We are officially gardeners. Our plants are in the ground and growing, so I think that qualifies us--right? We won't worry about whether or not they grow anything edible. For now, we're relishing in the joy that all our plants (except one) are still green and slowly inching taller.
Since this is our first attempt at gardening, we teamed up with a family from church who can't garden in their backyard since their backyard is a forest (literally). They've got the know-how, we have the sunny yard; its a good trade-off. They also have two little boys who are very enthusiastic when it comes to digging in the garden.
Because Tennessee's soil seems to be more clay than dirt, we opted for raised beds so we didn't have to deal with digging through the hard clay. The beds are 5' by 5' and have a layer of weed blocker between the ground and the imported dirt. In Garden #1, we followed a beginners' gardening plan we found online (I don't remember what site). Sadly, our strawberry transplant didn't survive the transition to outside living.
Garden #2 is more of an experiment for the vegetables we wanted to try but weren't included in the garden plan. Per Deric's request we've got a row of sweet corn, I wanted cucumbers, and our friends wanted to try watermelon. Somewhere in the craziness of planting approximately one million seedlings and trying to keep them all straight and accounted for, we lost the watermelon seeds. So last week when I realized nothing was growing in the second half of this bed, I planted a few more seedlings and hopefully they'll catch up soon.
We've also got sunflowers! I'm hoping these guys end up taller than Deric by the end of the summer. How pretty would that be?
We planted the seedlings in the garden beds four weeks ago, and so far the garden's been very low-maintenance. No bugs, no weeds; just daily watering. I may be overconfident at this point, but I've already got some grandiose plans for next year's gardens. I'm thinking lemons (in a container, seeing as we're not very tropical), lots of strawberries, blueberries, a variety of peppers, lettuce...Basically, I want an entire salad from my own backyard.
(Don't get the title? "Let us turn up the beat." Come on now!)
Your gardens look fantastic! I hope your have a bounty of veggies and flowers from all of your efforts. Our seedlings are beginning to grow and we just transplanted some of them to containers outside. I'm hoping all of the rabbits in the yard don't eat everything before we do!
ReplyDeleteLet me know how it works! We want to do gardens, too, but something about weeding in the heat 6+ months pregnant didn't appeal to me this summer;)
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