Gardening Season is Back!

As the Pointer Sisters exclaimed, I'm so excited and I just can't hide it! Last Saturday, April 28th, was the Sandoval DUG's opening work day and meet and greet. As always, there is a lot of excitement in and around the garden, and I'm thrilled to become more involved in this great community. As I expressed in my last post, what became apparently obvious to me about gardening is how it is such a community driven effort, meant to be shared. Since last years plot far exceeded my growing expectations, I have recruited the help of my dear and lovely friend, Stephanie Clark of Lale Floral Designs. Steph, who I fondly refer to as "Bean" partially because she looks like a beautiful string bean, helped me a bit last year, but I am stoked to be sharing my plot with her this year. Steph not only has what I like to call fabulous native instinct but a keen eye for design, and has been gung-ho about our little love plot! Saturday we eliminated weeds and got the soil ready for flowers and vegetables by putting down some organic compost. I was ecstatic to have such a hard worker bee by my side and immediately felt more prepared than last year--neighboring gardner's also commented on this...

Here Steph stands, carrot in hand! I couldn't believed it survived the winter! There was also a patch of red chard hanging around from last season. 

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Both of us being busy and blossoming entrepreneurs, simply finding a time to buy seeds was hard. We finally found ourselves a two hour time slot from 8-10PM last Thursday, however the only place open for seed-buying was Home Depot. Not our ideal seed-buying location, but beggars can't be choosers. We started gathering seed packets before I realized none of the packets we were picking were organic, a priority for edible consumption. Bean stopped what she was doing and helped me search for organic--the only organic brand around happened to be one of my mothers very favorite brands, Martha Stewart. We went a little crazy, and then narrowed down our choices:

-Artichoke
-Basil
-Beets
-Bell peppers
-Butter lettuce
-Cantaloupe
-Carrots
-Cilantro
-Eggplant
-Garlic
-Jalepenos
-Kale
-Pumpkins
-Radishes
-Spinach

By the time we finished turning up the soil and putting down compost on Saturday we were too exhausted to plant. With the help of an iPhone app, Steph drew out a little plan for us based on how much sun each vegetable needs, and what needs to be in raised hills versus rows, so we'd be prepared when we were ready to plant. 

Below is a picture of our tentative plan. 

In addition, Bean being the flower girl that she is, we picked out some eye candy:
-Delphineums
-Poppies
-Stock
-Sunflowers
-Sweet peas

Today we plant. Stay tuned...

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Total Expense: $67
DUG plot: $35
Seeds: $32