The Garden

Originally, I had planned on planting straight in the ground. A husband of a local church member came and tilled up the old garden spot that Uncle Ishmael and Aunt Winnie had always used. And then it got very cold. And then it rained again. And then it got very cold again. Finally, the sun came out and I went over to the spot to make a plan of exactly where I would plant my veggies.
And then I saw the rocks.
There were thousands and thousands of them.
And maybe a million more.

So I decided to go the raised vegetable bed route. The Pioneer Woman has a great tutorial on how to make one so I went to Lowes and stocked up on the supplies I needed.

I picked what seemed like a lovely spot. It was going to look very Beatrice Potter-ish.  The view was right out my bedroom window so that I could see my thriving plants first thing every morning. 

It was also right over the septic tank. Mom and I had spent the better part of a day building and leveling these bed so it was a tiny bit disheartening to have to move them. I had staked them into the ground, so I waited until I had my brothers and brothers-in-law here to help me pull them up and relocate them. And by help me, I mean they moved them while I walked beside and directed.  Good thing I was there or it would have been pure chaos. I'm sure of it.

So "we" moved them over to where the garden had been tilled earlier and the boys called it a day.

This afternoon (why I waited until the hottest part of the day to do this, I'll never know) I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled a truck bed worth of dirt into garden #1.  I don't think I've been this proud of my self for tenacity and pushing-through since I helped Grandpa break up the old concrete well with a sledge hammer. That was a good day.

Eily really came through the last five minutes and tossed some dirt in with her hands. I just don't know if I could have handled that last little bit without her help. :)

We were finally ready to plant. Hooray! We planted tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, rosemary, and sweet potatoes. I still have some basil and cilantro that needs to be planted ASAP but as you can see in the pictures, garden # 2 still has a ways to go before it can accept any plants. 

I really wanted to get that finished this week but I have to travel to the big city to get the dirt and we are supposed to have bad weather Thursday and Friday. I may try to do it on Saturday but that's a lot of work for one day.  I also need to decide what else I want to plant. I'm trying to plant the things I spend the most money on at the grocery store. I know I want to plant green beans and onions, but that's all I can think of. Any suggestions? I would love to plant corn but I don't know if corn would work in this type of garden.