Garden News

It's time for an update on the garden, and a picture or two.

I'm SOOOO excited about my garden this year. As you may recall, I've already commented on how BAD my garden did last year. This weekend, we were at a friend's house for an impromptu cookout, and I found out that EVERYONE'S tomatoes and peppers did poorley in our neighborhood, but HOT PEPPERS rocked.

Last year, my sweet father-in-law and my overly-enthusiastic son planted our veggie plants in our garden strip before we had a chance to correct the soil. I suspect some of the clay choked nutrients out of the tender plants and that may be why they failed. It was our first garden, and we learned quite a bit.

THIS year, my wonderful, awesome husband built me a raised garden bed. It is a vision of beauty. And over the last month, we've filled it with a nice soil mixed with leaf compost, added some soil corrector (peat moss and manure), and finally -- planted, planted, planted. Then, I covered the tender plants with beautiful mulch to protect them from the sun and retain moisture. This weekend, we'll be putting up bunny-corrective measures.

I was NOT going to invest so much money into a garden only to have it fail again! You can bet that I'm praying over that garden. In fact, with each plant I put in the ground, I said a little prayer over it, asking God to bless this plant and have it provide abundantly for our little family.

Hunter got into the act, too. He prayed over the whole garden: "Jesus bless garden. Provide food. Amen." How sweet is that?

So, here is what I planted in my cold weather garden so far: 7 loose leaf lettuce plants (we originally planted 8 but lost one to a rabbit); 6 head lettuce plants; 4 arugula plants; 6 broccoli plants; 1 Greek basil plant; 2 sweet basil plants; 2 flat leaf parsley plants; 1 dill plant; 1 rosemary plant. We will build one more raised bed to plant 'hot weather' veggies this weekend.

I have NO idea how much produce that will churn out, but it sounds like a lot!!! We threw in the herbs for good measure. Next year, I may add a third bed and plant even more lettuce.

Next, we'll plant hot peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and summer (heat-tolerant) lettuce. Then, in August, we'll clean out the cold-weather bed (except for the herbs) and we will plant more winter lettuce, mesclun mix, more lettuce, large-leaf sorrel (looks like spinach but has a sharp citrus flavor -- very yummy!), and brussels sprouts. Most if not all by seed. I hope to have sproutlings by early September (not sure), and harvest by mid to late September to October through the mild part of winter. How exciting!!!

The only disappointing thing... we did NOT ... AGAIN ... plant strawberries this year. And I am SOOO pouting about that. Can you tell? See? I'm pouting big time!