Preparing For Spring

    

    Spring garden time is here!  The soil is prepped, the seedlings have been sprouting indoors, and my pots and containers are ready to fill.  The temperatures are rising so I have been "hardening off" the seedlings slowly throughout the week. 

Our spring garden has almost doubled in size this year with the addition of 6 raised beds on our small south-facing side yard(5'x50').  These new beds will host sweet corn, brandywine, roma, cherry and yellow pear tomatoes, 2 kinds of melons, and sweet and hot peppers. 

Our backyard garden area(16'x30') consists of 7 long beds, 4 short beds, and about 20 feet of amended ground soil along the back fence.

  These will host pole beans on a trellis, some additional heirloom tomatoes, even more roma tomatoes, peppers, red and white onions, spring onions, garlic(planted in fall) , potatoes, carrots, herbs, cabbage, arugula and other salad mixes, collard greens, okra, radishes, escarole and kale.  We also have an area (10'x10')on our deck for bush sugar baby watermelons grown in spring in a baby pool and used in fall for pumpkins.  There is a trellis for our Straight Eight cukes and our Pickling cukes as well.  We have 2 varieties of semi dwarf asian pear trees, 1 fig, a dwarf peach tree, and a small spot for berries. And if that was not enough, we will have several 5 gallon containers full of any leftover seedlings that did'nt make it into the beds.

     I know what you're thinking.  "That's a little ambitious don't ya think!" Well, let me tell you.  Being self employed and hurt by the economic collapse, ambition is all I have.  My business was hit hard and if it wasn't for my wife having a secure job with the state, we may very well have been less fortunate.  Besides, our garden is just 1 small way to shave off expenses.  Not to mention, being rewarded with great tasting fruits and veggies that we are not afraid to put into our bodies.  The taste is no comparison to store bought.  We do grow organically and swear by compost tea. But we will touch on that in other blog entries later. So get out there everybody! Get those hands dirty.  Thank you very much for stopping by to read our 1st of many blog entries.  Follow us as we take baby steps towards achieving a more self sufficient life.