Our First Garden

By now we're over the fact that the property (farm) we had been trying to buy last October fell through. The house and yard we have now is adequate for our needs, very homey, comfortable for the most part; and as we've rolled with the punches and paved a new plan for our future, it's turned out to be a perfect situation.

Of course not getting our 40 acre dream property doesn't mean we can't follow through with some of our dreams; like having a nice garden, raising some of our own food, and canning and preserving them for fall.

It almost felt like we weren't going to get around to starting our first garden this year because of lack of the proper tools, time, and weather situations.

After much anticipation we finally go the neighbor to come over and till the old garden spot that appears to have been growing over for a couple of years. When all was said and done we ended up with a 30' x 12' garden full of wonderfully dark and moist soil. We can only imagine that it's the best soil people can ask for in this day and age of stripped-down topsoil in planned communities. This stuff is quality soil.

Hopefully that means we'll have good luck with it actually producing...something.
We've never had good luck with plants of any kind, so this year is a complete experiment.

We have another spot picked out in the backyard for a 30' x 10' plot, but have to wait until at last three days with no rain before breaking new soil (says the guy with the machine we have to use to do it).

Eager to sow seed to ground we paced around the yard gripping seed packets in our hand after plotting out on paper the design of the garden. You can't just throw sees anywhere. Some things need to be plated 36" apart, some seeds need to be planted 6" apart, and every variation in between. Peas need to be in a double row a few inches apart, and then the consecutive pair of rows need to be even further apart. It's not as simplistic as you'd think.

So after hours of measuring, and James digging and more measuring, we got our very first garden planted.

It doesn't look like much now but from closest (the west side of the garden) to the farthest today we planted:

GARDEN ONE

• 4 plots Spaghetti Squash
• 4 plots Acorn Squash
• 4 plots Green Zucchini
• 4 plots Yellow Zucchini
• 5 hills of Potatoes (1 of something random from the grocery store that went to seed, and 4 hills Red Potatoes from mom that sat in the basement for see)
• 2 double rows of Sugar Snap Peas
• 2 - 1/3rd row Garden Blend Lettuce
• 1 - 1/3rd row Salad Spinach
• 2 - 2/3rd rows of Searlet Nantes Long Carrots
• 1 - 1/3rd row of Short and Sweet Carrots
• 1 - 2/3rd row of Spanish Sweet Onions
• 1 - 2/3rd row of Evergreen Long Green Onions

and then we transplanted 4 tomato plants we bought a couple of weeks ago

• 2 Big Boy Tomato Plants
• 1 Cherry Tomato Plant
• 1 Grape Tomato Plant

Hopefully later this week garden two will go in so we can plant some of the rest of the seeds (and buy a few more plants, and more seeds, because we realized that we didn't start some of the ones are supposed to be transplanted, like the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants.

At least we'll know for next year.