Full sun

A nifty tip in Crockett's Victory Garden suggests planting garden rows that run N/S.  The logic here is that all of the plants will receive the benefit of full sun.  Before I ventured outside Sunday afternoon to consider the location and size of the garden, I armed myself with a compass. 

First, I established due south and due north and marked the locations with a stake.  The blue string in the image marks the N/S direction.  As of right now, the overall garden size is 15' deep by 24' wide.  Between each bed will be a path that is 36" wide, making the individual beds 5' x 7'.  The benefit of four individual beds is that they can be accessed from all four sides more easily than one large bed, especially in John's case.   Hmm, now I'm wondering if the beds themselves shouldn't be set up in a N/S direction as well?  Long angled beds ( \ \ \ \ \ ) instead of four rectangular beds ( = = ).  Hmmm.

It felt so nice to be in the yard contemplating where to establish the garden as well as other flower beds.  No snow, just grass under foot, the warm bright sun, and the scent of the warming Earth.  Before we know it, we'll be slicing into our first homegrown tomato and eating it with a few leaves of freshly picked basil.

The garlic continues to grow rapidly and there are several seeds that have sprouted in the seed flats!  So far, all six hollyhock seeds have sprouted, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli. 

Now, the biggest task that remains is to determine how much soil to have delivered and what to use as the border for the raised garden beds.  Fun, fun, fun!

Allium Sativum

Garlic, sweet, garlic. 

Even as small as these shoots are, they smell heavenly.  And as each variety of garlic will have its own distinctive flavor, each shoot has a unique scent.

We purchased our garlic bulbs from Seed Savers Exchange.  Their selection is great and have never failed to produce.  We have Chet's Italian Red, German Extra Hardy and Georgian Fire growing.  The name of the forth variety escapes me right now.

Hello, Neighbor!

John and I couldn't be more thrilled with the arrival of spring!  For the past couple weeks we have watched slender green fingers push their way through the surface of the soil in the flower bed nearest the driveway and along the front of the house.  Many of the flowers that are growing have been planted by a previous home owner and we are excited to see what blooms.  As for the iris', a smattering of tulip bulbs and a trillium we did plant in the beds nearest the house, we do see evidence of newly awakened life there, too.  Ah, the wonderful color of green is slowly returning to the Midwest!

Late last summer you may recall that we transplanted several thousand day lily tubers along the fence that runs the length of the front yard as well as a nice row alongside the ramp.  There are signs of growth here too and we are looking forward to seeing last seasons hard work in full bloom.  Hopefully, the peony bush we transplanted has survived and will show itself soon.

We have garlic!  Although establishing a vegetable garden last year was too much to take on, I wasn't going to pass on planting garlic.  Heck, no!  A small bed was made, supplimented with mushroom compost and a few handfuls of leaves, and in went the garlic cloves.  Four different varieties of garlic to be exact and six cloves of each variety was planted in neat rows.  This morning, before heading off to work, I decided to inspect the garlic bed to see if sprouts were peeking out of the thick blanket of leaf cover, and there are!  Twelve garlic sprouts can easily be seen so far.  In my experience with growing garlic, there has never been a clove that hasn't sprouted so I expect that we will have a full harvest of 24 bulbs of garlic come mid-July. 

Our yard is a blank palette just waiting for John and I to flex our green thumbs.  We plan to plant an Eastern Redbud tree in the front yard this year, establish a vegetable and herb garden in the back yard, as well as plant a number of different flowers that will attract butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and bats to our yard.  As our flowers bloom and work progresses, we will post photos here for you to enjoy.  It'll be fun for us to see a timeline of how our yard changes, too.

Less grass!  More food.

Lisa & John