Monday, March 16, 2009 The Little Brown Seed
 O, little brown seed in a furrow,
At last you have pierced the mold;
And quivering with life intense,
Your beautiful leaves unfold
Like wings outspread for upward flight;
And slowly, slowly in dew and light
A sweet bud opens—till, in God's sight,
You wear a crown of gold
Ida W. Benham
A snapshot of our first seedlings sprouting, cabbage and cauliflowers.
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Friday, February 20, 2009 Obsessions
Do you ever find yourself becoming obsessed with certain subjects throughout the year? I do!
For the past several weeks my obsession has been school.
I have read and researched and read and planned and read and talked until I almost can't absorb anymore. But that's o.k. because I feel I have received answers to questions that I had and I feel that I am more focused and prepared to continue through the rest of the school year. Next year is planned and I know what I need to purchase so beyond keeping us on track I feel that I my research has been worthwhile.
And it's on to my next obsession....which is actually very seasonal for most of us.
Gardening!
I had pretty much been a hobby gardener up until last year. That is when I realized that to purchase quality produce for my family on a regular basis my husband would frankly need a substantial pay raise, and since that wasn't in the near future and because I knew there was a better way, I began to do more research into gardening.
My mom has always had a HUGE garden and most of my summers growing up were spent in planting, hoeing, weeding, and picking from this garden. Now mind you I think this is great for all kids to do but in my situation, smaller yard and no bigger kids, I knew that I needed to find an alternative that would work for me.
- I hate weeding so that was #1 on my list; a garden of low maintenance
- I am usually pregnant, nursing or have a small baby every summer so I needed something that would give me high yield with little input.
- While I do have a decent sized yard it still isn't big enough to contain a normal row garden like most of the country gardens that I grew up with are, so I needed to find a garden plan that would not take up too much space.
This led me to the book All New Square-foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew which frankly rocked my gardening world! I wasn't really sure if I believed half of what he said but what I'd done before (row gardening) wasn't working so I decided to give it a go and while I didn't follow his plans to the letter I did get amazing results with a minimum amount of space used and very, very little of my time taken up after initial planting. As with all things it is definitely a trial and error process but overall last year was a success and I am hoping to do more this year.
Another great resource of information and encouragement came from Kimberly Eddy's e-book Momma's Guide to Growing Your Groceries. This is a great book that covers a whole gob of different topics and comes from this momma's personal experiences in growing enough food to feed her large family.
And then today I got the latest NGJ magazine in the mail and have been pouring over the gardening article and books that were suggested in it. Which has led me out to my backyard on this balmy February day to survey the ground and do some measuring and planning. Since I just ordered my seeds with my mom yesterday I really don't have any time to waste.
My goals this spring and summer are to be able to harvest loads of beans, peppers, tomatoes, squash, etc. to can and freeze so that I will have a full enough pantry to carry us through most of next winter.
And now that I've printed out a few pages of graph paper I think I'll sit down with my SFG book and my gardening journal and just see what I can come up with!
Great Gardening Resource books that I will be checking out at my library and purchasing:
How to Grow More Vegetables
Joy of Gardening
Lasagna Gardening
Let it Rot
Seed to Seed
Vegetable Gardener's Bible
Weedless Gardening |
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