Half my garden planted!

[HSmomto4]

We planted 1/2 our garden today! It was so pretty outside, about 75, so we went out and got our cool season plants planted. Tomorrow we will finish it. So far we have: 5 types of tomatoes (better boy, roma, sweet one hundreds, juliets, and grape cherry), green ice lettuce, collards, mustard greens, cabbage, broccoli, sweet banana peppers, lima beans and boch choa (sp?). Tomorrow we will plant our garlic, white onions, yellow onions, green beans, turnips, carrots and radishes. Then over at my parent’s house, sometime next week, we will plant potatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, squash, zucchini and corn. That will be all till May and then we will swap out the cool season crops with warm season crops.

I can't begin to tell you how much this family loves gardening :heh

[MochaMel]

Hi HSmom! :wave

That sounds great what you've done so far.. :thumb With all those veggies, do you even have to buy produce during garden season?

Mel

[HSmomto4]

Not much at all. Of course this year we are growing a lot more than normal just because of the ecconomy.

[funmudder]

Whoot!

[icebear]

lol, it will be almost another 2 months before i can even start seeds indoors up here :D
then i have to beat the woodchucks to whatever produces!

[MochaMel]

I have sadly never been SO green thumbish in the garden.. :ohno I wish i was; my Dad had a fantastic garden when i was growing up! 3 HUGE beds for all sorts of veggies and it seems i remember some fruit too, even pumpkins!:)

[icebear]

the first few tries i had with gardening i totally failed a lot of things, as i went along i learned what works and what dosen't. my dad and grandfather (my mom's dad) are great gardeners, my dad cause he puts in a lot of effort and when he finds something that works, he sticks to it. my grandfather is opposite, he constantly tried new things, tweaked and improved. i'm kind of inbetween in their philosophies. i'm not as hard a worker as my dad, but i read a lot and like innovation like my grandad. every spring is exciting, deciding what new seeds/plants to try and which old standbys to keep on with.

an example of this is that i still try to grow cantaloupe and melon. we don't have summers long and hot enough to grow good melon up here (and my little back 40 feet dosen't get enough sun in the right way), but i try a new method or new variety every year with varying success and failure. i end up with maybe 2 or 3 fist sized fruit by september and if i don't i wish i had used the melon's space for something more productive like cukes or zucchini. but we have fun taste testing the fruit we do get, its usually such a small taste that its a tease when its good, it reminds me of why i tried to grow it in the first place. it is worth that little bite- it was fun getting there. if it really fails, then i don't try that seed the next year.

last year was the first try planting sweet corn in my little 6x4 raised bed, it was a part success, i got about 30, 6 inch ears of very sweet corn, the seed cost me a couple bucks so it was not a huge yield, but it did pay for itself. Not sure if i will try corn this year or not, if i do it will be a different variety, something shorter season and something that is expected to grow larger ears..etc.

this year i am also planning to put up some trellis netting. i have always wanted to try to grow cukes and such vertically, it supposedly increases yields under the right circumstances and i like the idea of it taking a bit less room. we have slugs and snails around here so it might keep them off a little better too.

i did black plastic mulch around my tomatoes and peppers last year and it made a real difference in how much the plants produced. also kept the weeds down.


Can you tell i can't wait for spring this year? :lol2

[DebJo]

Stop bragging.:aha
DS 8yrs is going to drive me crazy for the next month till it's warm enough to begin thinking about gardening. He has been counting the days till spring since January.:ohno We love to garden also as a family. mmmm real tomatoes.:yeah Hope you all have a great time getting your fingers dirty. Thats what he made fingernails for, to get dirt under them.:lol2 God is good!

[markofthebest]

We still have snow on the ground.

I can't wait for flowers and tomoatoes and peppers from my little garden.

[icebear]

yeah, we've still got at least a foot of standing snow...at least