We are in year tow of our garden here in central Arkansas, zones 7a-8b,. Last year, we started some of our garden via seed, but we started all seeds outdoors. We built our amazing DIY palette garden beds (one of which we rebuilt this year), and cannot wait to plant our little seedlings in our new garden beds once they are a bit stronger.
HERE’S WHAT WE PLANTED ON MARCH 8, 2024
Notes from the garden: 2/25 and 2/28/2024
Planted basil seeds from our garden then planted organic basil seeds from store. Also planted Cave City Yellow Watermelon (one cup grew wonderful and one did not grow at all).
3/8/2024
Planted seeds of the following: Sunflowers, Bell Peppers, Cilantro, Dill, tomatoes, peas.
3/14/2024
Seeing growth on the following: Peppers, sunflowers, and peas, cilantro.
Below, you can see some of my most cherished seedlings! Last year we went on a fun adventure near Cave City, AR. The watermelons from that city are famous so we decided to wash/dry/preserve some of those seeds from last summer. We saved both yellow watermelon, shown below, and I just started some of the red Cave City watermelons a few days ago, and I am already seeing growth on them!
Above, Cave City Watermelon Seedlings after one week, and below, after two weeks and transplanted into a larger pot.
Below, you will see one misfortune in the seedling game we are playing. Before I thought to use my plastic cups for seedlings,we purchased two type of Spinach seeds online and the Giant Noble spinach seeds from a farm in Columbus, OH barely had any growth since 2/28/24, and the American Spinach seeds I ordered elsewhere has shown less than half germination. So, perhaps it was the seeds, but maybe I over watered, or something? So, I will try these same sets of seeds in my clear plastic cups and let you all know if it is the tray or what. You never know what you are going to get!
I am wondering if it is honestly these trays or what, because most everything else I started in my cups, has been germinating within 5-7 days! Below, you can see a cup I planted our Sugar Daddy Peas in on 3/8/24 and wow they are taking OFF!
DIY Palette Garden Bed Instructions:
Materials Needed:
4 Palettes, 2 1/2” wood screws, drill, saw.
Tools We Use:
Instructions:
We cut/sawed apart a total of 4 palettes length wise, and used them to create the four sides. We used 2 1/2” wood screws to attach all the sides together. Next, we used smaller boards which were still attached to the extra pallet pieces as sides, in lieu of using weed barrier fabric like we did last year on the blue bed.
After you have reinforced the sides and made sure there is nowhere for dirst to fall out, then fill the bed with as many sticks as you can. This helps us save because we use less bags of dirt
Lastly, fill the remaining space in with bags of dirt. We like using the Miracle Grow soil if we can!
Once our seedlings are strong enough and there is no more cold weather snaps forecasted, our seedlings wil be plated outside in these beds, in an efort to have an even bigger and more varied garden than year one, last year!
I wish I had known about these exact DEWAT Tools being on sale but I provided some links to the deals below for our handheld saw and our amazing cordless handheld drill from DEWALT. They have lasted a long time.
BELOW, OUR GARDEN FROM LAST YEAR (2023)
We got tons of tomatoes and tons of basil (which grew nestled beneath all of our tomatoes, shown here.
Below, out first palette garden bed built last year, then the awesome GardenWerx bag and gardening tools Travis got me as a surprise last year. I could not find a link for them, but I included a few cute ideas below.
Can’t wait to see how the garden performs this season!