Seed Catalog Pilgrimage

The arrival of the New Year means delivery of the annual seed catalogs.  This event is something I look forward to every year.  I love looking through all the colorful delightful pages of beautiful vegetables, herbs, and flowers.  Learning about all the varieties and possibilities.  I start dreaming and planning for my garden and all the wonderful food I will grow this season.  Gardening is in my blood - we always had a huge garden as a child - probably because we needed to supplement our family.  We were not rich and my parents helped stretch their budget by growing vegetables, picking fruits, and bartering for meat.  As a child, I did not love the garden.  It represented work to me.  I would have sworn that instead of vegetables we grew rocks.  Every spring we spent hours picking rocks from the garden in preparation for planting.  They seemed to multiply over the winter.

As an adult living in various cities my gardening was limited to pots.  I pretty much always had tomatoes, peppers, and herbs growing somewhere in my yard or on my apartment patio.  With the decision to move away from city life seven years ago, my gardening opportunities increased greatly.  I am expanding my crops yearly and learning how to make the most of my garden space.  I am experimenting with companion plants, natural soil supplements, and alternative pest control options.  DH and I took a 6 week sustainable farming class through the local University Extension last winter where we learned how much we don't know about farming!

Last year, with the purchase of our land, my gardening activities were much more interesting than usual.  It is my intention to eventually have a combination of raised beds and traditional rows for my veggies plus a small orchard.  But right now we have bare ground.  That fact is both exhilarating and daunting.  We have a lot of work ahead of us, however, we also have a blank slate to work with.  I am thrilled with the thought of planning out my garden from the very bare earth and designing it how I want it.  It is also our goal with this garden to make it as self-sufficient as possible so that we are not completely tied down during the summer season. Water systems will be efficient and automatic. Weeds will be deterred with mulches and ground covers.  Because as much as we like to eat fresh food - we also like to play!

Last summer we got the garden started by fencing a 60x60 foot patch of hay field to prevent deer and elk from getting in. Our neighbor came over and plowed it up for us.  We didn't have time to get in a drip line system so we hand watered all summer.  Lesson learned!  We will have a drip line system in this year.  We didn't have a lot of time to prepare so the garden was pretty limited but we did end up with some nice vegggies.  And boy did we learn a lot!  

This fall we scored some big tractor tires from a local farmer for free and I started my garlic in one in October.  I will use some of them for planters up by the barn and some in the garden for warm season crops like tomatoes.  Stay tuned - I'll take you along on the journey!

Garden before plowing.

Garden after plowing.