Aaron-N-Jen

I haven't really written an introductory post about the gardening challenge I'm taking this year. Melinda over at Elements in Time: Creating Edible Landscape is hosting a challenge to grow one additional type of vegetable or fruit from seed this year.

I had already started some seeds (of which most are being stubborn and doing nothing) from some packets I had laying around from last year. I figured I'd go ahead and try it to see what happened, while I'm waiting for new seeds to get here. I'm pretty much a garden moron, as I used to have what I called a terminal black thumb, but in recent years I've actually managed to let my house plants stay alive, and last year I grew some tomatoes and peppers from seed.

It was a major accomplishment, let me tell you.

Here's a basic outline of what I've got planned (in my head) for this year:
1) I would like to scrape up enough money to build several cedar-board raised beds behind our garage where we had tilled last year. Eventually, I'd like the entire area behind the garage to either be raised bed, compost bin, coldframe, what I'm calling a "gardener bin", shed, or some kind of ground cover (perhaps a type of stone with mint or something else grown in between it). No grass at all.
2) Build the compost bin, coldframe, and gardener bin.
3) Plant tomatoes (cherry and large), corn (new), green beans (new), peas (new), peppers, eggplant (new), squash (new), Camellia sinensis (new), and hops (new). I'd like to plant more, but this is my "starting list."
4) Maintain raspberry and blackberry bushes, strawberries, and giggle at the grape vine.
5) Finish the fence.
6) Plant/transplant herb garden.

Here's what I've got going so far. I can't remember what all I threw in there, but some of it is laughing at me. I can tell. I did label each cup to see what happened with each type of seed, but I'm too lazy to go look right now.