Cultivating Our Garden

Posted June 18, 2011 in General

As new owners of a sizable amount of land, Ty and I have challenged ourselves with the task of planting and maintaining a vegetable garden. Ideally, we’d like to be able to grow the majority of the produce we use, but for now … well, we’re practicing.

Initially, we’d intended to dig some beds in our field, but when Ty took our rototiller to the intended bed areas, all it did was gouge out some deep furrows in the ground. Nice. Things were a bit too wet and dense to be straight-up tilling. We’ll give it another go when summer is in full force and the soil has dried out. Hopefully we can make something work.

In the meantime, we cleared up an existing garden area which was used by the previous owners of the property. It’s to the side of our lawn, next to our four apple trees (which are growing little apples!).

A couple of months ago, we bought some baby strawberry plants from Bakerview Nursery and settled those in. They’ve grown up nicely and we should have some ripe strawberries within the next month. With 25 Summer-bearing plants, we’re going to have a lot of strawberries on our hands! And I’m really looking forward to that.

We also made use of some past-their-prime potatoes which we had sitting in our garage. They’re just now sprouting up through the soil, mixed in with a few marigold plants to help with pest control. (We’re trying to plant companion plants next to each other — here’s hoping it works! Plus, the flowers bring some much-needed color and vibrance to the garden.)

We also planted what seems like a ton of things from seed. Let’s see if I can recount everything: sugar snap peas, shelling peas, broccoli, kale, Walla Walla sweet onions, scallions, romaine lettuce, spinach, sweet corn, and carrots. We picked up two roma tomato plants from the nursery, along with some bell peppers. Our potatoes are russet, red, and Yukon gold.

It’s amazing to see the baby veggies poking out from the soil! The baby pea plants were barely breaking the surface one day, and the next afternoon we found them already an inch tall! And today they were leafing out!

So far, it’s very difficult for me to keep from snatching the wayward stalks of grass out from between the sprouts, but Ty keeps reminding me that I need to wait until the sprouts are bigger, so I don’t risk dislodging them. Lame! But it’s for the best, I guess.

I’m hoping that tomorrow’s weather will cooperate and that I’ll be able to take my camera out and get some shots of my little sprouts. The pea plants are just plain adorable, and the broccoli and kale are very happy. I’m slightly dissatisfied with the plants that look grass-like, but I know they’ll pass that stage soon enough and I’ll be harvesting veggies left and right. I’m so excited to finally have a garden of my own! I just hope that I can make myself keep up with it and not let the weeds take over.

As a side note, this brings to mind a question: What do vegans do about slugs? Any advice?