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My Garden
I recently acquired a garden plot. That might not be a big deal to some of you, but for me this is huge. We live on a military base and you are technically not allowed to garden in the housing areas. Some of the older bases have community gardens, but the plots are passed down, friend to friend, in secret, and it is very hard to get one if you don’t know someone who knows someone.
Am I making any sense?
Well I managed to get one a few weeks ago. I had driven by the gardens before and they are all nice, small gardens, fenced with chicken wire and other things. I accepted the garden thinking that is what I would be getting. I was wrong.
Somehow I managed to score the largest plot on base. It is so big that if you are standing on one end and talking the person on the other end would not be able to hear you.
Here is a picture of one side
it is hard to see where it ends in this picture
here is the other side
To give you a better idea of the size, the fence posts are about 7 feet apart.
The garden is also overgrown because the lady who had it last year had a family emergency in the fall and basically packed up and left town for several months and couldn’t take care of it.
This is all a little overwhelming to me because in my life I have officially grown about 10 things.
Here is a little photo essay of my efforts.
Year One
Year Two
As you can see, it is obvious that I can handle a huge plot of land…
I don’t want to waste our money on this. I realize that not everything I plant will grow. But I do want to have some success.
Eventually we would like to live somewhere that we can have a garden in our backyard and we can grow some of our own food. I hope I can do it! I plan to make my garden project a weekly post once I get it going. Right now I am working on digging up all the stuff from last year. Any tips, advice, or lessons learned are greatly appreciated.
Filed under: Food, Frugal living, Homemaking, My life
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We are going to put in a nice sized garden this year too. I dabbled in vegetables in our last house one year but I have a lot to learn. Luckily I have neighbors who know what they’re doing. Then I have to learn to bottle and freeze everything!
We’re going to have a lot of work to do this summer!
WOW! Congrats to you! I’m so excited for you and hope that it continues to go your way!
~Chanelle
We are trying to do a small garden in our backyard this year. We don’t really know what we are doing either! Hopefully we will get something to grow!
Well, what you have grown looks great! I like the Square Foot Gardening and French Bio-intensive approaches because they give me a way to break things down. The author of Square Foot Gardening recommends one four by four square for each family member (when starting out) and says that it will take about an hour a week to maintain each square. Something like that would probably be easy with all the kids
As for all of the space…I would decide how much you would feel reasonably comfortable managing. Don’t do larger because that would be disastrous…just ask Stacey. You can plant a cover crop on the part of the ground not in use and till it in to add organic matter for next spring. This will make crop rotation a cinch since you won’t have to worry about where things were planted last year. “How to Grow More Vegetables” by John Jeavons recommends three “zones” to rotate between.
Anyway, I like to think about crops that take minimal preparation for winter storage…carrots, turnips, potatoes, spaghetti squash, beets, etc. Any of your vining stuff will easily use up a lot of your space, as I’m sure you saw when you grew the watermelon.
That’s great that your garden is all fenced off for you already…I wonder if you’ll have a problem with deer there??? LOL
May God richly bless your labors!
Warmly,
Elizabeth
Enjoy your garden! I hope this is a productive year for you, even as it will be full of learning, I am sure.
I have a rather large garden that I share with some neighbors here. This will be our third year and one thing that has helped us is to spread things out a little more. We first tried to cram as many plants as we could wanting to make the most of the space, and it ended up being more than we could keep up with. We still definitely have a lot to learn. Every year gets a little easier.
We also put down weed blocker on the pathways (either fabric or mulch or something like that) so we didn’t waste our energy weeding the walk ways just so we could get to the plants we intended to grow! It is so great to eat our fresh from the garden organic veggies! Things seem to taste better when you work that hard for it.
~Erin
I can’t wait to plant our garden. When I go to the store to get produce I about fall over!!!!
I’ve started many gardens in my life. Few have turned out particularly well. There is one undeniable truth of gardening, however: a tomato that you planted and harvested yourself just tastes better.
Loved the pictures. Looks like you’ve done a good job at growing KIDS, now for the veggies and such….
We have garden fever here, too. Our first tomatoes went in this past weekend.
I have never been a gardener so that all sounds very intimidating to me…LOL!
Good luck with it!
You just blow me away!! Homeschool, Bake, Cook, Sew, mother of 6… what else, I know I’m missing something AND now you are going to GARDEN??
Well, we had a garden once… me, my husband and 2 darling children. We cleared the land and got it ready for our little seeds that we ever so gently put into the ground. We watch our garden grow and produce… weeds!! So we turned it over to some guys that worked for our company. And that was that. I can’t even grow mint!!
So I think you will do fine… looks like your kids did a great job!
My daughter thinks you should plant lilies. There’s an idea…just plant a huge flower garden, then sell fresh cut flower arrangements, then someday you could open a greenhouse…
Oh wait, that’s my dream.
Attempting to *not* turn green…I SO miss having a garden! Someday….
Cool, what a great garden you are going to have this Summer! It is way bigger than anything I have ever tackled so my advice is not much, other than to say good luck!
That looks amazing! We just started our garden for the first time ever via the Square Foot Gardener method and it was easy and so far very manageable. However, hubby got a little excited about the tomatoes and planted 13 plants!!!! Now it looks like we may move and my kids just keep thinking WHAT ABOUT OUR GARDEN!!!!!
Elizabeth
I live in Spartanburg South Carolina and I do not know anything about gardening. How can I find out when I sould start planting?
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