Garden Dreams

February is right around the corner and although I'm not sure when winter will show up I'm starting to dream of spring and planting our garden.  Last year was our first year and of course we had a big garden with lots of stuff.  Being our first year we had lots to learn and man was the learning curve harsh.  We didn't get enough of anything to put up but we did enjoy what veggies we got.

Last year:

When we were planning last year we knew we wanted to try as much as we could just to see what would grow and what we actually would eat. We planted partial rows of corn, summer squash, spaghetti squash, lettuce, beets, spinach, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes, peas, peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon.  We went on vacation so we didn't have time to start any of the seeds in doors, so everything went in the ground in seed form.  All we did to prep the area was lay down a cover of leaves the fall before and then in the spring we tilled them in.  Other than that we wanted to keep the soil as pure as possible so we knew what exactly we were dealing with.  We learned that while it was great for some things, we didn't do so well with our corn, melons beets and tomatoes.  Over all we did well for our first year and learned a lot.

This year:

This year we plan to extend the garden so we can have a bigger harvest and actually be able to put up some veggies!  We want to do a mixture of raised beds and container planting this year to see if we can increase our yields.  We are afraid our soil isn't good for tomatoes so we want to use potting soil and get the out of the ground.  We also want to make sure we have enough room so we want to trellis as much as we can this year.  We also learned that we need to be more diligent about the consistency of our soil.  We have a lot of clay around here and just the one till didn't do a very good job, so this year we need to make sure we till more than once and really pick through the soil for rocks and twigs.  Last year we planted and watered and that was it for the first month or so.  This year we plan on using more fertilizer.  We composted all summer and plan on using that to fertilize the soil.  We also plan on using a water in fertilizer as soon as the plants mature, we realized that as good as our soil is it can be much better. 

The biggest thing we did learned last year is that when we have a garden leaving for more than a weekend is a no no!  This year we are going to be around from start to finish and we are going to hope for a bigger and better garden!  Please stay tune and I'll share our journey as we walk it!