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Gardening activities of the one known as Banana Bonanza (aka, Mr.Bonanza or Mr.Bananza)

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20 April 2025 10:58AM - Planting a Peach Tree

This story is a joint post with a cycling one. Read that one first and then come back to this gardening one!

At the store the other day, my partner found a peach tree sapling for sale for, like, 15 dollars. She immediately purchased it and brought it home. This is what the bag of soil from ALDIs was for! I needed to plant the tree!

I don't know how much I've talked about this before, but my yard is very much clay soil. Like, calling it 'soil' at all seems like a misnomer. I've thought about experimenting with just firing the clay from my yard and seeing if it can form eathenware by itself. Regardless, one of the trickiest parts of planting was just digging a hole deep enough to get the sapling to fit inside the hole. But we persevere!

A small peach tree sapling planted into the ground. The top layer of soil has been mixed with partially composted leaves.
The planted peach tree!

You'll notice that the top layer of soil has been mixed with some leaf mulch. Although I didn't plan this specifically, last autumn while raking I just left an entire pile sitting in a corner of my yard. How fortuitous given that the instructions say to include such much at the top.

With that planted, it will now take some care and watering but I'm hopeful that either next year (or the next) we will have the first home-grown peaches! You, dear reader, will have to wait the same as me to get updates on it.

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12 April 2025 7:19AM - Relentless Sprouts and Second Box

The gardening adventure continues! After the last post of transplanting all of the seedlings to the back garden, basically none of them survived. The only plants that survived transplanting were the green beans and even then only three of the eight made it. Definitely a learning experience! I have since direct-sown new lettuce and other plants in hopes that they could grow from the box directly. And, well, see for yourself:

Close up view of a single lettuce sprout in a planter box with the rest of a planter box covered in small tree fibrous seeds. A second sprout is seen on the right side of the image and a bicycle can be seen in the background.
Direct sown lettuce plants starting to sprout!

And with this renewed hope, me and a friend have started planting far more and have even filled up a second planter box. There's lettuce, tomatos, onions, the aforementioned green beans, peppers, potatos, and even some sunflowers! It is only the middle of April and I'm already excited to see what kinds of harvests we'll be able to get from all of this work.

A completed second planter box next to the first planter box. The two planter boxes side by side fully planted.
Two planter boxes. Fully planted!
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23 March 2025 10:22AM - First Planter Box

After a trip to the hardware store and one last night where the temperature got below 0°C, the garden beds have finally been created and put in the ground! The four-by-four bed was made from one 16 foot piece of wood that was sawed into 4 foot lengths.

Area of the yard with the grass torn up and the crafted wooden garden box on the bottom of the image. Second layer of soil, the mulch+manure, getting put into the planter box. The completed planter box with a top layer of outdoor soil.
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
Tearing up grass Laying in soil Finished bed

Humorouously, one of our cats made the decision after making the planter box, that it was time to transplant the seedlings. She did this by knocking the seedling planter off of the shelf it was sitting on and having dirt and seed alike fall on the carpeted floor. I can take a hint. Thus, the seedlings from the last post have been transplanted in the new box!

Image of the planter box, one foot squares shown with yarn. Seedlings have been planted.
Stage 4: Finished garden bed with seedlings planted.

I did not quite follow the last blog post in how I planted all of the plants. The lettuce did indeed go in the back, but the tomatos and green beans are in different spots. Regardless, I now am looking forward to seeing if these little plants are going to be able to grow outside! I don't have high hopes for some of the less-hardy plants (looking at you tomatos), but the lettuce and green beans will hopefully do well.

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17 March 2025 8:23PM - Seed Sprouts

With this being the first spring in our new house, one of the things my spouse and I have always wanted to do is to start growing our own garden. Well we've started!

Sprouting Seedlings in a window with six signs that show which seedling is which type of plant.
Our first set of seedlings still in the window!

At present, we haven't started nearly enough seedlings and I do fear that we may be missing our opportunity to get a sizeable harvest. But, with this being our first year, I'd be glad to get a single leaf of lettucs, let alone an actual harvest. The current plants we have planned will be planted in a four-by-four square foot garden as follows:

A four-by-four grid representing the square foot garden. The top row has the label L T, the second row has the label T O, and the third row only has the first cell filled in with S B.
The initial setup for our square foot garden.

The labels are 'Lt' for lettuce, 'To' for tomatos, and 'SB' for string beans. I'm planning on going to the hardware store tomorrow to get the last things we need to actually set up the planting bed. Expect more soon!

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