Garden Beginnings

If you’ve been reading here much at all, you know I’m a fledgling gardener.  Last summer, guided by my generous neighbors, we had fun planting and harvesting potatoes and onions (wanted to start with a sure thing).  After we dug those up early in July we capitalized on our already prepared growing area and tried our hand at tomatoes and bell peppers. Success!  And… fun!

This year we are expanding, considering in the process some helpful advice from my blog readers.  With the windows thrown open to the spring breeze last week, the churning of our neighbor’s rototiller lured us out to the garden.

It is time!  Our garden areas are side by side, separated only by a few white posts that supported the fence that used to divide our properties.  Grinning as, one by one, my children settled into the newly tilled dirt with their little rakes and shovels, our neighbor gave me the raised eyebrow that asked “Want me to do your side, too?”  Seriously!  It was just that easy to tackle garden tilling – round one.

We all got in on the action.  Lance put pressure on the front end of the tiller, encouraging it to tear up grass and roots to expand our planting area.  I then yanked at roots while the kids dug to China.

Meanwhile, my blogging friend Phoebe has been busy planting and nurturing her Heirloom seeds. It seems she had a few extra, and how blessed am I that she sent me some! Here they are, soaking on the kitchen counter.

Yesterday the kids and I got busy planting seeds in our miniature greenhouse.  I’ve not had much luck with seeds in the past… between the “oops, I lost that one” and the finger poking and the flooding over-watering I figure if 1/2 of them sprout we’ll break out the happy dance.

I didn’t have any plastic thingies (told ya, novice gardener) that would remind me what I planted where, so I improvised. Using shiny star stickers, I labeled a piece of paper with each seed name and then put a matching star by the seeds in the greenhouse.

As long as my cheat sheet stays with the greenhouse, and the 30 little fingers in our home don’t disrupt the order of the stickers, we should be good to go.

I am absolutely grateful today for our neighbors and awesome blogging friends who gave me helpful gardening advice and even some seeds!  Visit Laura’s blog for more Gratituesday.

This post is also linked to Talk About Tuesday and Tackle it Tuesday.