Gardening talk today....and a bit of card talk too!

We love our veggies here and I absolutely love to eat salads - in fact I eat one almost every day. I'm a gardener as well but have never grown my own lettuce so I decided this was the year I was going to try it. This winter I saw a show on public television where they made a "salad table" and I was struck by this concept.....growing lettuce in a container- wow! You mean I don't have to dig up my yard and build a fence around a garden to keep out the deer and other critters out- how cool- I want to do that!

So I printed up the plans and tucked them away until Spring arrived- I finally found the time last week to get one made. I gathered my materials  (most of it was already on hand) and got busy and made my very own salad table.  My sister wanted one too so we spent a few hours getting full of sawdust and playing with the drill and screws and made 2 of them. It was pretty easy overall- as long as you can measure and cut you'll be ok. I'm pretty handy with all the tools (I used to work contruction years ago..) so it was a snap for me.

So here is my table- just waiting for me to fill it with growing medium. I actually made my table bit smaller than the plans I followed (3'X4').  The cost to build a table like this if you had to go purchase everything would be about $35.00- pretty easy on the wallett if you ask me! My sister lives in a townhouse and we made her table even smaller (about 3'x2') - so you have lots of options to customize it. For my planting medium I chose to use a mix of peat moss and Pearlite for good aeration and drainage. I will add some Osmocote for fertilizing once my seedlings are up and established. I really have the urge to go plant my seeds right NOW (the gardening bug has hit me hard this past week) - but I told me son I would wait for him to get home from school so he can help.

I'm not sure if any of you would like to make one of these but it is a great idea if you have a small yard and really want to enjoy fresh lettuce and greens all summer long. The best thing about using a container like this is there is no weeding to do and it's very easy on the back as well....no stooping over on your hands and knees and all that other stuff that's not so fun about gardening
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I almost forgot to show you what I picked out for lettuce and some other green goodies. I love a variety of lettuce and really love spinach leaves in my salads! You can also grow many other things in this table such as radish, spinach, parsley, and many herbs.

I  can't wait for my lettuce and spinach to start growing-I'll be taking tender loving care and watching them grow and waiting for that first day I can eat my own homegrown salad!

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Now on to the crafting note: I did not get anthing created over the weekend (busy weekend life)  but I do want to share some fun news with you. I won a little something over at the Hero Arts Flicker pool last week....and to my utter delight and surprise my package showed up today already! Tami Hartley sent me a lovely card and a stamp that I've been desiring for a while- in fact I stopped at 2 different Archiver"s last week to try to find it and they were both sold out of them.

I love this stamp: oh the ways you can use it! You must go see the Hero Arts Flicker pool for ideas- so much talent over there. 

 Thank you Hero Arts for being so very generous!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope I didn't bore you to death with the salad table thing.

Anne