mature into small plants that I can put in my pallet. I've used this site for inspiration:  http://www.growingagreenerworld.com/plug-a-3-minute-hole-with-a-pallet-garden/ . There are many more places for ideas, but this will give you a good picture.  We have not followed it to a "t" so we will see how it holds up. Especially year to year. Websites give you great ideas but rarely do they share how things pan out in the long run. I can share my hits and misses with this since I really don't have a green thumb. This will be fun :).

My pallet:

Here are my seedlings freshly planted (egg shell idea taken from pinterst):

Here are my seedlings (the ones that are growing) today. The tall ones are peas:

My dad gave me some of his seedlings, basil, in the "terrarium" next to the peas. I LOVE basil so I will do everything in my power to get these things to GROW! I put a clear take-out container to help with the process since my dad says basil loves heat and sunlight. Because I don't have a professional heating pad to help them stay warm or serious planting lights, this planter will assist in keeping the heat in. Luckily I have great sun coming in from the east which is where this window faces. It's great in the mornings, anyway.

I also have larger pots in the back that I will take pictures of once it starts getting warmer. It's too cold today. Hopefully this will be the last freeze of spring. I'm crossing my fingers. But in the meantime, I have the grill cover covering the planters outside! I can't see that working. Wish me luck. Lol.

I'm not afraid of trying anything. I'm certainly not afraid to fail (unless it's scuba diving. Failure is not an option!). If this all fails then you (and I) will have a good laugh. If this doesn't fail, then we'll have some awesome herbs all summer! Woo hoo!