Square Foot Garden Update - 03/11/06

Above is a look at the Meth Lab*, where the plants are percolating along pretty nicely. I still have to get the tomato seeds into cups this weekend, but SWMBO and I spent the day getting a strawberry bed ready for the arrival of our strawberry plants. I'm not real sure when the plants will arrive from Burpee, but they said sometime in March so we wanted the bed ready. We tilled up the area, raked out the grass, put double-stacked landscaping timbers around it (4 feet by 16 feet), then filled with a mixture of top soil and mulch, the mulch to help the soil to drain better. The plants will go into a mixture of potting soil and vermiculite (2/1) when planted. I'll add a picture of the bed when the plants are installed.

Along with the tomato seeds being planted, I am going to get some onions and radishes into the actual square foot garden this weekend. But in looking at the bed in which they were going, I saw what you see to the right - only there were a few thousand; you can click the picture for a larger version, by the way. So now I've got to get rid of an ant infestation. My onions and radishes will go into a different bed, but I still hope to get them in this weekend. The onions are for green onions and the plan is they will be harvested in time to use the squares for something else later; same for the radishes. But I still have to figure out how to get rid of the ants without having them just infest another bed. I'll be posting the question on a couple of gardening boards and see what suggestions I get.

*When the kids dubbed my seedling area, with it's glowing lights and plastic-wrapped exterior, the "Meth Lab," I thought it was pretty funny and a pretty good name -- but SWMBO has suggested I should stop using that phrase. I think she's afraid of a raid some night, with doors kicked in and cops, along with cameras from the Cops television show, storming through. So while the seedling area will continue, this is the last time I'll refer to it as the Meth Lab. Sort'a makes me want to shed a tear.