My Forray into Gardening   Last Year. Trying out Square Foot Gardening I bought my first house in the West Island of Montreal in mid-May 2006. Come June, we were still renovating. Since I didn't have a lot of time to amend the soil, which is really heavy clay, I bought plants from the nursery and decided to try raised beds the sqft way: In the above box I have tomatoes, bell peppers, basil, marigolds, mint, lemon thyme and some bok choi. While I managed to fit a lot in, I am going to go to regular deeper raised beds this year as I want to grow a lot more tomatoes. I have a decent amount of space available and think I can make better use of it.   Feb 20, 2007. Garden Poll. After the excitement of going through the seed catalogs, trying to decide what I wanted to plant I went a little stir-crazy. Early Feb I started creating a website to help newbie gardeners like me choose what varieties of fruits and vegetables to grow. I had meant to do this last fall but never got around to it. People can go rate varieties, creating a list of favorites that most people like the taste of or like growing. Put my site online today.   Garden Poll   Feb 8, 2007. Starting Out. Only my second year gardening and I decided I needed to start growing from seed. I planted herbs and mix lettuce in two windowsill boxes and started some ornamental grass and geraniums. My living room, which is the only room that gets good sun all day, is already starting to look like a mess. Since I have bought 30-40 packets of seed already, I know this isn't going to work! My puppies are showing way to much interest in the seedlings. They've already destroyed almost everything in my yard. I hope they grow out of this before the tomatoes come around. Rufus and Penny (non seed-related but I couldn't resist - they're way cuter than any seed I've seen :-) )   Feb 28, 2007. Building Shelves. I looked for a good shelving system at several stores but the problem was that I wanted to use cheap 4' fluorescent work lights and all the available shelving comes in 3' widths. Finally, I decided that the easiest thing to do was just build shelves - this thing didn't need to look pretty, it was going to sit in the basement. I went and picked up the necessary wood and then got impatient while my boy friend was at work and decided to build it for myself! Okay, so it's nothing great to look at but it was my first time I built anything at all (not to mention that the mitre saw makes me nervous as I'm very clumsy). It was kind of hard without anyone there to hold the wood in place and with Penny trying to sit on my legs every time I knelt down! Here are the results:     The shelves are 4' wide and 2' deep so that they can take 4 trays long-ways or side-ways. It took me two evenings to do the project. I have 4 double shop lights installed over 2 shelves right now and will probably install another 2 before spring. The lights are on chains so I have one higher than the other for my tall pots. Right now one shelf contains an assortment of stuff but this morning I put two more trays over my fridge to germinate: Leeks, Tom Thumb Lettuce, Petunias, Oriental Poppies, Shasta Daisies and Impatients. I will have to start using the 2nd shelf with the lights soon. The cost of the shelves: 6 2"x3"x8' - $11.28 (for leg poles and side 2' shelf arms) 8 1"x4"x4' /4 packs  - $24.84 (wood slats) Total: $36.12 +screws,  for a 2'x4'x6' shelf. The lights were $18.49 each and included all hardware (chains, s-hooks, ceiling hooks) = $73.96+$10.60 (8 plain cool white tubes) = $84.56 for the lighting. In total the project cost me $120.68+tax,  plus the screws and a power bar that I already had. I also used two sheets of emergency blankets from Walmart for reflection (not fully attached in the pictures) at $2.88 each. All prices are in Canadian - it should be much cheaper in the US.   March 03, 2007. Some Results. Tom Thumb germinated. All my plants under the lights are looking a lot perkier and the lettuce mix looks like it's almost grown an inch! Planted some bok choi in a container as well.   March 06, 2007. Hot Peppers. Someone from the US very kindly sent me some hot pepper seeds to try out: Cili Merah (Malaysian), Congo Trinidad, Thai Giant, Thai Mound and Surajmukhi (Indian). I just planted them and moved all my peppers over the hot water tank...over the fridge wasn't warm enough. I also added a timer on my lights after leaving them on overnight twice already. They go on at 8 AM and shut down at midnight.   March 08, 2007. My Tomato Addiction. I've gone bit crazy about tomatoes! I don't know where I'm going to plant all of these. I started with just 4 with the thought of adding one cherry: 1. First Lady Hybrid 2. Big Beef Hybrid 3. Classica Paste Hybrid 4. Tiny Tim (to give away) And now, after spending a few 100 hours on GW Tomato forum: 5. Aunt Gertie's Gold 6. Black Cherry 7. Bradywine 8. Cherokee Green 9. Cherokee Purple 10. Galina's 11. Jaune Flammee 12. Kellogg's Breakfast 13. Lime Green Salad 14. Sungold Someone please stop me!   On the bright side, my bell peppers finally germinated and I moved them under the lights with the flower seedlings.     Garden Poll - my Jan/Feb project!