Didn't Dave build the most wonderful fence to keep all the critters out?
The gate is really a piece of art. I have no idea how he cut those straight pieces of wood into an arc like that! Everything, except the tomatoes and peppers, has been planted now. Yay! It's so exciting to see the garden coming to life!
Radishes Onions
Grapes Blueberries
Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity.
~Lindley Karstens
There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.
Our vegetable garden is in full swing here! The garden beds were laid out, tilled, amended with compost, topped with a fresh coat of top soil, and mulched.
Blueberries, blackberries, grapes, onions, radishes, and peas have all been planted.
Next up: put fence around garden perimeter; build two trellises for the peas; build trellis for cucumbers; figure out what type of support we want for the grapes; and set out seed potatoes to sprout. The broccoli and cauliflower seedlings will be transplanted into the garden around May 10th along with the direct seeding of our beans, beets, carrots, and cucumbers. The watermelon will be direct seeded on May 20th and the tomatoes and peppers will be transplanted on June 1st.
I love how much this has truly become a family project! My mom and I planted the seedlings indoors at her house the first week of April. My dad has been in charge of the daily care of the seedlings and I am shocked at how good he is at it! The seedlings look amazing!!! Dave did all the measuring and strung the lines for the entire garden along with tilling it up. Then we all spread the mulch for the walkways. The boys helped my mom and I work compost into the soil and rake everything flat. Dave helped me set the grapes and the boys helped with all the blueberry plants. It is so much fun to be doing all this together!
Huge gardens always seem like a great idea to me in the dead of winter. Now that spring is officially here, it seems like a lot of work, LOL.
Sigh.
Ah well. Time to get my hands dirty. All the indoor seedlings have been planted and the blueberries, blackberries and grapes will be here any day. Here are the befores:
Wisconsin is one of the few places where 48-degrees can feel like a heat wave! :-) It's amazing what a little warmth and sunshine can do for my attitude. We have had a long, cold, snowy winter. Yes, I know it is Wisconsin and we always have cold, snowy winters, but this year was particularly harsh. We had over 98 inches of snow this winter -- the second snowiest season ever!
Yet, today the sun is shining and the birds are singing. It's 48-degrees and I'm itching to do something ... anything .... outside in the garden. Not the new, unplanted vegetable garden, but one of the already established flower gardens. There isn't much I can do -- the soil is very wet -- but maybe I can rake out the old mulch from the front garden. The next few days are all supposed to be nice, so there is plenty of time to rake out the old mulch and put fresh mulch down. Also, I still need to add weed barrier & mulch to the back garden. I want to get that done before starting the vegetable garden because I definitely don't want to be worrying about weeds in the flower gardens this year! The vegetable garden will keep me busy enough!
My mom and I got together yesterday and finalized the garden plan. Yay! Here is the overall view of the entire backyard:
The northern side of the yard shows what we planted last year. The blueberries and blackberries will go along the eastern fence. NB=Northland Blueberry, PB = Patriot Blueberry, and BB= Stenulson Blackberry. The vegetable garden will be planted on the western side of the yard. Here is a close up of what we are planning to do there:
On the northern side of the garden, we have our grapes in the first row. In the next row of three beds, we have potatoes and two kinds of heirloom tomatoes. In the western long bed, we have peas, bush beans, beets, cauliflower, and broccoli. In the eastern long bed, we have peas, peppers, carrots, onions, herbs, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers. In the most southern row, we have watermelon and radishes.
Here is our list of things to do:
Stake out garden borders
Rototill
Stake out garden beds
Lay down newspaper and straw in walkways
Till compost into each garden bed
Add top soil to create raised beds
Build fence
Plant :-)
Now, if it would only stop snowing so that spring could come!
"One of the most striking characteristics of each "depression period" is the tacit acknowledgment of city dwellers that "the farm is the safest place to live;" for though there is each year a migration from the country to the city and a counter movement to the suburbs and a less pronounced one to more agricultural environment, the movement becomes an exodus when business takes a slump and employees are thrown out of work.
So long as the income continues the employee is prone to quell what desires he may have for rural life and to tolerate the disadvantages of urban surroundings rather than to drop a certainty for an uncertainty; but when hard times arrive and his savings steadily melt away he begins to appreciate the advantages of a home which does not gobble up his hard earned money but produces much of its up-keep, especially in the way of food for the family.
...
In a poignant sense city existence is non-productive; it deals with what has been produced elsewhere. Moreover it is dependent upon "income" to supply "outgo" and in the great majority of cases has nothing to show -- not even character -- for all the time and effort spent. Country life reverses this order; it not only produces "outgo" to supply "income" but when well ordered it provides "surplus." Nay, further, it develops character in the man and each member of the family."
Not that we're planning on moving to the country. I just like the sentiment. I'm excited that we will be, Lord willing, able to be productive with the land we have already been given. My mom grew up on a farm and she has already taught me so much about preserving food -- canning tomatoes, freezing vegetables, and making applesauce, jams and jellies. Hopefully, this year she can expand the lessons! :-)
I just completed my order with Woodstock Nursery! Can you believe that some varieties are already sold out? That was very surprising to me. It's nice to know I have my order in and my berry plants will be delivered in April.
Here are the fruit plants that we will be planting:
The plants are really economical when you realize that you can have three whole bushes for the same cost as 3 pints of berries at the grocery store!
"The land! That is where our roots are. There is the basis of our physical life. The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity. From the land comes everything that supports life, everything we use for the service of physical life. The land has not collapsed or shrunk in either extent or productivity. It is there waiting to honor all the labor we are willing to invest in it, and able to tide us across any local dislocation of economic conditions. No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between man and a plot of land." ~Henry Ford
The life of the husbandman of all others is the most delectable. It is honorable, it is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable. To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived than expressed. ~George Washington
The first step, for me, in planning a garden in making a garden plan. That is, turning this:
Into this:
Lucky for me this year in that I did all the hard work of measuring last year! Now I can plan away. I am planning on putting the vegetable garden in the most Western part of the yard, between the Silver Maples and the fence. There are for two reasons for this -- there is a lot of afternoon sun over there and also, it will keep the garden out of the path of little boys! This is approximately a 45' long by 18' wide area -- more than enough room for what I have in mind!
Also, on the Eastern side of the yard, where the little circles have no letter in them, I am thinking about planting berry bushes. (Just ignore the spacing and placement of the circles -- that is left over from my planning last year!) I found a neat site yesterday -- Woodstock Nursery -- that have zone appropriate blueberry and blackberry bushes! Yummy!
Totally unrelated, but isn't the snow house the boys built above awesome? They built it with Dave this past weekend. I am completely impressed with their skills! :-0
I love this little book! It was written in the 1940's and is about small scale homesteading. I bought it a few years ago, and pull it out every now and then to dream ...
This plan is the story of our place, of my family and me. It's the true story of how we have built our homestead. I hope you will be able to get some new ideas from it.
We call our plan -- the "Have-More" Plan because that is the way it worked for us. Our plan shows how you can have a lovely home of your own on a piece of land that will furnish your family with food, recreation and health ...
You'll have far smaller weekly grocery, meat, and milk bills. With the small scale, modern, labor-saving methods we'll show you, you can raise 75% of all your family's food and find real pleasure in doing it.
I'd love to buy 2 acres in the country someday -- far enough out to feel rural, but close enough for Dave to still work in the city. Ideally, we could have a small orchard (apple, pear, peach and plum trees), lots of berry plants (strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry), and a huge vegetable garden. And, a few chickens. {grin Chrystal}
Considering food prices are expected to rise sharply this year, I'm glad that we've already gotten our garden plans underway for this home, this year. Feeding three growing boys is already expensive! It will be nice to have some offset to the grocery bill.
Hi ... I'm Heather! I have been married for ten years and am a stay at home homeschooling mom to three boys. My blog title is taken from the book 'Stepping Heavenward' by Elizabeth Prentiss. We live in the wonderful state of Wisconsin.
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