Bringing it up to speed

Alright, I'll back it up for a minute.

I considered constructing a vivid play-by-play of all of my gardening failures experiences since I began about 2 months ago. My plan was to include photos of me planting my seeds and glowing over their minuscule daily growth... but I thought better of it.

Mostly because it would take forever.

Hencethereforehence, I shall give a short/sweet/mild update on how the happenings have been going on since beginning of February.

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2/8/15: K and I build our raised beds. We used a total of 48 8' landscape timbers (some of which were cut in half by the lovely folks at Home Depot.) We used 6" galvanized spikes to assemble them. Lined the side of the bed with black landscape fabric (to help with chemicals in wood not leaching into the soil.) After we had 4 cubic yards of of a compost mixture delivered, we decided we would be stupid brilliant and forgo a wheel barrow and rather employ a tarp to help us drag the dirt back to the yard. It only took 338783 trips or so (but whooooo is counting?) After 8 hours, our project was finished. We followed it up by a careful balance of tacos and tequila.

2/18/15: One of the billions of photos I took of my seedlings. They lived on my dining room table for about 2 weeks (much to K's chagrin.) They started getting leggy, so I knew I needed a new solution until it warmed up outside.

2/21/15: Grow lights! I built these puppies out of two $12 workshop fluorescent lights, some PVC and a whole lot of foil. I originally built it for the dining room table at the front of our house, but after deciding that our neighbors might suspect us of running a drug ring, we moved the set up to the back bedroom. ("No, officer... I don't intend to smoke my cucumber seedlings...")

3/2/15: More growth and more solo cup planters. Sigh. They grow up so fast.

3/9/15: Yea, in true "Oh, Kaylee" fashion, I decided that Noooo I (didn't) want those store-bought convenient tomato cages and instead opted to make my own. Let's face it. Any excuse to use bolt cutters is fabulous in my book. (Bonus points for any future necessary tetanus shots after these babies rust up real nice.)

3/18/15: Since I planted about 4 times as many plants as I needed for the beds, my patio is currently inundated with container plants that I do not have the heart to sacrifice. No one is gonna make that choice, Sophie.

Also, this is after planting out the peppers. Tomatoes are in the back left bed. Various things in the right two beds. Featuring: the cheap plastic fencing I had to put up to prevent my ever-so-graceful dog from plowing through the beds in pursuit of the yellow tennis ball.

 Things since then have been pretty gradual. Lots of growth over the last 3 weeks or so. The photos below were taken yesterday and this morning. Already about to harvest my first yellow squash tomorrow.

 Of course there is much more to share, but I will try to spread it out gradually (kind of like how I gradually dole out my crazy.) Sorry for the iPhone photos. I will try to take more photos with my big-girl camera next time.

Now that you're semi-caught up, I can properly slack off for a day or two.