Starting up the Garden

First, we bring in the big guns! We had sold our tractor in Colorado when we left and only NOW find out it was a collector tractor…our new one is as well and we paid close to the same price…soo it’s all good! Here's what a tractor can do in short order!

 With the ranch, we inherited an old swing set that was beyond repair and actually dangerous. We thought maybe we’d just scrap it but that inventive spirit hit and we decided it would be a great backdrop for a garden! Since we didn’t have a tractor, Daniel did his best to tiller it up for us and we made due with a small garden…the first year we just experimented but soon found out this ground just, like Colorado ground, needed a lot of amending to the soil. Oh, it was rich and black enough but would dry up hard as a rock and crack in the heat of summer and become a sponge when it rained. We didn’t have time to build up a compost, soo, we went down to Habitat and got LOTS of bags of garden soil at a cheaper price to get us started.

Once the ground was broken up and cleared, Daniel brought his tiller in to dig deeper. He then filled it up further with compost...so it is "Double Dug" to about 24 inches which helps retain the soil when it rains and gives new plants or seedlings room to easily stretch out and build their root systems. Because we now have compost, we were able to double our garden space.

Jessie is standing in the middle of where the old garden stopped and where the added garden starts.

We had such a problem with squash vine borers last year that I am going to start out my heirloom seeds inside and get the plants fairly large to get them in the ground by the first of Sept. The vine borers come out the last week of June and last well into July or a little beyond. Since we have a long growing season, thought I might give this a try! Last year I lost my gorgeous squash to the borer and in reading up about them, they're nearly impossible to get rid of if they've gotten into your soil but they will die out the next year without a host. So, say a pray and wish me luck!  ;) This year I wasn't even going to plant at all and just give the soil a rest. But, a dear friend of our offered some extras that she had started from seed and had no more room to plant! That got us going! So, have scoured stores around and found some heirloom plants! We'll mainly be planting hot crops for the summer which will be a lot of varieties of peppers and tomatoes, and the plants that our friend gave us.

I planted a vining rose last year and these Tea Roses. The Tea Roses I transplanted as they were at the edge of my  old garden so am hoping they take.