We spent Labor Day hanging out at the house and then in the afternoon we went over to Guitar Center for Paul and Home Depot for me. I was looking for 8 ft cedar trellis wood. It’s almost like yardsticks in thickness and width, only that it comes 8 ft long. I had them cut 3 sticks in half for me so we could get them in the car. Also got some six new marigolds. Julia gave one to our neighbor. Also got a yellow pear tomato, and some rosemary.
When we got home, I started doing the weedeating around the fence and Paul took care of the mowing. Julia ran behind Daddy who likes to cut crazy swirling paths first before he gets to mowing for real. Then Julia can run around on the paths while we do the yard work.
Julia and I shared popsicles when I was done. Next I weeded the lower half of my 4×8 Link-a-bord bed. It had some grass in it but it didn’t take long to clear up. The other side has grass but I covered with with trash bags and weighted it down with scrap lumber. I want it to die off and be composting under their until cool season.
A few weeks ago Carla and I went to the “Fall Vegetable Gardening” class given by the county extension office. We learned that you get 3 growing seasons in Florida. Warm 1 in fall, then Cool 1 in winter, then Warm 2 in Spring. Then summer is no good for home gardening so you may as well solarize your beds.
Julia and I already learned that on our own this summer with the giant tomato that grew like crazy but never set fruit because of the hot night temps causing blossom drop.
Paul cut slots into my cedar sticks at about every foot so when you fit the slots together, you get a grid marking off our squares.
I didn’t want to use dowels with string to mark squares because my toddler will be tempted to pull them up and it could be a strangulation hazard with a kid that young. Why risk it? I also did not want to screw wood together and leave sharp points sticking down that could hurt her if she got nosy. So slots it is — we’ll see how they work out. The worst that happens is she pulls some off.
After Paul got the grid on, Julia helped me stick in 33″ tomato cages for supporting the pepper plants. Our seedlings are looking a little sad, but I have seeds saved up from organic peppers so if they fail we have back up!
I had to cut back our original plan to this 4×4 space because I was worried about falling behind again.
Here is how it looks planted:
I think Julia had a good time helping out.
(October 19, 2007: We entered the photo above in the Fall 2007 www.kidsgardening.com contest. Julia won 2nd place in the “home” category! 
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