There's been a lot of preparation required for our garden this year. We started our seedlings indoors by the end of February, so they had 6 weeks of growing indoors.
Our last hard freeze was March 5th out here in California, with temperatures dropping down to 29 degrees F. While March usually warms up quickly for us, we continued to see lows in the mid-30s F through the month. March 26th was the last time we saw lows in the mid-30s, so we’re still on track to get our plants in the ground in 1-2 weeks.
Meanwhile, our pumpkin, cucumber, green onion, lettuce, tomato, and pepper seedlings are doing great! The carrot and beet seedlings didn’t do well, so we’ll try to start them again this week and hopefully stay on top of the watering a little better!
After getting the large tree in our side yard thinned out a few weeks ago, we can finally prepare the garden space. The beautiful Southern Magnolia tree blocked out too much sun for most of our plants last year. We hope that it will now let some light through and we'll be able to plant some partial sun plants in the space surrounding the tree. We're trying to make the most of our limited space.
The plan for next weekend is to prepare our soil for planting. We’ll use the rototill to churn the soil, then use the new AcuRite Soil Sensors to test pH levels and moisture content. This will help us determine what type of fertilizer to use and how much of our compost to mix in before planting. Below is a picture of the new soil sensors with our table grapes starting off on a good start!
Lastly, we’ll have to lay the drip line watering system. We'd like to set up an automated system so we don’t have to worry about remembering to water. Last year it worked out well and our tomatoes went crazy! Yum.
Wish us luck! I’ll post an update on how our garden is doing in May and over the summer as we start to produce fruit. I added some pictures below of our bulbs already starting to pop up (with our apple and blood orange trees in the back) and our strawberries are always doing well!
