First seeds in the ground- And snow

I really need to take photos of all this stuff, and I promise I will- but I did not do it today, so I don't have them for *this* post.  Anyway, when we moved into the new house there were a couple wooden garden beds already built- one that I think is probably about 2'x4' (based on the relative size to the one we've actually measured), but since I'm bad at estimation of size I will update you later on the actual size of it.  Anyway, the other bed turned out to be 3'x6', and is situated under one of the conifers we have in the front yard, but gets a decent amount of sun.  After finally getting some row covers and a couple bags of garden soil to fill the 3x6 bed in, I got some cold tolerant items planted yesterday, on Saturday. 

In the 3x6 bed, I did an entire half of it (3'x3') in the Rocky Top Lettuce Mix, with 5 per square foot- arranged as the 5 dots on a die would be.  I was a bit generous with the seeding, so thinning will have to happen, but that's good anyway since you can eat the plants you thin!  If it hadn't been so windy I may have just very thinly scattered the plants around, but it's Great Falls and we're known for our wind.  So much so that when I bought the row covers, the nice woman at Big R was very careful to inform me that the U-stakes would not be enough to keep the row covers anchored and to make sure I used some extra means to keep them secure.  We used some rocks and tucked the edges of the row cover into the bed.

In the other 3'x3' area of the bed, we did 3 blocks (1' square) of 'Ching Chang' Bok Choy, 3 blocks of 'Dwarf Blue Curled' Kale, and in the final 1' x 3' strip we did a row of half 'Dwarf Grey Sugar' Snow Peas and 'Golden Sweet' Snow Peas.

I'm still pondering what to plant in the other raised bed and the pots that came with the house.  I may have my Pea Pods planting setup completely set up, but here at home I'm having much more indecision about the whole thing.  Also, I'm seeing what sorts of spring plants we have already with the house- already I've been surprised by crocus and what look to be tulips popping up!  I know for sure we have Daylillies as well.

I also found out that Big R, where we got our row covers- has seed potatoes (their claim that they carry almost anything really isn't that far off)!  So if the potato experiment works out this year (Planning on using rubbermaid containers and layering to grow them), I will be able to economize a bit next year buying more locally.  Not that the $16 I spent for the seed potatoes + shipping from Fisher's Garden Store is unreasonable, especially considering I did not have to buy like 20+ pounds of seed potatoes- but being able to just pick up a few is much more ideal for our limited space, especially if we end up doing something like this rather than rubbermaid bins.  Though considering this family, the bins may end up being the go-to.  We seem to always have an abundance of them.

Tomorrow if the snow happens to melt, we'll be going to the community garden to get some planting done, but I heard we're supposed to get a couple more inches overnight (on top of the 2" we got already), so we'll see.  If not, I'll find other things to occupy myself.  I did not get the very early start that I was hoping for, but this is good enough, so I'm not going to sweat it too much.  And at the very least, the row covers/frost blanket will keep the critters from chewing on my peas.  And I didn't get ANYTHING in the ground till the second week of May last year, so we're not doing too badly.