Welcome Spring!

Hello World! Most (all?) of New England is finally out of hibernation and Spring has never been more welcome. After 2 straight months buried under snow, it's amazing to finally see plants and trees coming to life yet again. Kind of magical, if you ask me.

I'm not sure what inspired me, but I decided I wanted a piece of that magic for myself and built a raised bed square foot garden. OK - my husband built it and helped me fill it but I did all the rest! This is my first ever gardening attempt so I'm keeping it small but still ambitious. I hope you'll cheer me on as I post my little garden's progress here. And of course I'll share my culinary creations born of it.

We did our first plantings and sowing on April 3rd, right after the snow melted from that lovely April Fool's Day storm. We chose cinder blocks as our building material because both Hubby and I are terrible with tools. Plus, we have the added bonus of planting inside the blocks which I think is pretty cool. Here is a shot of the raised bed just after filling it:


And here it is after our first plantings:

In the blocks, we put ever-bearing strawberries and in the bed, there are shallots (left) and leeks (right). As for seeds, we sowed arugula, spinach, bunching onions and snap peas (also in the blocks, all the way to the right where there are no strawberries).

On Monday (April 11th) we had our first sprouts - Arugula!


The next day, up came the spinach:


Then today, the peas, just barely:


The strawberry crowns are also looking healthy:


Here is everything else I'm planning to plant/sow:

carrots
cilantro
basil
tomatoes
jalapeno
bell pepper
parsley
swiss chard

The arugula will be my first harvest (if I don't kill it) and I'm thinking about an arugula-Parmigiano-prosciutto pizza...YUM! Anyone know if they make prosciutto locally??


-Nicole