Tuesday, April 10, 2012

April garden update

I wanted to share something exciting. I now have a 25'x25' inground garden!! This is in addition to the raised beds that I already have. This is such a blessing. My Brother-in-law owns the house next to ours and since no one ever uses the huge side yard next to it, he is allowing us to put a garden there.

As soon as Eric told me he said yes, that we could dig the garden, wheels started turning in my head. I knew we had to till the yard, and Eric wasn't thrilled that he would have to do it, so I went to Craigslist and I found a local fire fighter that had an ad that said he tills with his big tractor, so I contacted him. He came the next day and it literally took him 10 minutes to go over the area 5 times to get the dirt nice and light! AND it cost less than us renting a tiller.

An hour later I had the garden plotted/roped off and it is now ready to be fenced (to keep those dang squirrels away!) and planted.

I knew almost immediately what I wanted to plant there, were the things that did not grow well in my raised beds last year, since we have limited sun around our house. I will be planting organic Silver Queen corn, organic Delectable bi-color corn, DiCicco broccoli, Roma tomatoes, Black zucchini, and sunflowers. Thank God that more Roma tomatoes came up in my growing room than I had originally anticipated, so all I had to start this week was the broccoli and the zucchini. Also a few weeks ago on Facebook, the Frugal Farmers page posted a few helpful hints on planting corn, such as taping your shoe so you know how far to plant each seed and also use a 5' PVC pipe to put the seed down, so you don't have to keep bending over. There is a wealth of information out there and I feel so blessed to learn something new almost everyday.

On my garden graph there is still a 4'x20' space that I want to plant new and interesting things in. I am thinking I am going to go to the Simon Organic Farm Plant Sale in a month and hopefully get Copenhagen Market cabbage, Prize Choi bok choi, Butternut Brown Cotton, Sungold cherry tomato, and Jubilee tomato to grow.

On a side note, I have also listed on Craigslist that the trees on that piece of property need to be taken down. If someone wants to take them down, they get all the wood. I have already had 1 person contact me, so hopefully, they take all the trees, because I would like to start a few fruit trees, so we can be that much closer to not have to rely on food provided by the grocery stores. I have already selected what I would like to grow. These are all dwarf sized so I can have many varieties in the space we have. Harglow Apricot, Redhaven Peach, Empire Apple, Pink Lady Apple, Gala Apple, Bartlett Pear, and Moonglow Pear.  Eventually I'd like to have a variety of grapes, gooseberries, roses and blueberries also, but that will be a few years from now.

Phew! I think I have my work cut out for me this summer. What do you think?

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