The Gardener's Garden

Happy New Year!

And I can't think of a better time to dust off the old blog a bit. Actually, a lot. 

Long time, no blog; and I have some updating to do. I'll give you the cliff notes version. 

I finished school in June. Yay! 

Started working full time at the chef's garden that I had my internship at. Yay!

My social life saw a revival. Yay!

Sewed like crazy because I had markets, bazaars, and fairs for my booth. :gasp: Yes, I was a vendor at multiple events this past season. Yay!

Psst, you can keep up with those adventures on my sewing blog. ;) 

And I have a legitimate excuse for ignoring this little digital space.

You know the saying, "The cobbler's children are barefoot"? 

I'd like to add to it. "The gardener's garden is abandoned." 

I went to school to learn how to farm and garden. My garden should be :amazing:

Well, the garden that I work at is well cared for.

Mine, on the other hand, gets very little time dedicated to it. It's weedy, in desperate need of regular watering, and in need of just getting actually finished. I know, a garden is never 'finished,' but I would like to have the basic design and parameters of the space established, and I could just put in plants and garden around it. That would be kind of nice. 

In the summer of '16, we finally bit the dust and built raised beds. We put down weed block because we started finding baby MORNING GLORY. Not cool. At all. I was mad, and upset, and frustrated that I spend all my precious little time digging those things out. So we built the beds. 

It wasn't in time for the summer garden that year, but it was just in time for the fall garden. We took some wire and cut it to the width of the beds, and bought some frost blanket. That was also just in time for one of our snowier, colder winters. 

And that was the first time we had broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, carrots, parsnips, and garlic. Actually, it was my first overwintered garden at home. I call that a success. 

By next the next spring, the overwintered things were all done, and summer plants put in. I loved the minimal effort in getting the beds ready, and the timed drip irrigation, and the noticeable lack of weeding that needed to be done. Compared to everywhere else on the property, it was nice to not have to worry about the vegetable garden for once.

By the end of this summer, I quickly realized that the summer veggies weren't going to be done in time to get the fall/winter crops in, so we made a few more boxes to expand the area. Slowly we will build the full garden plan. Baby steps. :nods:

One of my goals for this year is to set up better infrastructure the areas that we've developed to make our daily routines easier. The blueberries, strawberries, herb garden, orchard, etc.. This year we could get a better handle on the weed pressure, be better about mulching and suppression, installing timed irrigation so we don't have to water everything by hand, etc... We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we'll just keep chipping away at it.  

I have some more fun and exciting things and developments to share with you this year, so hopefully I can get around to updating more often. :D 

Until next time!

SG