Since we live on 95 acres, I thought it was
a requirement to have a garden. This spring, Craig worked up a piece of
land about 50'x100'. I know, some say a bit much to tackle as a novice
gardener, but I thought we could handle it. After all, my parents were
going to help and share in the harvest.
We decided to plant broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage, peas, squash,
cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes,
blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. Ever the engineer, I got out
my graph paper and laid out a plan for planting. Craig cautioned me to
allow enough room between rows for the tiller. I wanted to maximize
planting ground, so I tried to
minimize the tiller space. Well, I minimized it so much the tiller won't
go down most of the rows! Of course, the fact that several of the rows are
a little squiggly doesn't help! Certainly not a mistake I plan on making
next year!! Actually, while watching the weeds grow bigger and bigger this
year, I've planned lots of changes for next year. Such things as tiller
friendly rows and black plastic much are the two most important. We all
loved the broccoli, so we'll plant more
of that, but the cauliflower didn't do well at all, so none of that next
year. Our peas did well, as did the cabbage. The leaf lettuce did
great, but the head lettuce didn't get as large as what you can buy in the
store. We are up to our ears in
squash! We are giving squash to everyone we know! I just dug a few
potatoes and they are so cute! I can't wait until we harvest the potatoes
and sweet potatoes. We have 45 tomato plants full of green tomatoes that
we hope will be turning red very soon! We are planning on making pizza
sauce and spaghetti sauce. We had a few blueberries and raspberries, but
we'll have more next year as the plants mature.
Perhaps the most important thing we learned this year is that it is very
difficult to tend such a large garden when I work in Cincinnati 3-4 days a week
and my parents also work and live in Cincinnati!!
