Have You Caught The Gardening Bug?

So, living in the North means our Spring starts a little bit later, and this year it seemed like forever before the ice melted off the lake out back. Now, two weeks later, Spring has arrived full force! A rule of thumb my Mom taught me as a kid was, "as soon as you see your first Robbin, it's Springtime." Well, there is tons of Robbins chirping, and we even found a nest under our porch with four powder blue Robbin eggs! - Luckily I was able to snap a picture (careful not to disturb the nest) of the nest while the momma bird was on the hunt for worms on the ground from the rainy night before.
 

Robbin's nest in our backyard.

Since the weather has been getting warmer, HB and I decided to take on the project of creating a new vegetable garden for our 2011 harvest. Last year, we created a make-shift garden (since we we're new to the gardening scene), and seemed to run into a few problems (earwigs, critters, etc...) so, now we feel we have a little more experience under our belt, and decided that this time we'd make a more visually appealing design with an easier to harvest layout. Which will now be pest free...hopefully.

 I will make sure to post pictures of the gardens (before and after) as soon as it's finished!

Since HB has been busily working on building our vegetable bed, I've been getting my hands in the soil and getting ready to plant in the next couple of weeks. Today however, I decided to germinate a variety of different seeds to get a head start on this years harvest. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to use, but I found an old egg carton in the recycling and it's perfect! I added a little seed starter soil in each egg carton cup, made a little hole, added the seed, sprinkled a little water, and Voila! instant germination station! I closed the lid to the egg carton, and put in a well lit window to give the seeds a greenhouse effect. Now, if my timing is correct, they should be ready to plant outside in a week or two, when the ground is perfect temperature for them to survive .

In this picture I have lemon balm, acorn squash, broccoli, and stevia ready to germinate.

What about you? Have you been bitten by the gardening bug? What do you usually plant in your veggie garden?

-xo Hippie Girl