August 2024
Randy and I started gardening in the spring of 1980. Our daughter Linsey was just 4 months old. I spent my quiet times reading Organic Gardening magazine and then bought a few books and we got to work making beds to grow our plants in. I bought my seedlings then but by the second year or so I was buying the seeds and starting them myself. We still do that today. Our first big monster problem was baby groundhogs. We caught and we killed a lot of ground hogs! I have grown to hate the pests but like all animals they have a life that interconnects with other things in mother nature. We also planted a peach tree and cherry tree. When we moved to a 5 acres and built our passive and now active solar home we grew lots of fruit trees and a much larger garden. The whole family helped. Imagine being told by a 4 year old, "I do that! That's a man's job. Adam our first son wanted to do it himself. I tried to give him the short handled shovel and that was a "No". He wanted the man's shovel! You name it we grew it. Our new home had a sunroom where we easily started our seedlings and we planned out the garden and drew up a map. When the weather warmed just enough we started planting.
The magic to a great garden is preparation of the soil.
As you can see we made raised beds and built the soil up with lots of horse manure from our neighbors and also mixtures of organic soil that was left over from what we used to start our seedlings in our sunroom.
For the past 47 years we have grown 90% of our vegetables. Plus we have a raspberry patch. Fruit trees became a challenge. After our dog passed away there was nothing to keep groundhogs, squirrels and deer away from the fruit trees.
You are welcome to contact me to learn more details. It is an easy way to get kids to eat vegetables. Our youngest at 2 years old stood in the garden picking peppers and eating them like they were an apple! I wish I had taken a picture!
I love May and June. Mainly because the garden work feels so good. My hands are either in the dirt planting or weeding. Because I have Muscular Dystrophy it has become difficult to do a lot of my gardening on my own. My Randy is my right hand man of muscle! I am so happy that he loves it too. And true to all gardeners, we do not always agree. So we do argue about how close you can plant the bean seeds. He wants to be able to find the beans. At this point all is planted. Here are some pictures to enjoy.
Early Spring!
Prep of the soil:
1. Dig the beds
2. Put on a layer of manure, horse manure for me is right next door.
3. Work that into soil
4. Attach a sprayer to a garden hose and set dial to 1 TBS per gallon. Add Basic H Classic to the sprayer. Spray all of the garden beds to treat the soil.
5. Rework beds if needed before planting...a finer digging and breaking up of clumps
6. Using a hoe create your rows. Sprinkle in the rows Fertrell feed from Fedco Seed company.
7. Water row gently
8. Plant seeds about twice as deep as the size of the seed.
9. Water gently again until it starts to sink in.
10. You can plant all root crops and peas, swiss chard, kale, radishes, and spinach now and be safe.
By the middle of May it is safe to plant the tender things like tomatoes and peppers. If you live south of PA then think more like the end of April or beginning of May. Live North further then think closer to June for those tender crops.
June 14th
Fantastic Sunday morning. The flowers are beautiful and I am so pleased with all of the colors. We have started the process of thinning to eat! Yes, I hate to kill those baby seedlings but when you don't plant a little thick that sparseness always feels like your wasting space. Since we plant in beds with close rows and do not walk between those rows but stretch across the beds, everything can grow closer together. But I am afraid you still have to thin. But why not thin to eat the thinning. So we have started the process. So what do we end up eating? Beet greens, lettuces, kale and chard, all from thinning. All the gardens during these long days are beautiful. Yarrow is blooming. So I pick it in full blossom, strip the leaves, put in a vase in the house with water and slowly over time as the water disappears the yellow yarrow leaves me with beautiful dried flowers that can last all winter. We did that yesterday. I do the same with my eucalyptus plants. They are not ready yet but the yarrow is beautiful!
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