July 26, 2011

How our Garden Began

This was in May.  Ryan and I began on our plans for our garden.  We decided on a sunny area in our yard that is out of the way.  It is bordered by a neighbor's garage, our three-seasons room, and our clothesline.  

Ryan made three raised planters out of fence pickets.  Why raised?  Well, we had heard good things about how well veggies grow in them and secondly, it grossed me out to think of the veggies on an even plane with the dogs.

Then we wondered, where do we get all the dirt? Really, who wants to pay for dirt?  Suddenly it hit us: we were planning to put in a sand box!  Out went some grass.  Now we had a bunch of free dirt.  Ryan brought home a cubic yard of compost one day and we mixed it into the sandbox.


M is preparing for a career like his father.  He was a great manager.


Into the boxes went some nice rich soil.  The kids leveled it all out and prepped it for planting.



Then my worst garden thoughts came to life.  The next morning we had dog paws in our nice garden plots.

So, now we began on an inexpensive fence that keeps the dogs out.  And since we were now fencing it off we decided we might as well dig up some of the surrounding grass area for potatoes.  You can see the fence (which rolls up) stuck into the pile of pulled up sod near where Ryan is mowing.



Please, never mind the camera strap in the pic, it was the only one I had of J helping out.

We planted corn in the north planter box with green bean seeds and cucumber plants.  This I planned out using the Three Sisters form of gardening.  I first read about it on Smockity Frocks Blog.  It is a method used quite a while back by the Indians. 

In the other two boxes there are sugar snap peas, tomato plants, baby tomato plants, many lettuce plants, carrot seeds, onions, salsa peppers, and broccoli.  We put potatoes and a couple of watermelon plants in the ground level plots.  The two buckets have two extra cucumber plants


A few weeks ago our garden looked like this:



The biggest surprise to us both is how our two baby tomato plants literally took over our planter near the yellow garage.  These beasts of plants had better give us pounds of cherry tomatoes! We have worked endlessly to try to save our onions and salsa peppers that these two weeds have tried to bury.  We'll see...

3 comments:

liltleli said...

you inspire me.

Diana said...

Good job! All of you. Let us know how it turns out!

Diana said...

Two things I just remembered from a gardening class I took - tomatoes are really a vine, this is why we stake them, to keep the fruit off of the ground. 2nd thing is that I was told (and have read) to get more fruit on tomato plants you need to pinch them back from time to time (this mean that you pinch off the new growth) this will stop it from growing the long "vine" and cause it to produce more flowers (fruit). It will also help keep it from getting to big.