Gardening

My raised garden beds before planting this year

About 7 years ago, I decided that I should start a garden. We had moved to our current house, and there was plenty of room for a garden. Problem is, I had never gardened a day in my life and didn't know how. It seemed simple enough....rototill a square area, put in some seeds and plants, and presto- you have a garden! Right? Well, yes. and NO. What I did NOT know was how to plant a garden, or how close to plant things, or what things were going to take over the entire garden with vines and leaves and the dreaded weeds. I did not know how tall tomato and pepper plants grew or how to stake them up properly so they didn't fall over and all the vegetables get icky from the ground. I didn't know about bugs that like to eat garden plants. I didn't know that bunnies would come along and eat my beautiful produce. I didn't know how many weeds could grow and take over a garden; but I learned. I learned a LOT. In spite of my lack of experience, and my lack of weeding, I still got a lot of produce that first garden. The next year, I moved the garden, studied a bit, and tried again. Same thing happened....those darn weeds followed me. By the next summer, my sweet husband bought me three raised garden beds. You see, I have a really bad back with lots of degenerative changes and back pain, and weeding a garden just doesn't agree with my body. I tried to do better, but bending over to pull the vast number of weeds that grow in the ground just doesn't work for me for that long. The raised beds were like magic for me. I could weed them and not kill my back in the process. Over the next couple of years, we got more beds and last summer, we moved them to one central location in the back yard, and put a border around the perimeter of the beds. I added trellises to help the plants have something to climb up, and I did a lot of research of what to plant and learned so much about planting for cool, warm, and hot times of the year instead of what to plant according to our community "zone" on all the normal gardening charts. It has been such a great learning time, and a lot of trial and error. I continue to learn each year, and am determined each spring to do better than I did the spring before. So far, so good.

This year, although you can't see them in the picture above, I have planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, small pie pumpkins, basil, sage, thyme, rosemary, beets, lettuce (2 varieties), summer squash, acorn squash, cauliflower and cabbage. In the past, I've grown mountains of carrots, watermelon, canteloupe, some broccoli, sweet corn, bush beans, and one summer I even grew celery! A friend of mine thought that was silly, but it turned out really well. I also planted 2 apple trees last year and 2 cherry trees this year. I have a few blueberry bushes, a raspberry bush, and a blackberry bush. I want to plant some elderberries this fall and hope for some good growth by spring. Will see how it goes!

Do you garden? Do you have any gardening tips and tricks to share? I would love to hear from you! I learn new things all the time!

Until next time....

Judy