My Garden 2013: Starting In My New Greenhouse

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Update 4/4/2013: This blog post was merged to "Daddykirbs Farm Blog". Please reset your bookmarks so you don't miss any super exciting updates to my garden and orchard!

Go to this link to view and comment on the current blog: http://daddykirbs.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-garden-2013-starting-in-my-new.html

I am very excited for this years garden! I have a greenhouse! This is the first greenhouse I've ever owned. It's not very big, but it should give me a nice place start my seeds and over winter some of the plants. My small Lemon tree will appreciate that.

These Harbor Freight deals can be pretty good. This greenhouse was on sale for $299 and they allowed me to use another 20% coupon on top of that. I was going to build my own greenhouse from scratch, but the cost savings here changed my mind.

This was from my garden last year. I have dreams
of greater success this year. My greenhouse is
bolstering my confidence! :)

Best of all, now that I have it I can SAVE MONEY! I used to buy all my plants for the garden, but now I can start from seeds. Plants can cost $4 each. A seed packet is usually around $1. Each seed packet can start 50 plants or more.

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse: Framing the Short Wall

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse

In this video you will probably notice that I can hardly contain myself :) I feel like a little kid with a new club ouse or something. Only here... I am inviting you into my club, not keeping you out! LOL.

After my introduction I have a series of video clips that show how the greenhouse went together. I don't think you should use this as a stand alone "how-to", but it might assist you in the process of building.

I wanted to share with you how I started my tomato seeds in the greenhouse too. I really don't know what I'm doing so forgive my mess! This video shows that process.

Most of my tomato seeds this year were purchased from +Gary Pilarchik at The Rusted Garden.
You won't find a nicer guy to buy seeds from ;) He specializes in heirloom tomatoes.  I chose to use the heirloom tomatoes this year because I'd like to learn how to save seeds for myself. By the way, Gary has videos on his blog about how to do that.

After the building and planting and the time it takes me to get a blog post up... here is an example of a little tomato seed that decided to love me back.

daddykirbs Garden Blog: Tomato Seed Sprouting

My little girl wanted to join in on the fun so she started one of the black sunflower seeds from the bag of chicken scratch. She grew some last year too :)

daddykirbs Garden Blog: Sunflower Seed Sprouting

We started a row of these in the raised beds too. We read that Sunflowers make Cucumbers taste better so we will start the Cucumbers near these.

I loved in elementary school when we got to start Sweet Potatoes in little cups! I decided to try it again here in the greenhouse.  These are holdovers from the very few that I grew last year. These will be planted in the Hugel Beds up by the Orchard.

Here are a handful more of the construction photos.

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse: My Helper :)

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse: Constructing the Short Wall

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse: Constructing the Short Wall

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse: Framing Done

Update:

Looks like I didn't fail completely :) Almost all of the seeds have sprouted.

Daddykirbs Garden Greenhouse: Beautiful Tomato Sprouts

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My First Hugelkulture Garden Bed

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Update 4/4/2013: This blog post was merged to "Daddykirbs Farm Blog". Please reset your bookmarks so you don't miss any super exciting updates to my garden and orchard!

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Permaculture? What is it? Well I'm still learning to answer that question for myself, but basically it's designing our environment more like nature. When we mimic nature our gardens will thrive and be more self sustaining. We help the soil along by providing more materials like compost, clippings, mulch and in the case of Hugelkulture we bury wood.

It is my goal to use my farm in a more sustainable way. Or as a gardening buddy of mine on Google+, +Dan Grubbs,  says "regenerative". The idea of restoring our land to a more fertile and fruitful existence.

This is all new to me too. I'm learning right along side you. Here is my first experiment with Hugelkulture. As the experiment goes along I'll add pictures and video to this post. So, bookmark it and come back! :)

Watch this video :)

Starting the Hugelkulture Bed - Daddykirbs Garden Blog

This next video shows some of the "next steps" I took to make this bed work better.

Since that first bed felt so good... I built a second. Here is a series of pics for that second bed.

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Logs covers with mulch - view from the South

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Logs covers with mulch - view from the North

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Covered with first layer of dirt

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Layered with horse manure compost

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Layered with horse manure compost - view from the South (Awesome shot of my beautiful little 'bota in the background)

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Layered with horse manure compost

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Final layer of mulch/dirt blend.

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Pin This :)

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Building & Filling Raised Beds

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Update 4/4/2013: This blog post was merged to "Daddykirbs Farm Blog". Please reset your bookmarks so you don't miss any super exciting updates to my garden and orchard!

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This garden area that I have is fantastic! There is a 32 foot square fenced in with a cute gate.... but it's empty. Last year I tried a couple of different methods. I used an old raised bed that was there and that worked fine, but it wasn't enough and wasn't laid out how I wanted it.

Chicken feed bags was the another method that I tried out. This seemed appropriate to me since I have lots of bags and it was more of a mobile solution. I figured I could move the bags around as needed since there was not a clear plan for the garden.

There were a few challenges with the bags. One, they didn't hold water like they needed too. It's hot in Texas and the bags dried out too fast. Another challenge in Texas is the bright damaging sun. Those bags broke down pretty fast. By the end of the season they were brittle and flaking all over the place.

Those methods worked ok... I got some produce out of them. But, it was not that good.

This year I'm investing in making the garden more usable and productive. There are raised beds for the family and the kids that want them... they have their own. There is also a greenhouse going in. It's small, but should be fine for seed propagation and over wintering the lemon tree.

Here is a snapshot of the raised beds:

New Raised Beds - Daddykirbs Garden Blog

Here is a video of the garden as it transitions from empty to useful.

It's worth noting that I did plan on lining the bottom of the entire garden with carpet. My thoughts on that were that the carpet would be a weed block barrier. In my original thought process it made sense. I figured that the beds would be full of good dirt so it didn't matter that they would be on carpet.  Well, after some exchange on the Google+ community, Hobby Farms: Growing Food & Families, that I moderate, I changed my mind. It was mentioned how dangerous it could be to have the chemicals breaking down and getting into my vegetables. This is called "leaching"... I'm not sure how much of it really happens and how BAD it really is, but I figured it's better to err on the side of caution. I really do appreciate the warnings and comments that were made.

Here is a YouTube playlist that show my videos of my garden before this makeover:

Daddykirbs' Gardening Playlist

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