Our Garden..

We have been working oh so hard in our yard to get it all cleared out and free of weeds for two main reasons; so that it doesn't scare our company away, and so we could grow a garden!

I wish I had some before pictures because the transformation that has been made is just amazing. Our roommates worked for a few weekends in a row clearing out the major weeds and unwanted bushes and waist high grass; thankfully they took the initiative because that was something I was not looking forward to. Since then the group of us have gone in and really cleared out the yard. We completely got rid of all plant life (i.e. grass, weeds) on one large strip of the yard and that is where we decided to plant our garden. We plotted out how much room we would need and from there went to work.

Because we were gone for the whole month of April (a crucial month in the growing season) we bought a majority of our plants a month or so old, as opposed to starting everything from seed which we have done in previous years. In the back we started with a few varieties of corn, then tomatoes (including a few heirloom varieties and your basic reds), peppers, green beans, zucchini, and yellow squash. Depending on the space needed for the plant, we only planted on every other row. The empty row will be used in the next month or so by the same varieties but ones we have just started to grow from seed. This will lengthen your production months by planting in stages. For example, the 4 tomato plants we have planted are close to 2 months old. Just a few weeks ago I planted a few varieties from seed and those will be ready to plant in a few weeks. The first plants will start producing soon but will stop in September or so. The second set of tomatoes will start producing in about 2 months but will produce until possibly November. Make sense??

With some birthday money I got from my favorite mother-in-law :) I bought those two citrus trees; a dwarf lime and lemon. We plan to plant them in larger pots, and hope that they do well in pot life for another year or so. I've always wanted citrus trees. With wedding gift money and gift cards we've been able to get a lot of other things we've always wanted, like strawberries, which I just planted today, no pictures yet. And that weird cactus looking plant is artichoke! Which I am very excited about. I hope you all decide to plant something :) Go to your local hardware store or even target or walmart and just see what they have. Maybe pick one plant, like tomato and see where it takes you.