New Direction for the blog...

So, this weekend we got our garden planted. I was posting and answer comments on facebook and Kelsey suggested that I should blog about our garden. I posted that on facebook and had several comments encouraging me to do it...so...I think I'll give it a go.

We have about a 12 ft by 6 ft (or so) area in our back yard that we have built a raised bed in. We added a chicken wire fence last year (to keep the dogs out of the garden). Last year we had so many green tomatoes and were excited about a large crop of tomatoes...but then overnight...they disappeared. :-( After searching the web, we decided that it was probably a possum. Aaarrrggghhh. This year, we are trying to come up with some ideas to keep the possum OUT of the garden. He didn't even share SOME of the tomatoes with us...he took them all.

The photo to the right is the garden after we had the frame. Our first year, we had it two boards high. Last year we added two more to give us a deeper garden area.

The soil mix we used was top soil, Moo-Nure (we call it "moo mix" or "moo"...we get it at Home Depot for about $2.37 or so a bag), and sand. I hoping to start a compost bin and start adding some good composted soil into the garden next year.

This photo on the left is the left area of the garden. We planted lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard last year. The lettuce and spinach NEVER grew last year...think we got it started too late and last year (2011) was SOOOOO hot! BUT...early in March of this year (2012)...we had lettuce coming up! LOL It was good too. The Swiss Chard took off last year and is STILL growing! Will have to post a photo of that in my next entry.

The photo to the right is the right side of the garden. I will start by saying that last year (and this year, we made sure the soil on this side was/is looser. This is where we plant our root veggies (carrots, onions, radishes, beets). Of all of those, the onions & radishes did well last year. We never saw any carrots or beets at all.

This final photo is the center of the garden. Last year we planted:

bush beans in the lower left section

(they didn't make it),

tomatoes in the upper left...

they were doing great...(remember the

possum from earlier...yeah...),

jalapeno, bell, & banana peppers --upper right

(finally got quite a few banana peppers

& a few jalapeno when the weather

cooled off)

squash (summer & zucchini) -- lower right...

(didn't work very well last year).

cucumbers (along the frame on the right). We put trellises up for them to climb. Not very successful last year.

This year, we have planted...Romaine lettuce, spinach, baby bok choy, 2 roma tomatoes plants, 1 cherry tomato plant, 1 grape tomato plant, 2 tomatillo plants, 2 jalapeno pepper plants, 2 bell pepper plants, 2 sweet banana pepper plants, 18 bush bean seeds (with plan to start more in two weeks), 1 pickle cucumber plant, 2 regular cucumber plants, 2 cantaloupe plants, carrot seeds, 64 onion bulbs, radishes, beets, AND...we planted another tomato plant in a bucket and yukon gold potatoes & red potatoes in buckets. We'll see how that goes. I hope to post a couple of photos of this years garden sometime this week.

I'm praying that we will not have a super hot summer and that rain will be great.

How is YOUR garden growing?