a-gardening we go

I got this quite splendid little 2 story grow house from Ikea for Christmas, mostly because I have a handful of cute tiny little orange trees I started growing at the end of last summer and they were getting too cold and very sad and miserable and I wanted somewhere bright and cosy for them.

Of course, part of the reason they were becoming sad is that they needed repotting, so this morning I very bravely repotted them. I’m not good at repotting things, so I’m very proud of myself. :)

Anyway, while I was preparing to do that kind of thing, and thinking about gardening this summer, and how I want to do raised beds because the soil in our little plots is terrible and I, frankly, am not *that* enthusiastic of a gardener. And along the “not that enthusiastic” lines, it suddenly occurred to me that probably there are people out there who provide kits for raised beds, and that that would be a much better use of my time and energy than trying to make them myself.

So I looked, and lo! There are people out there who provide kits for raised beds! In all sorts of sizes! And they deliver directly to one’s home! So I measured our plots and it turns out they’re not so little, actually, they’re 6×10 each, which if I was to fill it properly would be A LOT of gardening space! I could, in theory, get 4 6×4′ beds and have a couple feet between them to kneel/walk between.

I could also just get two, which might be more reality based with regards to how much gardening I’m actually interested in doing, but…well, I don’t have to make the decision right away. :) And since I’ve now got this cute little growhouse, I can also start things in it over the next few weeks and see how enthusiastic I am about THAT, before making the raised beds decision. :)

(We also have what is effectively a greenhouse for our back entryway. It’s not warm at this time of year, but there’s probably something I could use to heat it a bit if I got wildly enthusiastic and needed more starter growing space. :))

All that lies before us, though. I need to get a couple of trays for the growhouse to start with, and work from there.

(I have dreams of a large semi-submerged greenhouse that are born from having this house with a long-defunct pool beside it. If It Was My House (and if I had all the money) I would have the whole pool mechanism removed and cleaned up and I would sink a greenhouse into the hole and build it 6-8 feet up above the surface, so there’d be like a 15 foot roof peak, and I’d grow a couple citrus trees and year-round veg and stuff. If I was that dedicated a gardener. Which I have dreams of being, although I don’t know that I’ll ever *be* that dedicated. Still, it’s good to have dreams, right? Right.)