Almost Time To Start Gardening

With the warmer weather just around the corner I have been spending some time getting everything ready for this upcoming gardening season. The plants that I started from seeds are doing really well. My tomato plants are getting taller and my sweet pepper plants are looking really healthy. I planted approximately 5 different types of sweet peppers. Last count I have 35 healthy plants. I have 15 large pots on the back deck to transplant the peppers into at the right time. I will have quite a number of extra plants, which I will be giving away. I will also have extra tomato plants, which I have 3 varieties.
Yesterday I spent some time putting together a fenced in area where I will put approximately 4 tomato plants after I transplant them into my largest outdoor pots. I decided to move the tomatoes away from my pepper plants since last year I battled all kinds of diseases on both the tomato and pepper plants. This way if either the tomatoes or the pepper plants come down with a disease it won't have an impact on the other.
The location of this tomato cage is on the other side of the house next to the fence. This location gets a lot of sun which the tomato plants like. My only concern will be that the casge is next to our bird feeders and birds like to peck at the tomatoes. My plan is to cage in the whole area where my tomatoes will be growing in so that no birds can get to the plants and the tomatoes themselves.
Below are photos of my plants growing indoors and of my partially built tomato cage. All I need is some open air top to fully enclose the cage...either plastic fencing or wire fencing which will be carefully attached to the fence.
I figure that I will have everything planted outside by the end of this month...corn, potatoes, sweet peppers and my tomatoes.

Get Cash Back When You Shop Online

Not sure if you have heard of Ebates. They have been around for a while. We joined a couple of years ago...no fees at all and Vronica and I have received what they call "Big Fat Checks" totalling almost $300.  We got a $99.30 check in Feb and right now we are at $56.20 and growing on our next upcoming check in mid May. If you do any amount of shopping online this cash really adds up. We bought 2 new suitcases online at ebags and got $32.93 back and this was on top of the sale ebags was having at the time. If you are going to spend the money online then you might as well get something extra back.

Here is a link for more info about Ebates. If you use the link and join, I will get a $25 bonus and you will get $10 just for trying it out. I wanted to be right up front about the $ so you would not think I was trying to pull a fast one on anybody. This is legit...check them out for yourselves.

www.Ebates.com

Time To start Thinking About Gardening

Today is Sunday, March 11th. I have already started preparing for this years vegetable gardening season. I am in the process of growing various tomato and pepper plants indoors under grow lights.
I went to both Walmart and Home Depot and bought a bunch of seed potatoes..Northland Red, Yukon Gold and a different variety of Yukon Gold.
I took all of the potato tomato seeds and placed them on trays and I have them either in front of a sunny window or under the grow lights. Eyes have popped out on all of the seed potatoes.
I got my portable cloth garden out of the shed and put it together for my potatoes bed. I put the initial layer of gardening soil in it...approximately 3-4" deep.
I also ventured into my 2 fenced in gardens and got some work done. Last year I dug up my oval shaped garden area. This is the garden that I had planted my huge sauce tomatoes in last year. At the end of last season I turned the soil, fenced the garden in and then laid down some landscape/garden cloth that keeps the weeds out but allow air and water the go through the cloth.
I went into both of those fenced on gardens and cut out circles where I would plant my corn seeds. I made sure that this year I did not crowd the spacing between where each corn stalk would be. Last years corn crop was pathetic because I tried to plant to many varieties and the spacing was not adequate for the corn to grow properly. Now that I am utilizing both fenced in gardens for corn there is no need to not space the corn properly.
Below are photos of what I have got accomplished so far both inside and out: