planting, watering, and composting ... oh, my!

A lot has happened garden-wise since my last post. Just wait until you see some of the photos! M and I have probably spent 25 hours over the past few weeks developing our green thumbs (and sore backs, bruised knees) tilling, weeding, building beds, mulching, spreading soil and planting. It's no surprise I have developed a newfound respect for famers, especially the ones that adhere to organic farming methods, and I'm wearing my cuts and bruises like badges of farmer-girl honor.

And now that most of the hard manual labor is over, I've been basking in the excitement of literally growing my own food.

Rows and rows of veggies

After much research, I decided to construct raised beds to grow my vegetables in. Not only are raised beds attractive, they give the roots of plants extra room to stretch out and ultimately produce the best fruits and vegetables possible.

One of the reasons I love community gardening is the opportunity to actually talk to the community. I've met several of my garden plot neighbors already, all who have really great advice and tips to share.  I received a tip about the spacing of my vegetables (see below).  Being an ultra instruction-follower, I planted my vegetables 6" apart, just like the tag said. Apparently that's too far apart.

Raised beds with plants too far apart

There's a whole style of gardening called biointensive gardening (I'll go into it more another day) and after reading up on it myself, I replanted everything, which in turn made space for twice the amount of vegetables.

Raised beds with the right spacing between plants

As of now, I have the following planted in my garden (a mixture of plants and direct seeds):

Romaine lettuce, wild lettuce mix, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, swiss chard, kohlrabi, spinach, beets, onions (sweet, red and scallions) and parsley.

These are all considered cool-weather plants and will (hopefully) be ready for harvest in a month or so. Once it gets warmer out, I can plant tomatoes, cucumbers and the rest of my herbs. 

Did I mention I'm over the moon about growing my own food? Besides the lackluster tomato (yes, single tomato) I grew a couple of years ago, I have never reaped fruits and vegetables from my very own garden so this is a very exciting first for me. 

Gardening is more time-consuming than I had originally thought. I've been at the plot pretty much everyday since we got it and there's still more work that can be done. At the same time, it's almost therapeutic, at least for me. There's something extremely calming and peaceful about being in the garden early in the morning, the smell of dew still fresh in the air, birds singing, the sun shining. It's just perfect. 

For any of you in Howard County: The HoCo Recycling Department is giving away free compost kits (that's mine in the top left corner in the photo above). All you have to do is go to the county office, fill out a form and get the kit. They also have free paper lawn bags, too. 

Until next time, happy gardening, peace and love --

~Jo