First post

First post to first blog! This blog will follow our labors with our first serious attempt at a vegetable garden in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had a few tomato plants 2 years ago and they were pretty successful. Tried a slightly larger garden last year, but was mostly a failure. I think we had too little light reaching the plants. We've moved the located this year to a full sun spot, but no longer protected by the existing fencing as were the prior 2 locations, so we'll have to fence this in. At this point, the new garden is prepped and pretty much ready to be planted - hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Forecast calls for rain later in the week, so I'd like to have everything in by then.

Time line so far:

• 3/19/09 - started seeds indoors: tomato, pepper, cucumber (can you start cucumber indoors?)
• 3/29/09 - a few tomatoes have sprouted. planted mesclun mix in pot on deck
• 4/11/09 - most tomatoes are up now. one cucumbers just starting to emerge. no sign of peppers
• 4/25/09 - garden tilled - cut sod, added peat moss and manure from lowe's. layout is 2 patches, each 3'6" wide and 15' long. had planned to make them 30' long, but when i laid it out, looked overwhelming, so decided to halve it. So total we have just over 100 sf of garden.
  
• 4/27/09 - set 2x2 stakes around perimeter. will attach deer netting 6' high all around. not sure if these stakes will hold.