Operation Garden 2012

If you've followed my blog awhile you're probably wondering why there hasn't been a garden post yet this year (or not??). We've done a huge vegetable garden in our yard since we moved here back in 2008. This year we had every intention of planting again only half the square footage we normally do. It just never happened because I was too hugely pregnant to get down and dirty and since we don't have our own tiller yet we couldn't justify the cost (and hassle) of renting one for a smaller spot this year.

A.R. does most of the early hard labor tilling the land, so I wouldn't have had to do a ton early on except start seedlings and show him how to plant them. With a new baby due in June I knew my time would be limited to weed and maintain the garden, though, and A.R. doesn't have the patience for weeding. Plus, after our horrible squash bug infestation last year I did some reading and the best way to kill them naturally is to not plant for a season so the eggs die. Since we feed veggies from our garden to our kids not using chemicals is key to us.

We both still really wanted something home grown this year and on a recent trip to Home Depot we decided we didn't have to give it all up. A Topsy Turvy or two hung on our porch would work perfectly! This spring, operation garden 2012 started on our porch. M and A.R. set up our Topsy Turvies together with some serious father-daughter bonding and we also bought a strawberry planter as well. We hope to transplant the strawberries to our yard at the end of the season.

We planted two tomato plants in the Topsy Turvies and they are growing awesome so far. At last count we had just over a half dozen tomatoes growing, but they have yet to ripen. I hope they do soon as we haven't had a home grown tomato since our first summer here. Last year they just didn't grow well and the year before our state had horrible tomato blight and they rotted before ripening. I can't wait to have my first tomato and mayo sandwich this summer!! :)

Next year, I hope our "real" garden will return full swing. We have great plans for it including edging part of it using raspberry and blueberry bushes as a natural fence.