Playing in the Dirt: Part III

Finally, we plant. I used this tool to help us lay out the garden. It tells you how many of each plant you can put in each square foot, which was easier for us to lay out. We measured and marked one-foot spacing on the inside of the box, and estimated from there. We left 2 cells empty in case we wanted to plant an/or move something else later.
I grew a lot of the seedlings too close together in the peat moss containers. The sprouts were too dense of most of them to just plant the whole container, and they were too fragile to separate individually. We did our best, but ended up scrapping the lettuce and starting over. Most of the herbs got transplanted in one big lump. We also planted some spinach, squash and watermelon seeds directly into the garden.

I found these cute (waterproof) signs in the dollar section at Target and used them to label each plant.

Other tips and tricks:
* We dropped a few eggshells in the holes we dug for the tomato plants. The calcium is supposed to make their stalks nice and strong.
* Some plants need support. We got a cage for each of our tomato plants so that they would grow upward. (Ours are 33", 3-ring, 3-leg.)
* Water the newly planted garden well, especially for the first 24-48 hours.
* Be careful when planting seeds to not "drop" any. We have a few surprise sprouts around our garden, and we are pretty certain its because I got careless while handling the seeds :/

Total spent in this post:
Plant signs 5 packs of 5 @ $1.00/pack = $5.00
Tomato cages 4 @ $1.68 ea = $6.72 (included a 10% off coupon from Lowes
Tomato cages 2 @ $0.79 ea = $1.58 (we had to get 2 more, and they happen to be cheaper at Aco)

Total to date: $87.97

And Josh admiring our hard work: