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Another general status update. The second planting of spinach has sprouted, the peas are sure growing, and the tomatoes are showing good healthy growth.

	Here is the new spinach growing beside the first planting of spinach that is growing nicely. I made one small harvest out of this already, but not really worth counting. More of a thinning than a harvest.
	The peas are finding the trellis all by themselves and are latching on for dear life.
	This is the blueberry bush. It is loaded, especially since it is all alone. We’ll probably have to bird net this to get most of these.
	The first of the cut flowers are blooming. This is the first yellow lily. I am looking forward to lots of yellow blooms before long.
	These are flower sprouts that my wife and I planted in the new bed a few weeks ago.

I’ve been meaning to create a 3rd and 4th raised bed for a while now. I only have room for 2 squash plants in my existing beds, so the 3rd bed is needed.. and the 4th.. well, who ever has empty beds??

I decided to snap a few photos of the process. My first beds were made with 2x8s in 10 foot by 4 foot lengths. 2x8s are expensive though.. upwards of $20 per cedar board at home depot. I don’t have that kind of money at the moment, so I went searching for some cheaper options. I want to keep it untreated and organic though.. so cedar is really my only option. Previously I went with 2x8s to hold up to what I thought would be a lot of weight holding the soil. Well, uncompacted soil only 8” deep don’t really put much weight on the sideboards.. so I found some untreated cedar fencing for $1.30 per 5 foot. I picked up 6 of them for less than $10 total. \

	Here they are sitting in my garage. These are 1”x5”x5’, six total.
	I cut the two end boards to 4’ length to give me a matching size of 10’  x 4’.
	I laid them out beside my existing beds and started to till the sod with my shovel, as I don’t have a tiller.
	I’m pretty new to this whole thing, so I figured instead of getting rid of the existing sod and the dirt attached to it, I’d just ‘turn over’ the sod and then add a compostable mulch layer over it to kill the grass, and eventually it would break down and I’d have nice soil.
	What ‘compostable mulch’ did I use? Old newspaper!
	Then topped off with a few bags of purchased garden soil. I need a few more bags to fill the bed. I’ll pick those up in the next day or two and have it all ready for early June squash planting. So.. will the newspaper kill off the grass or will this bed turn into a raised sod bed? I dunno.. time will tell.
	UPDATE 7-27-2009 The newspaper mulch worked great! Here is the bed a few months later, and as you can see it is doing spectacular. None of the grass underneath came through, and no weeds came up either. The tomatoes are pushing over 4 feet tall and have a well developed root system. I call this a total success.

Not a whole lot of crazy stuff going on just yet. So far just about everything has sprouted that was planted in early May. Some are doing better than others, as you’ll see below. Of the second planting, most of them have sprouted.. rutabagas and lettuce in the planters are both doing well. The lettuce is doing MUCH better than the garden-planted lettuce. I think maybe the garden gets too much hot sun, and even though its still cool out, it does get direct sun most of the day. The planter is in the shade of the Rhododendron until about 3pm, then it gets direct sun from 3-9pm, which it seems to really like.

	The flowers that Dad and I planted last year are growing great! My last plants have just emerged so every single plant survived our harsher than normal winter! Even my perennial and semi-perennial herbs survived! This is the view from our kitchen. The rhody is in full bloom now, after this photo was taken.
	The tomatoes are starting to look a little better. The bottom set of leaves are still a bit yellowish but the tops are getting a darker and fuller green and a few of them are showing new growth. It is still early in the season and cool, so I’m not expecting them to grow a whole lot just yet, but it is good to see their overall health improving.
	My tomatillos are doing very well. They are blooming pretty well already. I have never grown tomatillos or been anywhere to see them grow, so I really have no idea what to expect. I just know I like to eat them, so I’m hoping for the best!
	A cool season crop, the peas are loving this weather. They are doing fantastic, with no signs of any pest problems at all. Lets hope that trend continues! The cucumbers off to the right of the peas aren’t doing much yet, but they like the warmer weather so they are holding on and doing fine.
	I’ve only had two beans to germinate so far. I think i’m going to have to replant this weekend if nothing happens. As you can see, the two that did germinate are getting gnawed on by something.. most likely slugs. I might have to take some advice on slugs and set out a cup full of beer as bait to lure them away from my veggies.

That’s about it.. nothing else really going on in the garden. I may attempt to create two more beds this weekend, money and time permitting. I’ll be sure to take pics of the process if I am able to do so.

Over the weekend I did my final up-potting on my tomatoes, tomatillos, and jalapenos, into 1 gallon pots that I had saved from my big Molbak’s plant purchase last year (thanks again Mom and Dad!). My tomatoes were getting a little too tall to support their own weight, so I decided to build some baby trellises for them. I had a few scraps of 1×8 pine left over from a previous project so I ripped them down on the table saw and then used my pneumatic brad nailer to nail them together. I created a little jig so they all went together in less than half an hour.

Now they are hardening off. I move them outside during the day and inside at night. They are pretty well hardened off now and I could plant them, but we are supposed to get some lows in the upper 30s later in the week so I’ll just keep them in the pots and move them back and forth into and out of the garage until that cooler spell as passed.. so by this weekend they should be in the ground!

Also in this bunch is the mint plant that my grandmother (Granny) gave me when I was at her house this spring. They survived the flight back from Dallas in my backpack wrapped in a damp paper towel just fine. It has already put up a ton of new shoots and is growing like a weed. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with it. I’m thinking about keeping it in a planter on my front porch, so that every time you enter or leave you get a nice smell of mint. A container also means I can move it to the back deck (which is covered) during the late fall and early spring, and over-winter it in the house.

The carrots and onions have finally sprouted. I only planted one row of each for a staggered harvest. They look so cute sprouting in their little rows.

I can’t quite remember which one is which (photos I mean, I know which ones are in the garden) but I think the left photo is the onions and the right is the carrots. The spinach is still growing like mad and a few more lettuce plants have sprouted too. Looking forward to the harvest already!

May 1st is my ‘last frost date’ here in my area of Washington. May 5th is the ‘safe’ last frost date, but the weather forecast for the next several week has 43 as the lowest temp, so I think we are good to go for the year. On Friday, May 1st, I direct seeded my peas, beans, bok choi, shimanato onions, guardsman onions, parsely, dill, chives, and cucumbers. I also moved my tomatos, tomatillos and jalapenos to 1 gallon pots, and trellised the tomatoes and tomatillos. I started the hardening off process as well. They are all in my little garden wagon now and will spend the days outside and the nights in the garage somewhat near the furnace to stay warm.

I’ll post up some photos of them when I have time to take some. Hopefully they will be hardened off and ready for transplanting this weekend, if not sooner. The weather is supposed to be cloudy and cool all week, which is good for transplanting.