Gardening Journal

For a couple of years now, we've been growing our own vegetables organically and with great success (thanks be to God!). This is the first year where we are expanding our efforts which involved more planning and potential for combatting pests and diseases. This journal will track our experience and hopefully help others as they experiment with organic gardening practices. We are located in Zone 5.

Catching Up

Weather notes: May started out unseasonably warm with only a few frost nights. This latter half of the month has been really cool - barely making it out of the mid-60's, especially here near the lake. Nighttime temperatures have hovered around the mid-40's. Had quite a bit of rain in the past couple of weeks. We're headed into a warm, sunny spell for this long weekend.

So far, we've modified our plans back because our original plans required more time and money. "Phase 2" of our garden expansion plans will happen next year.

The most challenging piece of this has been the planning...what to plant, in what quantity and where, since, of course, I need to do a wealth of research and work out a tricky crop rotation schedule. :)

Before last week, all we could show for our efforts were a few herbs planted in pots (and placed on a sled for easy transport into the garage in case of frost!), some lettuce planted along the side of the house, and faint areas of regenerating grass from the places where we dug into the sod to outline the anticipate garden. Oh, and lots of paper with drawings and notes.

Last week we started making some progress. Dave rented a sod cutter and took out the grass where we will be planting. On the weekend, I was able to get some free mulch from neighbors who had to have a couple of maple taken down, and this past week, Dave borrowed a rototiller from other neighbors (thank God for good neighbors!) and turned over the soil. Here's what it looks like now (for a before picture, just imagine grass, actually weeds, where the soil is now):

Total $ invested so far: 250

Total hours invested so far: countless

We've also done some weeding, creating mulched pathways so we can avoid compacting the soil, and moving around a few plants. I also moved the stones which lined our front beds to the side of the house to create four 4X4 raised beds. I'm closer to completing our planting zone and rotation schedule and will post that when it's completed.

Today, we have 12 yards of topsoil (which is 30% peat hummus) being delivered and so will be spreading that around to create the new beds. The above cost also includes the price of 5 pea/bean towers we purchased on line. They'll give an artsy flair to the garden!

Looking forward to a long weekend of earth moving, stone moving, plant moving and planting.