Happy Mother’s Day!

Since it’s common/tradition to plant your tomatoes on Mother’s Day in Nebraska, I decided to take this day to write an update about our garden….which we named “Weeping Gardens” (please note we are not artists…just gardeners).

This year are garden is about 20 x 14 ft.  Brent and Chuck did a great job tilling the soil…like the manly men that they are. Brent also did a great job securing our garden from the viscous rabbits in our yard…yes they are vicious.  They eat everything in sight. He put up this awesome fence and even made a fancy gate. We even have labels!  I really feel like I am living the dream.

So far, most things seem to be coming up just fine. And if we were trying to start a Maple tree farm, we would be doing great, those damn helicopters! It doesn’t look like much now but in a month this dirt will look green an luscious (fingers crossed).  We planted peas, green beans, carrots, beets, onions, kale, green peppers, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. We also have some herbs: oregano, mint, lavender, and cilantro.  I think we possibly planted the peas a little late, so I hope they make it through the heat or maybe it will cool down for a while.  I never have any luck with root crops because our soil is clay….so I guess you could say that I am really “rooting” for the carrots, onions and beets!

Hope all you mothers have a great day!  Be good to yourself and your babies. Make someone take care of you today. As I have said before, Edith is the best thing I have ever grown.  The tomatoes have a lot of competition….

 

The Weeping Gardener

One of my new year’s resolutions for 2012 is to be more self-sustainable. I hope to grow and store more of my own food. For some reason after I had Edith I began to fear the end  of the world as we know it.  I am not sure why this fear came about, I have a few guesses (recession, losing my job, having to take care of something for the next 18 years), but it really got me thinking about how I could live my life without all of our modern conveniences.  I have been gardening for the past four summers by trial and error and was pretty successful the first two years. The last couple of years have not provided the yield I would have liked. I started composting last year so that I would have some new soil this year, decided that I would educated myself more about gardening and canning, and expand my garden in 2012.

The garden in its current January glory

Today I took a Gardening Class at Metro Community College.  Metro has so many great non-credit classes to offer and most of them are at the Fort Campus which is a really beautiful old army base “Fort Omaha“. I have always wanted to take a non-credit class there (Hooray! Another goal fulfilled).  I had originally signed up for a specific class on vegetable gardening that was cancelled so I moved over to this other class.  I was not super excited about taking a class on a Saturday but in order to meet my goal I made myself do it.  Basically what I got out of this class was that planning and maintaining your garden are the most important things in regards to vegetable gardening. Also, I learned the extension office also provides tons of valuable information on the topic (duh!?!).  Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed in this class. I was hoping to learn what soil certain plants needed, when to plant, how much spacing was required.  I guess it is my fault for not just consulting the greatest teacher of all … the interweb (as Brent likes to call it).  We did get to visit Metro’s greenhouse though which was very pretty and warm.

Metro's Greenhouse!

I feel like I am back to square one but I do have a plan.  I want to plant more this year and plant things that I can freeze and use for baby food.  Also, I am done with zucchini and summer squash (I hope Brent can live without these because I am so sick of them).  I also want to plant in the cool seasons which means root crops, potatoes, onions and greens.  I hope Brent will be on board with digging in the dirt in late March because I need his manpower.

Sleeping Gardener

I couldn’t resist posting this picture of Edith napping with me today. She is by far the best thing I grew in 2011 🙂