My Garden

I know some of you already know about my garden, so just skip this post if you do :). For those who don't, here's the story. I am by no means a "green" "organic" person. I've wanted a garden for a long time...I guess just b/c I like the idea of growing my own food and I figured it would save a fairly good amount of money since my husband (and the rest of us, but he eats more than we do) likes to eat a lot of veggies. And maybe I just have fond memories of Grandma's garden and eating the yummy food she got from it. Anyway, I asked her and my aunt (who also has a great garden and makes amazing pickles) about it, what it would take, how big it should be, when I should plant, what I should plant, etc etc etc. My garden is about 16' x 8'. That seemed HUGE when I started, now I wish it was bigger! Our yard slopes down, since it floods. So we had to build a "box" for it so it would be on level ground, which meant we had to get a lot of dirt to fill it up. We got some fill dirt from a friend and then used about 10 40lb. bags of garden soil to top it off. We also put chicken wire about 2' up around it to keep rabbits out. We also found that birds like to eat carrots and strawberries. So we put a little chicken wire netting over the strawberries (haven't decided what to do w/ the carrots yet). I also found out not too long ago that if you want your peas to grow very well, they have to have a lattice to grow up on. So I just got that built today. Late April is the best time to plant here. Basically, it's whenever the danger for frost is gone. Although, some vegetables (lettuce, I know for sure) have to be planted later in July. If you can buy the plant instead of seeds, do it. That means you'll get produce quicker. I planted broccoli, peas, peppers (should have been plant, but I forgot), carrots, green onions, green beans, red onions (bulbs), strawberries (plants), cucumber (plant), zucchini (plant), and tomatoes (plants, one Roma, one regular). Some of the packages of seeds said you could start them inside several weeks before you planted them, but of course I didn't plan ahead, so I just planted them outside. I got everything in the ground in mid-May and it was about 2-3 weeks later that we got our first strawberries (there were minuscule!). This week we've gotten a Roma tomato, strawberries, and beans. The peas won't be much longer before some will be ready to pick. The cucumber and tomato plants have taken off and are HUGE. The zucchini isn't far behind. So I wish I had more space for them. And I wish I had more room for the strawberries. Cucumbers and strawberries are planted up on little hills, so I probably should have made more room than I did for them. Oh well! Anyway, that's enough about all that :) My mom never had a garden (she kind of has a black thumb, eh Mom?!), so it's not like I grew up gardening. It's really not too difficult. I water it every day that it doesn't rain, but I've got a sprinkler that reaches all of it w/out having to be moved and I usually only water it for about 15min. Now that I need to check for picking every day or two, it's easier to keep up on the weeds. The only thing that hasn't grown is the broccoli. Not sure why that is.

This is the garden before anything was planted (or the chicken wire put up)

This is early June, about a month after I'd planted everything.

This is today :)

Here you can see just a bit of the red onions (bottom), the strawberries, cucumber (back), zucchini (front) and the 2 gigantic tomato plants (which kind of look like one--not sure why I didn't plant them farther apart...)

Here are the red onions (going from the bottom of pic to top), green beans, green onions, the few carrots remaining, the 2 pepper plants sprouted, and the peas (right in front of Anna). The broccoli is planted on the other side of the peas, but nothing has grown.