Thursday, April 5, 2012

The Garden

Last year the Briary River crew decided to grow a summer garden, the main staple of which was beans and corn.  This year we decided to start early with a winter garden then a summer garden.  We have some idea of what we are doing since we all grew up working in our parents gardens but we are also trying to branch out and try new things.

Luckily for us Buckman’s Mom owns a field right beside their house so it is the perfect location for a garden.  We have about 14 one hundred foot rows planted now for the winter garden.  We have carrots, winter peas, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, red potatoes, white potatoes, onions and we have already planted some squash and tomatoes. 

The first row is the carrots.  We have experimented with carrots before but we did not have much success.  This year Bernie used sawdust as the bedding.  Again it did not look good.  We kept checking and nothing was ever happening.  Several of us wanted to just give up and plow the row under but we decided to just leave it alone and if it grew it grew and if it didn’t then it didn’t.  Luckily we did not plow it under because it took a while but now we have a nice row of carrots.

The next three rows are winter peas.  This was another first for us.  Not knowing much about winter peas we decided to plant them like butter beans.  The kids however had another idea.  While we were planting the rows of beans I looked up to see the kids pouring some of the seeds out into a pile beside the garden.  Your first instinct is to fuss at them but we knew they were just kids wanting to do what we were doing and besides they only wasted 50 cents worth.  Our beans are coming up good but the beans the kids planted are making ours look bad.  Theirs is coming up thick and nice.  We have decided that next year we are going to take their advice and plant ours more like theirs.

Third is the spinach.  Again it was a first for us and an experiment that I wanted to do.  It grew fantastic, and now we have more spinach then I know what to do with.

The lettuce and the cabbage are also growing fantastic.

Next is the potatoes.  We planted 2 rows of white and 2 rows of red.  The reds started out good, but the whites were not doing anything.  When we checked, many of them were starting to rot.  We decided to plant a couple more rows of whites and now the first rows are coming up great.  I have no idea what we are going to do with 6 rows of potatoes but we will not go hungry.  The squash and tomatoes are growing right along but it will be a little while before we know anything for sure but we have grown those before.

As soon as I can get the tractor running again we can get started on the summer garden and the corn, but that is another post.

At least we know that we are feeding out families fresh and healthy food.

Joe        

2 comments:

  1. Joe exaggerates. we know very little about what we are doing, most of it is an experiment.

    Buckman

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