Gardening

I love to play in the dirt! As I look at my hands after 50 yrs I ask myself who they belong to. They are scared and wrinkled. They’ve held babies and they have wiped tears. They have created and they have been used to bring forth life from the earth. They are full of love. I am blessed with these old hands of mine.

When I was the sickest and thought death was close by, my dear husband built me my “Williamsburg” garden. It’s a beautiful place. I have 4 raised beds with pea gravel isles and a picket fence WITH A GATE! I always wanted a gate. In fact in 1999, we were in Colonial Williamsburg in March. Not much goes on there in March. It was cold, but they were holding an outdoor auction. I was so excited and bid on a iron ball that goes on the gate. It was a lively bid, since about 3 other women wanted this iron ball for their gate. Funny thing is we all got our iron ball and chain, and none of us had a gate. Well, I finally got my gate, but I still haven’t hung the iron ball and chain that pulls the gate shut behind you. Hopefully this year! I put good topsoil and “leavegrow “in the raised boxes added some organic fertilizer and off I went. My first year with raised beds, I was amazed at what I could grow in such a little space. My tomatoes were 6 ft tall and my Zinnias were in competition with them. Since that first yr, 2005, my plants are still booming tall and gloriously productive. I allow volunteer heirloom tomatoes and zinnias to come up at will. I want to build a small hoophouse this summer to allow for winter gardening. We love eating fresh greens; kale, mustard greens, collards, spinach, and lettuces of every kind!

It’s important to us to eat locally and to be as self-sufficient as possible. This year we are going to try successive gardening. We’ll manage the sustainable gardening with compost from our on going compost piles and from the newest members of our family; our chickens and goats. They will provide some wonderful contributions to our garden. Using raised beds allows us to maintain them easily without having to till the ground every year. With the added compost, simply hoeing the soil is easy and less back breaking. And of course every year we rotate our crops to give back to the land the nutrients needed. This year we will add new boxes that are 3 feet wide, but these will be at least 10 ft long with 1 ft isles of grass and/or gravel between them. These new beds will be for corn and potatoes. They take up so much space and this will work well I think. It’ s my plan to have successive plantings this year. Which would entail staggering crops so that we eat from the garden all year. My hopes of building a hoophouse might only pan out to be little tunnels to start, but it is my hope to eventually have a hoophouse for cold crop veggies.

Cabbage

27 hills of potatoes

Don’t forget to join the Growing Challenge! Click on the photo at the top and follow the instructions. It will be fun….frankly I don’t remember all the rules but I know a couple and one is that I’m suppose to post an entry once a week about gardening. Well, I’m not sure how I’m doing. I better get on the ball. Wow, the pic at the top of the page disappeared from The Growing Challenge…oh well, follow the link on the home page.