Welcome to my garden! It’s always been my goal to not only share delicious meals but also to share farm and garden life. We recently purchased some land, which has allowed me to create the garden of my dreams. My desire is to share home-cooked meals with food sourced and grown from my very own garden. I also have an interest in preserving and canning, and hope to share more about that with you, too.
Gardening is in my blood, as my mom grows a mean garden every year and if mine is half as successful as hers then I’ll call it a win. My childhood was spent helping her and one of my favorite things to do was look for flint and arrowheads after the garden was freshly tilled. As I get older I cherish the moments I get to go back to my family farm and help my mom. While I’m there I’m soaking up anything she can teach me when it comes to gardening, but also canning. Her influence is a huge part of why I love gardening so much today.
Gardening takes work, and sometimes trial and error; we hope at the end of the growing season that we have success with our harvest. One of my past soccer coaches said it best, “the only time success comes before work is in the dictionary,” and boy is he right.
With that said, I hope you’ll come along with me on this journey! I plan to share updates when I can of the process.
We started with bare ground, it took many efforts with our tiller (which is back-breaking work), but we’ve got 8 beautiful hilled rows. Here’s what we’ve planted so far:
- Red Pontiac Potatoes
- Kennebac Potatoes
- Red Onions
- Yellow Onions
- Shallots
- Walla Walla Onions
- Golden Beets
- Red Beets
- Carrots
Sadie likes to help, or at least she thinks she is helping 😉
Here’s a little before and after of our onions and potatoes – so exciting!
We’ve also planted a few raised planters with the mulching/layer method, which is where you layer the following:
- Cardboard
- Some rocks
- Sticks
- Leaves
- Topsoil
- Top it off with some compost soil (Daddy Petes is the best).
Below is where I started my asparagus and onions…
Last, but not least, we planted some berry bushes! One of the things you should do first when you buy a property and start a homestead is plant your berry bushes and fruit trees right away since they take years to establish. The same goes for asparagus.
- Here we planted:
- Red and yellow raspberries
- Black raspberries
- Elderberries
- Blueberries
I hope you enjoy following along with our gardening journey and that it brings as much joy to you as it does to me! With most things in life, a good harvest requires diligence and hard work, and am so excited to see all of the crops we harvest and how I can incorporate them into my recipes.