The Garden

So, I mentioned a while ago wanting to tell you about our garden this year. This year, we read a bit of Square Foot Gardening and decided to make raised garden beds from cinder blocks. Nothing we've planted in the ground has flourished.

So first Jake tilled the area we'd like to use for garden space.


Then as we laid the cinder blocks down to make the first garden bed, Jake sifted through the soil. This was a very long process. So long... that we only got one bed done and we were late getting our plants in the ground as it was! This is what the soil looked like before.


This is what Jake made to sift the soil:

Then he'd take a small scoop of dirt, and use his hands to pick out the big rocks, large clumps of weeds, and rub the dirt around as it sifted down.



And this was the result:


Once the bed was finished, we mixed in peat moss, vermiculite, and wood ash.

Our goal is to make more beds sometime before the winter, so that they're ready for next year. But we'll follow the advice in Square Foot Gardening next time and make them about 4x4 instead of our 10x10.

Here are the latest results of the growth in the garden. I hope we have enough warm weather left for everything to ripen!!

Our hot peppers:


Our tomato jungle:

And... last but not least, the mysterious pumpkin plant growing in our compost! That's right! We think the pumpkins we had last fall must have been heirloom because they have reseeded and we have about 5 pumpkins growing with at least a dozen more flowers!