I have long loved gardening, but we let our garden go to weeds about 4-5 years ago because it was just in the not as important category while all of our energy went to growing children. This year I felt that I had the energy to maintain a vegetable garden again, and I am so glad!
I neglected to take a "before" picture, which is too bad because this would look much more impressive if you knew what we were starting with, but imagine the entire 14' by 14' plot covered in weeds that went to my knees or higher, while a little 18" chicken wire fence around the perimeter was all broken and trampled down.
We rented a roto tiller and broke up the soil really good. Then we began the hard shovel work. Pulling weeds, turning over the soil, amending it, "stirring" it....all had to happen before we could plant. We also dug holes for these green metal posts and put in a new 4' tall fence around the whole perimeter so we could better protect our lovely garden from animals. We ultimately planted corn, zucchini squash, yellow squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuce, and green beans.
So after weeks of intermittent work, here is my garden:
We planted both seeds and little starters. The children wanted to try sweet corn this year, so we have a little corn section that grew from seeds! The corn plants are thriving. It's almost like we can see them grow before our eyes.
I made signs for the garden from our surplus of red bricks (wrote on them with permanent marker).
The yellow squash plant grew so fast it covered its sign!
Here is "tomato row" in the back.
One of our three pepper plants.
Our watermelon plant is growing slowly but hanging in there!
Look at our cute little lettuce plants! They and the onions were the last things to get planted from seeds just a couple weeks ago, so they will take a while to mature.
Right by our back door is our little herb garden, with basil, rosemary, oregano, and parsley.
And today..... (drum roll please)..... was our very first harvest of one yellow squash!
"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt." ~ John Muir
2 comments:
WELL DONE! amazing transformation. so much spiritual application in gardening isn't there? i'm happy you have this "therapy" for such a time as this.
Looks awesome! I had hoped to plant our small garden again this year. We let it go last year, and I had intended to rent a tiller and make a go of it this year. But someone didn't listen to me when I told him that and he threw wild flower seeds all over the raised beds. Hoping for next year.
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