We haven’t done a real garden in years, mostly because we’ve gone on long summer trips every year lately. That and how we are, historically, not very good at gardening. But this year we’re home at least until the end of June and maybe all summer (we change our minds pretty much daily about which is more likely; at the moment we have a trip to Michigan planned, but we’re still trying to decide whether it’s a good idea to go or not). Our house sitters are big gardeners, and we often come home to things growing in our garden area, which we then spend the last days of summer trying–and generally failing–to keep alive.

But as with so many people, being stuck at home with lots of time and nervous energy on our hands has brought out our homesteading side. First came the chicks. And then came the garden.

Speaking of chicks, they’re getting so big! They’re not really chicks anymore at all; they just look like miniature chickens. They moved outside permanently just a little while ago and both humans and chickens are glad they’re out of our bedroom. Look at these grown-up chooks!

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I don’t think I’ve ever done a garden that wasn’t all raised beds and/or containers before. But this year’s garden was kind of an impulse project, and we weren’t feeling up for going to all the trouble and expense of making raised beds. Because that has been my experience: the beds themselves are a relatively inexpensive, straightforward project…but then it’s astounding how much stuff you have to buy to fill them up with. Of course, you can reuse the soil year after year, so it’s just the initial costs that are so daunting.

So we just went out and started hacking up the ground in our garden area. And then I remembered why raised beds are so popular. Digging up rocky, clay soil filled with tree roots is not any fun. But would it result in a successful garden? Well. It’s only May, but we’ve had pretty good results so far:

At the end of the summer, I hope to write a more informative post about how things all turned out and what we learned from all the experimenting, but I can’t offer anything like that now when it’s still early days. You know, before all the bugs come and the weeds take over and everything starts to die and I can’t figure out why.

Maybe that won’t happen this year.

Anyway, this post is more of a “meet the garden!” kind of post. Here it is!

At first I just sort of dug up some places and started planting seeds that I already had around from years past. But then a need for some sort of order crept in. We got those pavers and made borders around 4×4 beds. We bought compost and garden soil to mix into the existing soil. We bought new seeds (when we could find them; seeds are or at least were a little hard to come by). At first we were going to get by without any kind of fence, but the dogs had other ideas, so we bought this inexpensive barrier and attached it to metal stakes that we already had (folded over to make it short enough to climb over and not block much sun).

We’re thinking of adding more pavers and making a little seating area out there, too, maybe with more potted plants.

We bought starts for tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries, but everything else we grew from seed. So far we’ve got lettuce, spinach, carrots, zucchini, spaghetti squash, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, beans, and potatoes going.

I’ve never managed to grow potatoes particularly successfully. This year I couldn’t find seed potatoes, so I just got organic potatoes from the grocery store and stuck them in the ground. And they’re huge!

I’m doing the thing where you pile more and more dirt on as they grow, but now they’re still growing, and I’m not sure when I’m supposed to stop. I just planted more potatoes, because it’s so fun! I hope those giant plants are actually going to make more potatoes.

 

The peach trees we planted a few years ago are looking good, too:

There are apple trees, too, but those have yet to make fruit. The peaches have all fallen off one of the trees; the same thing happened last year; we got tons of peaches from one tree and none from the other one. I guess we should try to figure that out.

We have blueberries in the front, too, that should be ready pretty soon. And NEXT spring I’d like to get more of that kind of thing going…a couple more fruit trees and some more berry bushes. We have such a giant, sunny yard I always feel bad that we don’t do more growing stuff in it. Oh! I have a few pots of lettuce on the deck, too:

We also have inside projects going on, so I need to get moving both on finishing those and on blogging about them.