So I have just about finished planting my garden for this year. This Memorial Day weekend, I took Friday off so I could have a four day weekend. I'm glad I did as we expanded the size of this years garden in the back yard. It' probably 25' by 15' or there abouts.
Friday I spend pretty much all day tilling. I rented a roto tiller from Home Depot and started in at about 9:45. I didn't finish until about 6PM. I only rented it for 24 hours so I had to return it by 9:15 on Saturday. I wouldn't have minded going through one last time of turning the garden. But it was sufficient. It was a long day made better by my daughter's boyfriend and my youngest son chipping in to help with the tilling.
You may recall from last year that we actually have two gardens in our backyard. The smaller garden was 8' by 18' or so. This year I decided that I wanted to plant some berries so we planted two blueberry bushes and two raspberry bushes. Over a longer period of time, this garden plot is probably too small, but I expect to move next year or the following year. So they'll get dug up and taken with us anyway. I did plant the berry bushes on Friday.
For the expanded larger garden, I decided to have a "fenced" in part and an unfenced part. That way I don't have to buy any more "fencing" but can still protect some of my plants from the dastardly groundhog terrorizing my neighbors and I. So on Saturday, I put in the edging around the whole garden. We bought some plastic edging from Walmarts (cheap is good in this case). Two 50 foot rolls of edging. Inside of that I added all the wood planks we had for last years garden right inside that edging. The fencing is actually from a long roll of window screens since that's much cheaper than buying the gardening fencing. It works just as good.
On the unfenced portion Arisa and I planted marigolds, alyssum, onions, peppers, jalepenos and some parsley. The ground hog likes the parsley so planted some where he could get it without trying to climb the fence. Oh yes, ground hogs can climb fences. Quite quickly actually. I saw him do it yesterday afternoon. Anyway, of particular interest to me is the lavender and rosemary that I planted.
In the fenced in portion I have six tomato plants, green beans, soy beans, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, celery, pak choy, mizuna and a few other things including more peppers. Not sure what all is going to come in well but we'll see.
My experiment this year is horseradish. I love horseradish particularly on roast beef. I also love horseradish cheese, but that's neither here nor there. So when I saw the horseradish on sale at Gale's, I bought it. We'll see how it does. Never seen horseradish, check out the next picture.
I am also trying out potatoes(2) this year to see what happens. And I left one plant/weed that I actually think is Gobo (Greater Burdock). If it's not, no big thing but I know I tossed some gobo seeds there last year and they didn't come up. So I'm wondering if those seeds came in this year.
Of course we have our strawberries again this year. Had the first one yesterday and it is so much better than store boughten! The cherry tree is really producing fruit this year. Last year the crop got decimated by a hail storm, but this year we're looking good so far. The cherries are already ripening though it's really a month early. I tried two this morning and they still have a few days, maybe a week to go on the ones that are already red. I hoping we can harvest some before the birds and squirrels get them. My spearmint and peppermint are also coming along nicely as well. Check out the slideshow from this weekend below.
Like last year, I'll post occasionally on the progress of the garden. And just as I finish this post and gardening for the weekend, the thunder start rumbling. Well at least I won't need to water my garden today!
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