Garden preparations

Last summer, Dale and I planted a modest garden. We had lots of vegetables, most of which produced a good amount of crop. We had so much fun with it last year that we decided to quintuple our garden this year!

The garden preparations have been ongoing for several months now, beginning with planting some seeds inside to get them a head start on our short growing season. We started the plants back in February, in a peat pellet tray. Within days, several of the plants had started growing!


Soon, we had a pellet tray full of green plants. We had planned on some of the seeds not germinating, so had planted three seeds in each pellet, and several pellets of each kind of plant. Surprisingly, every seed germinated, so we trimmed away the two weaker plants in each peat pellet, leaving only the strongest plant. The tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli were particularly strong, and we transferred them to larger pots after just two weeks in the pellet tray.

(A month after we started our plants inside, we got over a foot of snow! Those tiny little plants wouldn't have survived outside during this storm!)






The plants continued to thrive inside, and we began acclimating them to the outside by placing them outside in the shade for a few hours every day. The peppers always looked better after being outside, while the tomatoes started to look a little weaker.


This weekend, we rented a tiller and Dale tilled up our garden plot. After loosening the soil (and removing quite a bit of grass), Dale laid out bags of gypsum (to keep the clay-like soil loose), composted steer manure, and composted mulch, which he worked into the soil by running the tiller over it a few more times.

When he was finished, we had a nice, smooth garden plot full of rich organic matter and good loose soil.







The next step was to plant. You might not be able to see it in this picture, but the garden plot has several white plant markers that indicate what we planted in each area. We didn't plant everything yet -- some of the plants won't be planted until May or even June, and we are going to let the plants that we started inside grow a little longer inside before we transplant them -- but we laid out the garden and planted several seeds.

This year, we're planning on the following vegetables in our garden:
corn
sugar snap peas
green beans
spinach
carrots (multi-colored!)
radishes
green onions
tomatoes (four different kinds)
green bell peppers
red bell peppers
serrano chili peppers
sweet banana peppers
broccoli
adirondack blue potatoes
yukon gold potatoes
zucchini
yellow crookneck squash
pumpkin pie pumpkins
jack-o-lantern carving pumpkins
watermelon
honeydew
butternut squash
green hubbard squash
cucumbers
lemon cucumbers

We also planted some other edible plants outside the garden:
blueberries
blackberries
raspberries
strawberries
asparagus
hops (for brewing, of course!)

We are looking forward to a good harvest this year and can't wait to eat home-grown veggies from our garden all summer!