Once home, I laid down cardboard and shopping bags on the ground to kill the grass where I want my new veggie bed to be. I put the bags of potting soil on top of the cardboard (after cutting drainage slits on the bottom) and cut the top off of the bag. In this new container, we planted our onion sets (Red candy and Candy varieties). My plan is that by the end of the growing season, I will just take out the plastic, use some old boards to make the sides of the bed, and add any soil need to fill the area. Voila, new raised bed with improved soil from where the cardboard and shopping bags composted in.
The onions that I planted are intermediate day onions, selected to match my region. This is the first year I have grown onions, and apparently, the variety you choose has to do with the amount of light, not the temperature. Still based on latitude, but a little bit different. I bought the onion sets, instead of seeds, because I want to make my first onion experience as easy and successful as possible.Next, Livy and I cleaned last years plants out of our self-watering containers and mixed in compost to get the soil ready for the seeds we will plant tomorrow. I LOVE these containers. The bottom of them has a large reservoir which is filled through the tubes you can see standing up. A plate with lots of holes covers the reservoir, and the soil goes on top of that. In our hot GA summers, without these pots, I have to water veggies more than once a day. With these pots, I can go several days, and the roots just pull water up from the reservoir. The green that you can see in one pot is chives from last year.
These pots will be home to our deck garden. These are the plants I want access to at any moment: grape tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, spinach, arugula, mixed greens, beets, and carrots (the things I harvest nearly every day). The plants that get harvested less regularly (onions, larger tomatoes, potatoes, and bush green beans) will live down in the yard.Tomorrow, my plan is to get the spring seeds in the pots and to cut up my seed potatoes. I am considering planting the potatoes straight into half-empty cubes of peat moss so that I can mound the dirt as they grow. I haven't figured that out yet. I may have to build a bed for the potatoes. I am also considering straw bales. The seeds that we will plant tomorrow are: Roquette arugula, Bloomsdale spinach, a spring lettuce mix, Red Deer Tongue lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Golden Detroit beets, and Little Fingers carrots.
