Trying it again (blogging that is)

Another gardening season is rapidly approaching. My attempt at blogging about it last year obviously failed miserably. Due to weather, schedule, having to dig out by hand a new garden plot from the lawn, my own inactions, etc., the garden didn't really get put in until quite late last year. I ended up busting my hand-me-down, decades-old rototiller and resorted to hand digging out the various garden plots. Though the garden got in later than I anticipated and not quite as large as I originally wanted, we still ended up with quite a bountiful harvest. I think my favorite harvest story was from mid-September when we harvested just over 65 pounds of tomatoes and then spent three days milling them, making marinara sauce and then freezing the sauce in single-meal-sized plastic tubs. We still have 5 or 6 tubs of marinara and one ice cube tray full of pesto left in our freezer.

Things that worked: tomatoes, hot peppers, potatoes, basil, pumpkins, one head of cabbage, lettuce, mustard greens, bush beans, popcorn, lots of sunflowers and many other flowers.

Things that didn't work: beets, the rest of the cabbage, carrots, some winter squashes and pretty much all that I tried to start from seed indoors.

My problem with the seeds starting indoors (including the cabbage) was mainly not having the garden plots ready until it was way too late for those seeds. I think I just got a bad batch of carrot seeds and beet seeds. With those I made the mistake of not using Seeds of Change seeds. The winter squash baffled me. All three hills sprouted and then just quit growing. I think it may have to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of the soil in that back corner. I'm going to go back to growing potatoes in that plot this year and try the squash in a different part of the yard.

April & I perused the Seeds of Change catalog a few weeks ago and decided on a pretty ambitious garden this year. I should be able to get stuff into the ground much earlier this year, at least in the plots that I used last year because I prepped most of them with a mixed cover crop. I will expand the area of garden plots too this year. Less lawn, more food and flowers.

This year we are expanding to include sweet peppers, pole beans, tall sweet corn instead of popcorn, winter squash (hopefully it will work this time), way more potatoes and dry soup beans.

If the weather is anywhere close to okay this weekend, I'm planning to start turning some of those plots in anticipation of getting peas, beans and greens into the ground within a couple of weeks. Oh, and from the picture in previous you can see that we acquired some chickens in the last year. I have them in a movable coop and expect that their "fertilizing" of the yard will help the garden on top of the benefit that we are already getting an egg a day from each of the three of them.