Good morning friends. I apologize for not posting a Weekly Wrap-up this week as well as not posting yesterday or last Friday. I am still in the process of adjusting to school being over for the semester as well as the holiday. but, I promise, I am back!
This year I though I was going to be able to plant some of my plants in the ground for my summer garden, instead of just the containers. That school of thought has failed miserably once I started looking at the soil and tried planting a few things. There is no topsoil layer, lots and lots of sand and then a nice layer of obnoxious . clay underneath. I started putting a few of the corn starters in the ground and watered them. I did one row, and moved on to the next- thinking everything was going pretty well. I took a break to eat and when I returned, there was a hardened layer of clay over the top. Needless to say, I transplanted them into the two watering troughs I have available.
Now that I had discovered that I could not plant things in the ground, I was going to have to find an alternative option for planting. I searched high and low for inspiration, feeling defeated when I couldn't come up with anything. I was going to have to go buy more containers to plant in. After talking to my grandmother, she mentioned the bathtubs we had down in the barn. She said they were available since we currently have no livestock using them as watering troughs. I was on a mission. I moved one of them myself- needless to say, I have asked my dad and brother to help with the other two. I also laid claim to a deeper water trough in which to plant the melons so they can root deeper in hopes that they will produce more fruit.
I also expanded my herb garden this time around. I have been doing quite a bit of research into the health benefits of herbs as well as cooking more with fresh herbs. I am also just enjoying their wonderful aroma. Once I have compiled some more research and tested some of the combinations out, I will put up a post about it.
I suppose that is it for now. I will be back with another post tomorrow. I will also have wome more pictures soon!
Love Always,
Rebecca
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Saturday, May 18, 2013
{Farm} Letters from the Garden V1, #2
Good morning friends.
Today I wanted to share some pictures of the garden. Its coming along nicely. I can't wait to see what it looks like after today, since my mom and I are going to the seedling sale at the Co-Op. Tomorrow I will post my weekly wrap up and share what I got to plant.
Hope you enjoy. There will be more pictures up as time progresses and things come along.
Love Always,
Rebecca
Today I wanted to share some pictures of the garden. Its coming along nicely. I can't wait to see what it looks like after today, since my mom and I are going to the seedling sale at the Co-Op. Tomorrow I will post my weekly wrap up and share what I got to plant.
Containers finally being added and organized
Hope you enjoy. There will be more pictures up as time progresses and things come along.
Love Always,
Rebecca
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
{Farm} Letters from the Garden V1, #1
Good morning everyone! Today is a wonderful day- its finally warming up! The temperatures have been increasing not only during the day but at night as well. That means that its time to really get going on the garden.Wahoo! I want to keep up with a series of blog posts to keep not only ones self updated on the progress of my garden, but I feel as if you might enjoy it as well.{Letters From the Garden} will mainly consist of weekly round ups of my garden journal, my layout, photos of the progress, and other tid-bits that are involved with the garden.
Ok, so for a little bit of background in terms of what I have previously done. Last summer the inspiration hit to try my hand at gardening. Not just the "weeding the flowerbed" variety, but full on gardening. At the time, we didn't really have a concrete plan as to how the garden was going to go. My grandmother had a handful of large and small pots as well as several watering troughs that were no longer being used. So we decided to a container garden in our back yard.We arranged the pots around our back patio, creating a nice little border around the edge. we had about 12 or13 pots produced quite a few veggies which we enjoyed through out the summer. It also added a nice bit of green to our back yard.
This year I decided to continue with the containers and integrate some of the plants into the ground as well. Due to the increase in population at our house (our two border collies) we have decided to move it outside the fenced in area that is our back yard. We discovered fairly quickly that Linus enjoys dirt, which translated into digging up the dirt in the plantless containers. He especially like the troughs as they are big enough to fit the whole dog and still have room. I decided I didn't trust him not to dig up the pots when they had pants in them. My grandmother and I debated back and forth for about a week, trying to make a decision about where we wanted to put every thing. We didn't have enough pots still in good shape that would fit all the plants we wanted to do. We also found that there are certain plants the need to trellis and ones that can't go deep enough with their roots in a pot. With that said, we knew we wanted to put the garden somewhere where we could put plants in the ground as well as in the pots.
We thought we had it figured out until we remembered on small glitch- the bunnies. They never really bothered the plants in the yard because very few of them even come in. Also, the fact that the plants were up off the ground didn't seem to be an adventure they wanted to participate in. With that notion now in our heads, we began coming up with more ways to do it. We had everything from cinderblock raised beds to digging holes and creating a temporary fence around our garden to keep them out... One day my grandmother pointed out the dog run down by the barn. The light went on- not only was there enough space to put containers and put things in the ground, but it was also fenced off with wire that had smaller gaps, so the bunnies couldn't get in. After that, it was settled. The dog run would now become the garden.
Its going to be a great place to put it. I am also trying to rig a covering of some sort to that there is a bit more shade, since there really aren't any trees or sources of shade. My thought is to purchase a large mesh of some sort- similar to what they use for the military- to cover the area.
Its on my list for out trip to Reno on Saturday.
Hopefully I will be able to get a few pictures of the start of our garden posted for you to see. Until then, have a great day!
Love Always,
Rebecca
Ok, so for a little bit of background in terms of what I have previously done. Last summer the inspiration hit to try my hand at gardening. Not just the "weeding the flowerbed" variety, but full on gardening. At the time, we didn't really have a concrete plan as to how the garden was going to go. My grandmother had a handful of large and small pots as well as several watering troughs that were no longer being used. So we decided to a container garden in our back yard.We arranged the pots around our back patio, creating a nice little border around the edge. we had about 12 or13 pots produced quite a few veggies which we enjoyed through out the summer. It also added a nice bit of green to our back yard.
This year I decided to continue with the containers and integrate some of the plants into the ground as well. Due to the increase in population at our house (our two border collies) we have decided to move it outside the fenced in area that is our back yard. We discovered fairly quickly that Linus enjoys dirt, which translated into digging up the dirt in the plantless containers. He especially like the troughs as they are big enough to fit the whole dog and still have room. I decided I didn't trust him not to dig up the pots when they had pants in them. My grandmother and I debated back and forth for about a week, trying to make a decision about where we wanted to put every thing. We didn't have enough pots still in good shape that would fit all the plants we wanted to do. We also found that there are certain plants the need to trellis and ones that can't go deep enough with their roots in a pot. With that said, we knew we wanted to put the garden somewhere where we could put plants in the ground as well as in the pots.
We thought we had it figured out until we remembered on small glitch- the bunnies. They never really bothered the plants in the yard because very few of them even come in. Also, the fact that the plants were up off the ground didn't seem to be an adventure they wanted to participate in. With that notion now in our heads, we began coming up with more ways to do it. We had everything from cinderblock raised beds to digging holes and creating a temporary fence around our garden to keep them out... One day my grandmother pointed out the dog run down by the barn. The light went on- not only was there enough space to put containers and put things in the ground, but it was also fenced off with wire that had smaller gaps, so the bunnies couldn't get in. After that, it was settled. The dog run would now become the garden.
Its going to be a great place to put it. I am also trying to rig a covering of some sort to that there is a bit more shade, since there really aren't any trees or sources of shade. My thought is to purchase a large mesh of some sort- similar to what they use for the military- to cover the area.
Its on my list for out trip to Reno on Saturday.
Hopefully I will be able to get a few pictures of the start of our garden posted for you to see. Until then, have a great day!
Love Always,
Rebecca
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