Day 6 Update

I was very excited about starting my garden so I rented some plots of land in the community garden. My community garden is located in a local park. It has raised garden bed that you can rent year round. I have two 4'x8'x1' garden plots. They were a total of $30 for one year, with free water to water the plants and a community tool shed. Today I went to check them out and get my garden
started. What I found was a little worse than what I expected

The beds were overrun with weeds. I immediately start working on them. I only managed to finish weeding one and a half of the plots in two hours time. I will finish weeding the rest tomorrow and then I will plant my carrots and beets in them. I have carrot seeds in a package, along with a tub of beets that have sprouted indoors.

In the mail today I received a 2017 copy of the farmer's almanac. It's $8 and contains lots of helpful information about when it's best to plant certain plants. According to the farmer's almanac, the best time to plant early crop carrots where I live is March 7-31. The best time to plant early crop beets is from March 15 to April 3. With plants like carrots and beets, there is a late crop and an early crop. Early crops grow throughout the spring and are harvested in the summer. Late crops are grown in late summer and fall and is harvested close to winter. 

 Here is the progress that the seeds I started last Sunday have made:

This is the progress of the beets and carrots. The carrots do not appear to have sprouted at all yet, but the beets are all coming up very well. I will transplant this whole bucket into one of the garden beds. In the future, instead of starting these plants in a bucket indoors, I would start the beets and carrots in the ground instead. This is because beets and carrots both have very delicate roots systems, especially as seedlings.  When attempting to transplant them to the ground or to a bigger planter, there will no doubt be casualties. 

This is the progress of the tomatoes and bell peppers. The tomatoes have started to sprout very well. The bell peppers appear to be more hesitant. This could be due either to different germination periods or to the different nutrient requirements. Tomatoes are easy to grow in almost any soil, but bell pepper plants prefer sulfur-rich soil. Some gardeners even recommend planting matchsticks with your pepper plants to give them a boost of sulfur. I plan to transplant these to my garden plots in two or three weeks, maybe even four. It's better to tomatoes and peppers outside when the weather is warmer. 

The barrenness at the bottom of the planter is because I didn't plant any seeds there, although I clearly should have. It's important to make the most of the space you have available.