Its this time of year for the past several years that I am so anxious to garden. I have yet to produce a decent garden, last year even my pumpkins totally sucked. My real problem is probably a combination of knowing next to nothing about gardening in real life (I've read magazines and online articles) and by the time summer hits I'm so unamused by my pathetic plants that I give up and don't water or weed like I should. My mother hated gardening because that is what she grew up doing and so we really never had a vegetable garden. My mom also hates cooking and canning and so why grow something that is gonna take more work to use. I always have such huge expectations about how beautiful my flower garden will be and how impressive my vegetable garden looks. Its all yet to happen. Talking with some of my neighbors they after many years finally have good soil and good producing gardens, I just don't know if I have the patience to wait so long. So tonight I got a movie from the library called yardening and its a VHS so its a little older, a guy who's pants are held up by suspenders and has a full beard walks you through the whole "how to plant a garden". Now I'm up and I can't sleep because there are so many things I need to do to prepare for the spring planting season. So to bore you out of your mind I'm gonna share my mental to-do list :)
1. see if my dad has a working chain saw and would want to help cut some logs for me
2. make my big raise garden into two skinnier raised rows (big project)
3. move the dog kennel again, possibly up against the fence that the stupid dog keeps ripping apart
4. see what scrap pieces of wood i have in my basement that i could rig up a nicer more organized compost pile.
5. Make Compost bin
6. Put leaves and straw and grass from the yard into the bin.
7. see how much a drip hose and timer cost
8. buy more pet pots to start seeds in
9. figure out what needs to be planted in the spring and get seeds started
10. consider building more raised beds
11. change mind because you can't even get one bed to grow good.. maybe next year
12. figure out a way to get more earth worms.. possibly flooding the backyard.. or paying siblings to round some up.
13. look for sales on seeds and buy more
14. figure out a way to do all of this with two children.
When all is said and done I'm completely in awe of the pioneers and people who lived before there were home improvement stores or online help, they produced food for their whole family for both the growing season and the winter. I would be skin and bones if I had to rely on what I could produce, how in the world did they do it? and do it so well? hmm maybe I'll look it up online.
2 comments:
Drip hoses and a timer are worth the investment! I had never done a garden since we'd moved here because we always headed back west right when I should be planting. Last year I was determined to plant SOMETHING, though. We did a few tomatoes and beans and sunflowers. We went back west for three weeks last summer and hooked up dripper hoses to a timer on the faucet. It worked really well and I kept them going the rest of the summer! Water teepees are worth the investment, too! A couple of brands are Red Tomato Teepees and Wall-o-Water. Here's a link to another at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Dalen-Season-Starter-3-Pack/dp/B000NCYTK2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1267208070&sr=8-4). There are several different brands but they are all basically the same design. We had fantastic tomatoes last year! Of course, you can also just cover them with old milk jugs with the bottom cut off, too.
Good luck my friend! and when you plant way too much and have extras, give me a call!
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