Garden Journal - March 2013

Garden Journal - March, 2013

To Do:

• Start tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, herb and flower seeds
• Transplant (block-up) seedlings started last month and move to greenhouse
• Design and build the duck house
• Layout and cut in new garden beds
• Fence in gardens with temporary fencing
• Design irrigation system for greenhouse and cold frames
• Design gravity feed, drip irrigation system for garden
• Order planting supplies like row covers, hoops, bamboo for trellis, etc.
• Re-submit garden shed plans to town hall to renew building permit
• Create blog and facebook page for the school garden
• Finalize layout of school garden and start building raised bed boxes

Notes:

For the past few years I have been thinking about adding an irrigation system to the greenhouse and cold frames. There are usually over a thousand seedlings in the greenhouse by the end of March and it can get a little tedious watering everything. I would like to have overhead sprayers as well as drip lines and have been looking at the DripWorks catalog and website trying to figure out the proper system.

The garden beds next to the house and garage will be set up with a gravity feed, drip irrigation system. I have been looking for inexpensive rain barrels to use, but haven't had too much luck. I would love to use wooden barrels instead of plastic, but the ones I have found are very expensive.

The garden shed was supposed to be built before winter, but as usual I was too busy with my business and didn't have time to build it. That was probably a good thing because I have decided to put it in a different location which will work better with the new garden layout.

I would still love to build the larger greenhouse that I have been designing, but don't know if there will have time before spring. My current greenhouse is still adequate, but is getting a little cramped for space now that I am trying to grow flowers and plants for the school garden.

The school garden project has finally been approved ~YAY~ and we are really getting excited to start working on that. Last weekend I was supposed to walk the site and measure to finalize the layout. As soon as I do that I can start building the raised bed boxes and hopefully we can raise enough funds to get the fence built fairly quickly. We have a resident artist at the school who has agreed to design a sign for the garden, which should look awesome with the whimsical theme we are trying to create!

What is on your garden to-do list for March?

~Rob~