2010 Garden
My folks gardened until I was a teenager, but I don't remember much except playing in the dirt after Daddy plowed and helping pick green beans. Last year was my first garden as an adult. Being married to a farm kid, we plowed, hoed rows in our sandy, alkaline soil, and planted rows of corn, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spinach. We had a few hills of squash, one pumpkin plant, and a watermelon hill. After pulling bindweed and more bindweed all summer, we had lettuce and squash by bagsful that made our friends cringe, some corn, a couple peppers, some spinach, and 4 bushels of bloom-rotted tomatoes. This year, my farm kid honey said -- "It's your turn to plan the garden!" YIKES!
So, I started reading books and going to talks at the library. Finally I heard "less weeding" and "more nutrients" in the same sentence. I decided on 4 raised beds, 4'x4'. And yes, I wound up with a scaled diagram for each bed, showing what was planted in each and where (blame it on the day job). The weather didn't really cooperate until August, and I was pretty disappointed by then. Very little lettuce, no squash, and more grasshoppers than spines on a cactus at that point. But since then we've had a nice Indian summer, most of the tomatoes ripened beautifully, we've had a few squash, and there's still 3 pumpkins, 4 squash, 2 cucumbers, and some green tomatoes on the vine. Meanwhile I hold my breath, hoping for another few days' reprieve from a deep frost. And my arm has been twisted until I've agreed to at least TRY fried green tomatoes!
Here's some videos from back in August.
Northwest bed
Southwest bed
Southeast bed
Northeast bed
