Setting up our first vegetable garden (Part 1)

For the past two years, we've been members of a local CSA (or Community Supported Agriculture). This is a great source of fresh, locally grown organic veggies all summer long! It's a tremendous value and a wonderful way to support local farmers.

This year, we just couldn't swing the financial commitment for the CSA — there was too much of a jump over previous years.

Enter our new garden!

I know a lot of you are thinking, Now wait a second! This is a LOT smaller than a farm! and it certainly is!

Our thought process was to grow what we eat most often. In our case, it's some staple vegetables. 

Tomatoes

Bell Peppers

Jalapeños

Garden Salsa Peppers

Lettuce

Cilantro

We made the trip over to our local Earl May store on Saturday morning after having breakfast at my in-laws'. I already had a list of some of the items I needed, which was supplemented with some conversations at the store. We spent some time gathering different packets of seeds, and based on the space with thought we had available to us, we narrowed it down to the plants we got above.

I talked with Calvin at Earl May in Cedar Rapids, who graciously helped me pick out a new shovel. Calvin helped me understand what we needed to do to prepare our garden for planting. Thank you, Calvin!

The Mrs. made a trip to the greenhouse, where she started to look at the tomato and pepper plants that were already started. The smart woman that she is, she suggested to get one tomato plant and one pepper plant to get things going, and we plant those in addition to the seeds.

I had some other lawn items to get (fertilizer), but all said and done, we spent a little over an hour at Earl May.

After lunch, we made our way outside and tackled preparing the area. This is what we started with:

This is about half-way through, and the dog got in on the action too!

A little over 90 minutes later, we had it all cleaned up and turned over. Time to plant!

We made labels to place next to the plants and seeds and put those where we wanted the plants to grow. Once we had everything laid out, we got to planting! Here's the garden after a little watering:

We still need to get a couple tomato cages and some stakes for the pepper plants. A small fence around the plot would help keep out the local Easter Bunnies too! (and non-Easter bunnies as well.) 

It was a little bit of an investment to get things going, in both time and money, but hopefully we'll get the payoff later this spring/summer when we're able to harvest our own veggies!

All in all, here's what we spent:

(1) Tomato Plant - $4

(1) Jalapeño Plant - $4

(1) Packet of Tomato Seeds - $3

(1) Packet of Bell Pepper Seeds - $3

(1) Packet of Garden Salsa Pepper Seeds - $3

(1) Packet of Lettuce Seeds - $3

(1) Packet of Cilantro Seeds - $2

(1) Shovel - $35

(1) Hand Tiller ~ $20?

Time to Buy Another

The Mrs. and I are at the point in our homeowner's journey that we're looking to replace furniture and other items that we bought earlier in our relationship. Things that have been through a couple moves, two states, and much more.

One such item that we've noticed getting less and less comfortable is our mattress!

Being a stubborn husband, it sometimes takes a while for things to sink in (no pun intended!) and to really understand what my wife is trying to tell me! She's been telling me for a bit now that the bed is uncomfortable and is showing its age. I'm not sure how long these things are supposed to last, but I guess I thought they lasted longer!

However, in doing some quick research tonight (thanks to my handy-dandy friend Google!), I do see that the average lifespan of a mattress is five to seven years. Only 5-7 years for a mattress? Huh. Could've fooled me with how much we spent buying it!

One great resource that I did find was "The Mattress Underground" - a whole site dedicated to creating educated mattress consumers.

I feel a little bit better about having to purchase a new mattress now - if we need to - because of the quick research that I did tonight.