Garden- 2011 Style

     Last year our garden was completely wiped out by a end-of-the-world type hail storm, so this year I was determined to do my best to have a wonderful garden barring another natural disaster. I began early by starting my seeds on a planting shelf that my husband built for me a couple of years ago. I always plant enough for my own garden as well as my Grandpa and Dad. Every year I try to start my own broccoli with no luck, they never have germinated. This year I decided to try sprouting them in a damp paper towel inside a ziplock bag. I dumped a whole mess of seeds in just in the hopes that at least a few of them would germinate. To my surprise almost every one of them began to grow! I was so pleased with my mad sprouting skills after so many failed attempts that I couldn't possibly throw any of the precious plants away. So there I was several weeks later with well over 100 broccoli plants (cabbage and tomatoes- same story) wondering what the heck I was going to do with all these plants. I felt like Johnny Appleseed only with broccoli, cabbage, and tomatoes. Everywhere I went and everyone I saw received a flat (or two) of plants. 
      Our weather here has been very, very wet. We got  much more snow than usual and then we have had rain all spring and summer which is completely out of the ordinary for our area. Usually by this time of the year all the fields and such are completely burnt to a crisp and everywhere you look is brown. We are continuing to get rain and irrigation water and it is cool so things look great and everything is lush and green. My garden has really benefited from all the moisture and even though the cold weather set us back quite a while, my garden has never looked better. We have usually been eating things like cucumbers for at least a month now and we still are probably at least a week or more away from the first cuke of the season so we are late but I think we are going to be overwhelmed when everything does come on. For the first time ever I mulched my garden. I have always just thought it was a better idea to pull weeds and till around the plants. I will never be so stupid again! I mow several lawns each week and so I thought I would try mulching with the clippings just to see if it really helped to keep weeds down. I was shocked at how well it worked! I started out just putting the clippings a couple of inches think and then I have continued to add to it as the plants got bigger. My mulch is about 5-6 inches thick now and I have not had to do hardly and weeding. About once a week I go out and pull the 2 or 3 weeds that  are growing along the edge where the clippings aren't as thick.  From now until eternity I will never garden without mulching like crazy.

This raised bed pulls double duty- It is not only a potato bed but also the compost pile. It houses red wriggler worms that make short work of  whatever we put in there!

Cabbage, broccoli, and peas planted closely together. The broccoli is just about done for the year so I will be pulling that soon so the cabbage have more space. It worked well to do it that way.

I love my greenhouse!

The cabbage are doing awesome this year. Again, the two rows of broccoli behind them are going to be pulled up soon, so that will make it easier to get to them to harvest.

Our local nursery had a greenhouse full of pepper plants that were getting too big for their containers the other day, so they were giving them away for free to anyone who would take them. This spot was originally my corn patch was got flooded out and it was too late to plant more corn so I just filled it with the free pepper plants!

Strawberry bed

Beet bed

I decided I would try planting cucumbers in the asparagus bed to make it useful the rest of the summer and so far so good.

Tomato plants are looking great.

    


Gardens are a lot of work, but so rewarding at the same time. Even more so when they look awesome and produce like crazy and nobody knows that you don't spend every waking moment out there working! I won't tell if you don't.