It's Spring Time!

I absolutely love spring!  Flowers are blooming, gardens get planted and that means fresh veggies and canning season right around the corner.

I can't wait until the produce I have on my window ledge actually comes from my garden!

We are getting our garden beds ready to plant.  I am glad that I have held off because we have had some hard freezes still yet in our area.  However I believe that we are ready to go ahead and plant some veggies.

In the past we have always tilled a big 40 foot by 60 foot plot and planted, but we had so much rain last year, that nothing grew, except a pond of course! ;-)  That is when we decided to make raised garden beds (you can read about how we made them HERE).  This year there isn't much to do to get them ready except add a little soil.  And the exciting thing is that while we did have to buy some soil this year, next year we won't have to.  We should have enough compost to add to our garden beds, and after all that is what we are striving to do, to become self-sufficient.

So I thought I would share some pictures with you about how we are getting ready on the farm for our garden.  The pictures below only show one of our garden beds.  We currently have three and will be adding more this summer.

Adding the soil

I can't stress how important it is to let your kids help with the gardening.  We have to teach our younger generation where food comes from, good nutrition from fresh veggies, and how they can feed themselves as they get older.  I am so glad to see that gardening and canning are making a comeback, because it is an art that should never be lost!

But Mom, we have to spread the dirt around with our hands!

I can't blame them, I love getting my hands and bare feet in fresh soil.  There is nothing that feels better.  The soil we bought did end up with a lot of clumps, so getting them out was a job that my kids loved!

Why, yes! That is a poodle skirt she is wearing to garden. :-)

Here they are leveling out the soil.  Next come the seeds.  My dear friend Amy gave me some wonderful seeds that she had and wasn't going to use.  It was like Christmas and my birthday all wrapped up into one looking through those seed packets.  I was trying to figure out which ones to plant, there were just so many to choose from!

Some of the seeds I will plant.

I have not had good luck with carrots in the past, but each year I keep trying and I am bound and determined to grow some, someday.  I really think our soil is just too rocky, but hopefully with the raised beds, that will help the situation.

I also thought I would share a couple of pictures that to me mean springtime.

Our forsythia bush

Growing up we always had forsythias.  I love their yellow flowers in the spring and lush green leaves in the summer.  They are almost always the first thing to bloom letting us know that spring is almost here.  I planted this little guy from a small start about 4 years ago.  It is slow growing, but it is growing and each year, I get more and more blooms.  I just love it!

Dogwood bloom

This is one of those pictures that I didn't think was going to turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised. Dogwoods are another one that signifies the start of spring to me.  I have tried to grow dogwood trees in my yard, but they don't make it.  They need cover, which is why they grow in wooded areas so well. They love the cover of the taller trees.  I hope someday to have a pink dogwood tree near my house that I can enjoy.

So how are your plants blooming?  Do you have a favorite spring flower or tree?  Let me know in the comments below!

Leave a Comment flowers, gardening, planting, raised beds, spring time

It's Garden Time!

I love the spring time! It means trees are budding and flowers are blooming, but best of all it means garden time!

It seems like every year we are late with putting out our garden.  Something always happens, whether it be life or the weather that postpones when we had planned on planting.  This year however we had big plans!  I started some seeds indoors and we were going to get our cool weather crops out, then go on to the summer varities.  And then life happened.  My mother-in-law put her house up for sale which meant that we had buildings to move to our place (YouTube video coming soon) as well as a few other big items. And if that wasn't enough, I ended up needing major surgery.  That means 6 weeks no heavy lifting and no hard labor. In fact no work at all, which is almost impossible for me to do!

So once again we are late with gardening season.  Here it is the middle of May and the garden isn't even tilled let alone planted.  But I haven't given up hope.  I have an idea that I think will work.  I just hope my family will help out since I won't be able to do the work myself.

Sox the tomato plant lover.

I thought I would share with you the pictures of my plants that I do have growing.  My peppers did wonderful.  My tomatoes, not so well.  That was due to a certain cat that couldn't keep out of them.

Here is where I started.  A blank slate.  I started these seeds on March 1st.  There was snow on the ground and dreams in my heart of the fresh vegetables to eat and can in the coming summer.  I planted seeds for four different kinds of tomato plants and three different kinds of peppers.  Some of the seeds I had purchased, and some I had saved myself from the ones I grew last year.

Starting seeds,

And here are the plants one month later.  The plants have grown some and so have the dreams.  They look wonderful!  I am so excited and my husband and I start talking about when we need to start working the soil.  This also includes redoing the chicken run because during the late fall and winter, we let the chickens loose in our garden spot so that (hopefully) they would eat the bugs we had trouble with in our garden last summer.

Tiny pepper plants

Tiny tomato plants

It was after these pictures that things started happening.  And now here it is in May.  You can see how much the plants have grown and I am determined to still get my garden out.

Pepper plants

Tomato plants

So here is my idea.  Instead of tilling the whole garden, I am thinking of having someone just make rows.  The chickens have done a good job of trampling down the straw that was in there last year.  That straw can serve as a mulch between rows.  I have done this before, but it was on my small garden plot.  I am sure it would work on a larger garden as well.

So is there anyone else out there that is late with their garden?  How are your plants doing? Please post a comment and let me know!

2 comments gardening, planting, spring time, starting seeds, vegetables