After months of careful planning and researching and seed propogating, the garden is in! Not as early as I would have liked, but still, it is in. Everything is planted. Some things are even sprouting already.
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| Good Mother Stallard pole bean sprout. I spent enough time in the garden to watch it actually open and unfurl yesterday. |
This year is something completely new for my veggie patch. I built raised beds. Nothing fancy. But, raised beds nonetheless. Next year, I hope to add a few more so that everything is planted in beds. I have four so far and plans for four more. I have wanted to do raised beds for some time, but have always been talked out of it for one reason or another.
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| There it is. Probably should have taken my dirty gloves out of the fence before I snapped the picture. |
Raised beds aren't for everybody. For myself, I know that I don't have a reliable tiller. And tilling is quite a procedure even when we have one to use. The weather has to be just right. Both of us need to be home. Seriously, the stars have to align for us to get a decent till in. Thus the desire for raised beds. This year, I just decided to go for it. Power tools and everything.
Natalie and I built the plank rectangles. Matt and our neighbor hauled in a trailer full of compost from our community pile. All the kids (ours and the neighbors) hauled in sticks and leaves from the yard. I hauled in countless wheelbarrows full of composted chicken manure/bedding. We dug and picked weeds and sifted out rocks and filled the beds.
Then the planting started. Lettuce, spinach, carrots and zucchini in the first bed. Sweet peppers and pie pumpkins in the second. Peas and broccoli in the third. Cucumbers, parsnips, and turnips in the fourth. Potatoes were carefully tucked into haystacks. In between all this, bean teepees were constructed and planted. Marigold and zinnia seeds were sprinkled into the corners and between crops. Tomatoes were the last to go in. They were planted yesterday.
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| The garden from the other corner. The green in the front corner there is my little strawberry patch. Lots of berries this year! |
During all this steady, sweaty work on the garden, I read an article about another MN woman who constructed huge raised beds with a method called Hugelkultur. I thought it sounded cool and like it would help our very heavy, clay soil. I didn't know it was a thing. Like hipster gardening. I don't want to be a hipster. I look terrible in skinny jeans. Good thing I didn't know that when I started. Anyway...
So I dug a small trench, hauled in some rotten board chunks (plain rough sawed pine leftover from a long ago project.), sticks and lots of old leaves.
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| Trench with sticks and wood scraps. |
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| Same trench from farther away to give an idea of scale. |
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| Toss some leaves on top. |
Once I had a decent sized mound, I put the excavated dirt back on top. In went my shrimpy little tomato plants. Then went on a light layer of hay. (It was what was left from my little potato beds. Time to hit up my neighbor with horses again.) Once the plants are a bit taller, I will add some more compost & manure and another layer of hay, just to make the soil thicker.
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| Shovel the dirt back on. Also make sure to pick out the unwanted green things that may start growing again. |
I pinned it all in place with about 15 tomato cages. Then applied a good amount of water mixed with fish fertilizer. I put the fish emulsion fertilizer on everything. Now my garden smells like somebody farted. I'm told that goes away.
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| The tomato mound. With our super fancy scarecrow watching over it. Ok, not really, she's actually facing the other way. |
All I can do now is cross my fingers, say my prayers and hope that these little plants have the decency to grow and be fruitful. It would be rude of them not to.
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| Sugar Pie pumpkins are coming up nicely. So far, so good. |
Every year, I think this is going to be my year. Bumper crops. Veggies coming up everywhere. This year, I really hope I'm right. Organic heirloom veggies will abound or I'm gonna die trying!
