Tuesday, May 21, 2019

2019 Garden Season has Begun!

Hi friends!

It's been awhile since I've updated on here....nearly an entire year!  This winter was rough...and long.  Ashlyn started school full time, I went back to work part time and life just seemed to get busier and very overwhelming.  But, the kids and I only have two weeks left of school/work and are ready to take on summer full swing!


The past two years, we've planted our garden on Mother's Day.  This year, it was a brisk 45 degrees on Mother's Day....so no garden planting for us!  Instead, we waited until this past weekend where we planted the garden on our warmest day yet - low 80's and sunny.  It was such a beautiful day!





Most things were planted by seed.  I did purchase tomato, tomatillo, hot pepper, cabbage, and sweet potato plants.  Tomatoes and peppers are hard for us to grow by seed due to their longer germination period.  Cabbage and sweet potatoes were impulse purchases ;)  Due to our terrible season dealing with Squash Vine Borers last summer, we decided to not grow any types of squash this year.  We're hoping by taking a year off, they'll disappear.  #fingerscrossed


The kids were spending the day/night at Jason's parents last Saturday so it was the perfect opportunity to get the garden planted.  In just under 6 hours, we were able to plant most of our 3,000 sqft garden.  We planted everything except the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cabbage before we called it quits for the evening.  Here is a little view of the garden before the planting began:





We went big this year - nearly every available space has been taken up in our garden.  We started with the tomatoes.  We planted 48 canning tomatoes and 47 roma tomatoes.  I have yet to be able to can enough tomatoes to last us through a winter...so that's the goal this year!  Next, we moved on to corn.  We ended up with six rows this year - approximately 220 corn seeds were dropped in the ground!  Last year, we decided to mark our rows of veggies with marigolds. 





For beans this year we just went with two varieties - one pole bean and one bush bean.  Sixty-six black bush beans and 94 pole beans were planted. 





Another large planting this year was onions.  We went with onion sets this year instead of seeds (wise choice!) and ended up planting about 120. 





We tamed down on cucumbers this year and only planted half of what we planted last year.  We still have a shelf of pickles in our garage fridge so we just planted six mounds for eating.  We are also trying cucamelons for the first time this year.  I've never grown them nor eaten them so I'm pretty excited about those!





Another new thing we're trying this year is tomatillos.  I've become quite the fan of Salsa Verde in the past year or so, so I'm excited to grow these for the first time as well!  We went light on peppers this year as well - four jumbo jalapenos and four Hungarian Wax peppers.  I just wanted some for salsa and that are big enough to stuff and grill.





We ended up with about 120 peas in the ground, a small row of beets and a row of carrots and radishes as well.  I ended up picking up four cabbage plants and thought that we should give sweet potatoes a try as well...so we have three of those in the ground.





We went with two types of potatoes this year - fingerling and Yukon gold.  I planted 100 potato starts in the ground.  ONE HUNDRED.  If they all sprout and produce potatoes I don't know what we're going to do!





Well, there is a little update on our garden.  The plan is to keep updates a'coming....but we all know how busy and crazy life gets!  Hoping for another beautiful weekend so I can get more/better pictures posted.  Maybe even a little garden tour???

Until next time,

~ Sara