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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Blog Revival

Goodness, it's been a while since I've posted here.  I got a little distracted (one might even call it obsessed) by other things.  That distraction can be found at my other blog.  But I'm back here, and changing things up a little.

It's June and it feels like summer, but summer won't officially begin until next Thursday.  Until then, we are sending the kids off to school where they do things like have reading day field day, and go on field trips.  Like summer camp, only not.

I certainly don't blame the teachers... I think everyone is antsy for the school year to be over.  I read a funny post here that pretty much sums it all up for me.  So glad to know I'm not the only one who "tapped out" a while ago!

We've been pretty busy trying to get an organic garden started.  Here are the fruits of our labor thus far:



We actually have had a few more berries, but a certain little strawberry-loving three-year old keeps picking them as they ripen.

The garden was started with both seeds (non-GMO) and organic starter plants.  We seem to be gardening by trial and error, and I wish I had taken the time to do a little research on how to grow the different types of vegetables and fruit we've selected.  We didn't analyze any further than "Does it need full sun" and "How deep do we need to dig." 

We did make one decision that affects the garden.  When we moved into this place in November, we realized we had company:

 
A colony of honeybees in the bottom half of an old utility pole.  At first we thought to give them to a beekeeping friend, but we will keep them where they are for now to help propagate the garden.

Now that I have taken the trouble to read up on gardening, I'm finding that the soil is poor- very  compacted with a clay-like texture and with bits of concrete mixed in (!).  Ken says the concrete was most probably thrown into the soil when the fences were put up.  After this growing season I'm going to try my hand at lasagna gardening to amend the soil for the next growing season. 

Anyone out there with organic gardening tips, please feel free to put in your two cents.  I'm a newbie at this, and any tips or info would be greatly appreciated!

1 comment:

  1. My soil wasn't great in my garden either - again lots of clay. I have been here 9 years now and have put in lots of homemade compost, bags of sheep manure (from the garden centre) bags of stable sweepings/horse manure from local horse studs. Coffee grounds in your compost are good too. its is slowly getting better - gypsum (from a hardware store) helps break down clay too. Good luck for next summer.

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