A few more inches

It's been a week, and the plants have really taken off. 

My kitchen garden is growing so well, that I may go ahead and put in another raised bed right beside this one. 

I'm very excited to try out the gardening method described here. I came across this article some time ago and saved it in my interest page. I'm excited to add my compost contributions directly to the garden. We will see if this works. I'm always curious to find techniques that decrease the total amount of labor needed for a successful bounty. 

I already have baby strawberries and green peppers. 

I carefully inspected each plant to see if I had aphids or any other pests. I was surprised to see the bottoms of all leaves are clean. 

I did see evidence of a caterpillar (I think), with an egg plant leaf almost missing in its entirety. 

I noticed some weird spots in the inner leaves of the strawberry. I'm not sure what is causing them.

I looked over the plant pretty thoroughly, but didn't see evidence of any pests. 

Next, I got busy adding the straw to the top of the garden. In the article it states, "You need at least twice as much as you would think." The article calls for 8inches, but perhaps less if you use bailed hay. I was using baled hay. Good hay, that I bought; unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of livestock close to where I live. 

I barely made a dent in the hay. I plan to utilize the rest in building out the rest of the backyard. I find myself getting excited thinking about what kind of projects I can do to make use of the excess hay. I also ended up with some excess bags of play sand that we originally intended to fill the base of basketball hoop. (We went with water instead, hence the extra sand). I'm thinking I may build a fire pit :)

Here is the left over hay after spreading it in the garden. 

In the article it talks about wood shavings, which I used in my garden possibly making the soil acidic. I'm thinking I may need to get a soil sample. I'm hoping the 50% sand mixture that was completely devoid of all nutritional value will offset any acidity introduced into the soil. (Eeek)

I plan to test with this method…

Here is the garden with hay around each plant. I took care to protect the plants has I added the hay. 

Finally, I needed to add some string for the climbers. I used some left over twine that I had in the garage. (love free!)

I'm thinking about adding the twine across the garden bed in an "x" shape to support the tomatoes when they get big enough. I may break down and pick up some of the wire hoops instead… we'll see. 

So far, I've been watering it pretty regularly (hitting it with a hose every other day).