March, 2013

We started off the month planting all of our transplants and are ending the month covering them up to protect them from a freeze we're expecting tonight. Mother Nature is so confused!! 

Once we got all of the beds finished, we spent several days working on the irrigation system. We have established 3 watering zones, each of them on a timer so that it will be watered for 45 minutes every other day. The two 16' beds are on a zone, the four 8' beds and two 6' beds are on a zone, and the three 12' beds are on a zone. Dean has worked incredibly hard to get this garden up and going this year- without his hard work it wouldn't have gotten completed.

Let me take you on a tour of our garden!

One of the original 16' beds containing spinach, carrots, lettuce & swiss chard.

The other 16' bed containing cabbages (planted at the end of December), onions and collard greens.

One of the 12' beds with straight and crookneck squash, zucchini and bell pepper.

This 12' bed contains heirloom tomato and eggplants. We'll be adding additional tomato and pepper plants to this bed.

This is the hybrid tomato bed, along with a lemon cucumber and bell pepper plants.

Ah, the potato beds. Closest to us are the Yukon Gold potatoes and in the next bed are Red Norland. Both are early season potatoes.

This is Leah's strawberry bed, the only non-SFG bed we have.

We also have three beds that I don't have pictures of right this moment. There are two 2'x8' beds with cantaloupe and cucumbers and a 2'x6' bed with watermelon.

February 2013

Dean was quite busy in our garden during the month of February, while I spent most of my time working (at both school and Lowe's), helping Mom and working on our seedlings. We started some of our seedling around the 11th of January and planted more on the 4th of February. My goal this year is to start everything in our garden from seed, especially after the disaster which occurred last year after I bought the Lemon Boy tomato plant home- the eventual destruction of all of my tomato plants.

This photo shows all of our seedlings on the 15th of February:

Background plants were planted in January (around the 11th), the foreground plants were planted on February 4th.

Planted in January.

Dean, along with some assistance from Joseph and Anthony, spent this month working on the expansion of our garden beds by adding two 4'x12', four 2'x8' and two 2'x6' beds, making our garden 360 square feet total. He also added the drip irrigation system we ordered from Drip Works, burying the 1/2" tubing and creating 3 watering zones. We eventually hope to put his citrus trees on a timed drip irrigation system.

While expanding the garden we added a gate on the north side, moved the garden shed to the east side of the house along with the 2 compost bins, and relocated the dog's water. He also repurposed the old soccer goal into a covered shed for things like our pipe and 5 gallon buckets.

Our garden area before the transformation. Photo taken the end of September.

The two 16' beds in the foreground, the three 12' beds beyond. To the far right you can see one of the 8' beds which run along the entire fence line. This photo was taken March 16, 2013.

The 8' beds and the corners of the two 6' beds. You can see the white pvc covering the 1/2" supply tubing which is run underground. The pvc is to protect the tubing from the weed eater.

Shaded garden from the east view.

Here you can see the garden shed, two compost bins and covered area Dean made from an old soccer goal. You can also see the double gate he made on this side of the garden.

This garden wouldn't look anything like this if it hadn't been for Dean. On January 25th, my 81 year-old mother fell in the garden center of Lowe's and broke the 2 bones in her wrist. The first few weeks following that accident, every spare moment I had was at her house helping her with basic living activities: bathing, washing hair, writing out checks to pay bills, etc. She was very determined to do everything she could for herself, so by the end of February (after the finally put her in a regular cast on February 18th) she was doing most of this for herself so I could help in the garden a little more.