Sunday, June 15, 2008

Our First Veggie Garden


Shauna has been wanting to start a vegetable garden since we moved to this house in 2000. Mike finally built us a really nice 16' X 6' raised garden bed! This will be our experimenting year, as we have no clue what we are doing. I have done some internet research (my specialty!) and we are trying out square foot gardening.

We are really late in the season to be just planting, but oh well. We should have had our plants in around mid April. We only started the actual planting yesterday. Mike started the beds a few weeks ago, but it took so much dirt to fill. We ended up having to buy 92 bags of dirt and humus to fill the bed. It would have been much easier to have the dirt delivered, but our house is on a steep hill and there is no way to get the truck to the backyard. That would mean we would have to bring the dirt up in wheelbarrows, from the street. It was easier to just get the bags and bring them home a few at a time. At least I think that was easier.

If this works out, i would love to have a few more beds next year. We all LOVE strawberries (except for Alex, who doesn't love them all that much) and it would be awesome to have our own strawberry beds.

Yesterday, Shauna and I planted 13 tomato plants. This morning we planted 6 zucchini plants, 5 watermelon plants and 9 cantaloupe plants. We also planted Romaine lettuce seeds, carrot seeds and cucumber seeds. Shauna and I had planted a cherry tomato plant and bibb and leaf lettuce in some posts on the front porch two week ago. A couple of the lettuce seedlings appeared yesterday and the tomato is growing nicely, with several flowers on it already.

When we were done planting, Mike came out and put up a fence around the bed. Hopefully, this will keep the dog and other animals out. As we were raking the dirt to level it yesterday, Wrigley decided that it would be great fun to run through the bed and even lie down in the middle and refuse to get out! Shauna and I did not think it was so much fun since we had to re-rake every time he messed it up.


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