Monday, June 6, 2011

The Garden

Oliver and I have never tried to grow anything except flowers and tomatoes.  We have this weird courtyard area in front of our house that isn't good for anything...until you read a gardening book that lists all kinds of veggies that need full sun to grow!  Well, we now have a use for our courtyard and a few Saturdays ago I started a bunch of seed.  I am trying the square-foot gardening method and loved the book which explained how it all works.  It took me less than a day to read the whole book cover to cover!  

It has charts about when to start your seeds and how far apart to plant them, etc, etc.  After reading the book I decided I'm not going to try for master gardener this year, I'm just planting.  So I started everything, but our tomato, from seed and all on the same day.  We'll see how it goes.  

We planted cantaloupe, snap peas, tomato, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, basil, carrots, red pepper, corn and potatoes in our 4x4 garden raised garden. 
The trellis allows us to grow more stuff because the melon, tomatoes, and peas are growing upward instead of spreading all over.
Since our initial planting we have also decided to try pot gardens for zucchini, yellow squash, honey dew melon, lavender, and dill.  We refinished/rebuilt our old garden table thing and I'll post updates of that too (it did not keep the perfect color despite our staining efforts).  Then we just kept going and planted some pumpkins in back. 

This year is the experimental year to see what works and what will grow where.  We aren't about canning, bottling, preserving, feeding our whole family for the summer or anything else right now - it was just a $10 seed investment and generous friend's donation of the square foot garden.  I didn't want to start seeds indoor, stagger plant to prolong my harvest, or any of that kind of thing.  Depending on how it all goes, we'll just keep increasing our gardening skill year after year.  This year is just about getting something in the ground and seeing if it will take root!  Stay tuned for more pics!

PS Since planting two weeks ago the broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and corn have all sprouted so it might just work!

4 comments:

Evan and Holly said...

I'm so stinking super excited for you. I am also so stinking super jealous. I really want a garden but we'd have to buy the wood to build the box, buy dirt to fill the box, and then buy seeds. Plus a trellis if we bought something that grows like that. Plus I'd have to get Evan to have time to build me a box. So tell me how it goes. I am really trying to get our yard ready so that next year I can plant some things, although I wouldn't necessarily be here for a harvest.

Anonymous said...

I'm playin' the same game this year! I loved the book too and still refer to it often... hope we both get lucky and fall in love with gardening!

Candace said...

I'm so impressed! This looks great!

Ali said...

You are awesome!! I have been so overwhelmed at the thought of a garden because of how little I know. I really like what you said at the end about having your garden grow each year. I don't know why the thought didn't even cross my mind that I can take it easy and just start with the basics. Maybe just do tomatoes for now and work on the other stuff next year. :)