...and they're off!!!!

Look everyone! It hasn't even been a week and the plants have burst forth in wild abandon! This is too, too, too exciting for words!

The small leaves are arugula plants and the large one is a "walk-on" pumpkin from last years Halloween decorations. That compost is some wild stuff! Just for the record, these are inside the cold frame. However, they were planted at the same time as the remainder of the garden and the cold frame has had less water. But here it is!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Memorial Day

Man o'man....the crops are planted. It took us two days, but they are in. I am very happy with the result, but tired. Last night I dreamed that I was planting! Humorously, my bedroom overlooks the gardens and I am convinced that I could hear the plants growing! Now all I need is some rain!

The pictures that I uploaded are of the plantings, but I thought it would be nice to list out what we planted. You will notice the lines of cord going North/South. These are the individual rows of seeds.

So what did we plant? Here it is:

• Front Garden
• 52 Tomato Plants
• 12 Broccoli Plants
• 8 Cauliflower Plants
• 4 Eggplants
• 3 Zucchini Plants
• 1 Summer Squash
• 8 Green Cabbage
• 4 Red Cabbage
• 5 Hills of Cucumbers
• 3 Lines of Lima Beans
• 2 Lines of Wax Beans
• 1 Line of Peas
• 1 Line of Beets
• 1 Line of Spinach
• 2 Lines of Edamame
• 2 Teepee's of Sugar Snap Peas
• 1 Line of Cilantro and Dill
• 1 Line of Cosmos
• 1 Line of Bachelor Buttons
• 1 Line of Poppies

Is that enough? Ha...just wait!

• Back Garden
• 30 Feet of Green Pole Beans
• 24 Green Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 4 Yellow Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 8 Red Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 8 Purple Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 15 Feet of Onions
• 4 Hills of Gourds (assorted and bird house)

And if that still isn't enough...

• Cold Frames
• Lettuce (salad mix)
• Carrots
• Arugula
  
  

The front garden hasn't been mulched yet, but you can see that the back garden has been covered with straw. I use straw because it decomposes and doesn't let weeds grow. On the garden paths I lay the straw very thick (about 3 inches) and over the plants I lightly shake the straw to cover the ground. I have found, in times past, that the straw keeps in moisture and keeps the sun from baking the clay ground into pottery!

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Every Fall I "acquire" bales of straw from family members that used the straw as Halloween displays for their pumpkins, scarecrows, etc. This year I stored 6 bales in my barn for use this summer. This one simple step saved me $$ and no doubt made an excellent home for several small creatures. I am a big proponent of Organic gardening (some modifications....I am not a total purist!) and the straw comes in handy for helping to save resources.

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When Alex tilled the front garden, I had him extend the perimeter past the fence so that I could plant flowers and herbs for cooking. This is a fortuitous action, because of a lack of proper planning, I ran out of room inside the garden. I also put in a garden bench and I plan on mulching this area with traditional bark mulch for aesthetic reasons as well as weed control.

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As you can see in the picture, my lack of planning caused me to run out of room inside the garden so I needed to plant the cucumbers on the outside of the fence. Let's just hope that rabbits don't like cucumbers!

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The last thing that I need to do before declaring this garden "finished" is to build the garden gate for the front garden. At the moment I have it completely ghetto rigged with an old piece of

plywood, a small piece of fence, a 2x2 post to hold it together and set on top of old lumber. This looks awful and requires the use of a power screw driver to gain entrance into the garden. I am not going to show a pic of this because it is so embarrassing. However, when I finish building the permanent gate, I may slip in a small pic to show the before and after. Let me tell you....no matter what the new gate looks like, it can't look anywhere near as bad as what's there now!

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Now its time to sit back and listen to the garden grow!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Major Expansion (an act...not a person!)

This year I decided to expand (the garden...not my butt/gut, that just happened without consultation! LOL)

Mom & Dad were very quiet about the subject because that meant that they would be helping with my new undertaking (parents aren't always given choices). But they were all for it when I reminded them of all the wonderful produce that we 'produced' last year. The small back garden was unexpandable, so some preparations to a new area were necessary before I could "dig in." The front of my barn had a large enough area, but the ginormous pine tree with its deadly tentacles (I mean roots!) needed to go! The fence that Gram had was rotten, so it needed to go, and the plants were in desperate need of therapy and a new home. Picture 1 shows the before situation.


I then had Alex use the tractor driven rototiller to break up the soil and treasure hunt for pine tree roots! It is amazing how quickly the tiller can find pine tree roots the size of my leg! But the power of the tiller was so great that it made match sticks out of the roots with little problem. Dad had a friend come over and drill the post holes for the fence posts (13 post holes in 40 mins). Let me tell you...that was amazing! If I had a place to store a tractor like that...you better believe that I would have one!


Eric came over and helped Dad and I put the fence up last week. Eric is 12 and is very much a gardener. He is helping me with the gardening this year while he works on his gardening merit badge for Boy Scouts. It is a shame that there isn't a house cleaning merit badge or else I would certainly be helping him (read: watching him) earn that one in my house! LOL

Because the rabbits are a major force in my little, but magnificent, Garden of Earthly Delight, Dad and I added footer boards to discourage digging. We also added header boards to keep the fence from sagging. All that is left to do is build the gate and plant the crops.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day and that is traditionally the day that Grandpa always planted his gardens. As a big proponent of tradition and the idea that "pretty much anything that Gramps did is good enough for me!", I will be out there in the fields after the Memorial Day Parade tomorrow. I am resting up my green thumb tonight, because tomorrow it will be working its magic.

BTW - In case anyone thinks that I am exaggerating about the killer rabbits, check out pic 4. I circled the two culprits that are laying, sneakily in wait for my tender, fragile plants to be left untended, unguarded, and unmolested......these rabbits are ~EVIL~!!!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Beginning with Last Year

Last year I asked for a plot of earth large enough to create a vegetable garden. The result was a beautiful spot that took on the characteristics of the majestic hanging gardens of Babylon (or at the very least the vegetable patch on the lower back 40 of the hanging gardens of Babylon.) The endeavor started out as a place to plant a few tomatoes and some basil. Well....never one to do anything half-way, I decided not to battle the hordes of rabbits that were waiting patiently to gobble up my fresh planted produce and fence in the plot. But, the plot of land was sloping and the soil was poor, so I had to make improvements. (Notice that for a few stinky vegetables I am practically going into the poor house trying to make them grow!)

SO, I fixed the slope, fenced it in, improved the soil and planted my crops (mom & dad helped!) Here is the result:
The area is 20'x16'. You can see the pole beans climbing up the fence to the right. The green peppers in the foreground and the tomatoes toward the rear. We decided to do everything organic and so the result was a bit more work....but, so worth it! I think we ended up with about 40 quarts of green beans just from a 20' row of pole beans. The cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, acorn squash, and banana peppers are not visible.

In addition to the garden is a cold frame built of of my bedroom windows (I had all the windows in the house replaced and these were a great size for a cold frame!!) The cold frames held the lettuce, spring onions, and spinach. I also, decided to plant a few flowers and I ended up with a nice vase of zinnias and I absolutely fell in love with cosmos!

My friend Renee loaned me her composter and all of the materials from the garden and the kitchen go into that giant green rotating barrel. It is truly a miracle worker! You will also notice that Dad took the time to cut some small branches, strip them of leaves, and create a bent-twig fence to hold back the beans. It also kept the straw from the path from crowding out the plants.

I think that the only big problem was Japanese Beetles!! Yikes!! I found an old book with natural remedies. Sometime soon I will tell you all about that adventure! Ug!

In the bottom of the second picture you can just see the garlic bed under construction. A friend of mine from church assured me that I could grow garlic with no problems. Plant it in November....pick it in July! I am going to dedicate a post to that in the near future! The results so far are extraordinary!!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan