Discouraged

I am seriously rethinking this Square Foot Gardening thing.

I'm a fan of the box, and the method seems to make sense. But I can't deal with this mix! The MIX is far and away the biggest pain in the rear associated with this thing. There must be an easier way, right? Some sort of mixer thingie I can rent from Home Depot? Similar to a cement mixer?

Today alone I spent TWO HOURS trying to mix up the goods. What I have to show for it are a sore back, dirty feet, out of supplies, and only got about a third of the box filled.

Planted....but I have to do something to hold that dirt in right away.

Oof! There is really SO much more I could have been doing with two hours in the garden this morning. Not to mention inside the house!

So - how important IS the mix? I'm really thinking I'll just fill the rest of the box with plain old-fashioned DIRT. It's not the expense of the stuff - it's the work involved. If it took me two hours to get a third of the box ready, it will take me four to finish, according to my admittedly lacking math skills!

In other news of the day - check out these herbs I had just planted in the herb garden.

Sage

Parsley

The thyme I planted at the same time is doing fine, the basil is not growing much but it's not dead (it's already flowering, which seems to me a bad sign for such a small plant and this early. But it's not dead.). I have no idea what's wrong with them. I put another parsley in the waterfall bed for caterpillars to munch - it is growing tall and bright green. Another I put in a pot - all bought and planted on the same day, by the way - it's doing fine as well. The rest of the herb garden looks great, but is all stuff from last year.

It's very discouraging at the moment. I have too many big jobs on the plate at once, all of which have to be at least worked on now, if not finished. It's overwhelming enough that it takes all the pleasure out of it. :(