Spring Gardening

If you live where it gets warm you might not appreciate this, but here in North Idaho, the snow was on the ground from October to April 5th on this property!
And winter has still been trying to hold on. So I knew if we were going to have anything growing in the backyard, I better get something growing quick. Now the rule of thumb here is you don't plant until the snow is off the local mountain, which is usually around Mothers Day...that's May 10th this year. I know my sister has had to pull three rounds of weeds already where she lives.
I began with organic potting soil and organic seeds this year, in hopes of seeing a green house out back that Dear Husband and I dreamed about in winter. However, mil likes to do yard work and it would be much nicer if she could help. So instead Dear Husband and I wandered out to the local hardware store and bought four white roll up shades and some deck stain for the front porch. Why you say? To brighten up and protect the deck with the stain and put the shades up front on the porch to create a semi controlled place for our seedlings to grow.

It will allow us to do some container gardening, keep down the need for weeding as my time is taken up more with Caregiving.
Ok, so the first pic of marigold and shasta daisy seeds is not so interesting, it's just dirt, but after a winter of white for six months, brown really is a lovely color! In the second picture you can see I used egg cartons to plant the melon and tomato seeds, and the egg carton lid to plant some herbs. The 2" containers cantalope and watermelon...ok so I am dreaming that we will have a long enough season for these to make it to fruition!

They began here on the shelves of an old wire wrack near the heat of the fridge motor and a heater vent, in front of the glass door to get what little light they could find about 4 weeks ago. I did have a full specturm uv light to help out in the beginning. However we have been getting a bit of morning and evening bright sunlight, so having a light weight movable wrack was nice. Next time I thing it work better to have it on a wrack with wheels to just roll across the wood flooring. Now that the sunlight is streaming in more regular I suppose they will growing quicker. Now all I need is some enough weather to get out and clear off the front porch and stain it so I can replant these little babies. The prolific zuccinni is doing great. I did chance a planting of some pea pods out back around the base of a ladder so the plants can grow up the ladder for some support. I also chanced a planting of some green onion seeds and lettuce seeds out in some long planting boxes. And of course waht do you suppose happen a few days later? I kid you not it looked like a white out not of snow, but of hail! That's ok, God has made us Idahoan's tougher with all the show shoveling and if our plants are going to survive than they are going to have to learn in adverse conditions as well. Refining fire has a way of doing that, or in their case...hail.

Hope you are enjoying using your green thumb as well, and I would love to hear what you are doing. I hear much talk of square foot gardening, have any of you tried it? Also, any tips on container gardening? This is my first serious try at container gardening and I would love to hear any tips you have.

Happy Gardening.