Ruby Queen Beet

I decided to give beets a try again this year. I had never had luck growing them well in the container garden, guess they didn't get enough sun to develop a nice sized root. I'm planting these in with the Swiss Chard, as those tend to do good. They'll be grown for dual purpose, the leaves and the roots. The thinned out beet microgreens had a nice buttery taste to them.

Genovese Basil

This is the basil you grow if you want to make pesto. My seeds seem to germinate reliably, and this basil really develops well indoors under the grow lights. Will be cloning this variety off to populate the garden.

Buttercrunch Lettuce

Decided to try out a new variety of lettuce this year. This lettuce is a semiheading variety that can supposedly resist some heat. After seeing how prolific it is in other people's yards/hydroponic systems, I decided to go for this one. I've had good luck getting this variety to germinate too. The transplants I've put in my garden are also holding up to the hot weather my climate gets!

My first crop I've harvested out right before the heatwave was about to hit. Lettuce hardly had any bitter taste to it. Had the traditional buttery texture! This variety is an early summer champ.

2017 Garden Expansion Overview -- Plants and Strategy

Now with all the field work out of the way, here's what's going to be growing out in the backyard.

I've designated 3 different zones with the landscape fabric. One is spaced with 6" centers, while the other two are spaced with 8" centers.

Lathe Machining 16" Diameter Wood

More detail not covered in the video:

It all started when the law of Scrap Alchemy provided me with a bunch of free wood to experiment with.

Field Prep Pt 3 -- Erecting a Tomato & Pepper Trellis

Once the tomatoes and peppers get established in the yard, they'll need some support. Since the spacing on all my plants is such where traditional tomato cages would not have enough space to be viable (and too costly), I thought of a more practical solution.

Field Prep pt 2-- Creating the Crop Rows

With the rows formed in the yard, I decided to try a trick I learned from some urban farming videos.
The idea is to cover and plant my crops using some weed control fabric. In the fabric itself, you can cut holes to where the plants go. This is especially useful for keeping the distance inbetween plants consistent.

Field Prep Pt 1 -- Tilling the Land -- Playing with new Toys

So what is all this indoor seed starting leading to? Big thinking. A massive garden expansion.

Since the yard has absolutely nothing growing in it, I figure that this would be a good year to actually do something to it.

Indoor PVC Seed Starting Shelf

Inspired by many videos of practical farming, I finally learned why much of my past seed starting has resulted in failure. 1) Lack of light & 2) Poor soil media. In this guide, I build a proper seed starting shelf to start my seedlings indoors.