Let's Get This Garden Started

I love summer so much! Ok, I know it isn't truly summer yet, but this Memorial Day weekend was warm enough to be called summer and it was the start of our vegetable garden.

This will be our 3rd year having a vegetable garden and I keep learning more and more every year.
We (meaning my husband while I sat back and drank wine and told him he was doing a good job) expanded the garden this year. More space = more vegetable goodness!

The past two years we just bought whatever starter plants we wanted at Remus Farms in Hobart, IN and put them in what we thought was a good layout. Last year our tomato plants were gargantuan and over took our garden and some of our peppers didn't grow. But we yielded lots of cucumber pickles. Which I happily canned for the first time and loved doing it too! This year I found a book at the library called Square Foot Gardening.

 This book got lots of vegetable growing ideas in my head, such as how many vegetables to plant per square foot based on how big your garden is and how much you will actually grow and actually use. It also gave a lot of great ways to grow plants such as cucumbers, cantaloupes, and watermelons upward rather than on the ground. I followed a  lot of the advice in the books on where to put my plants in the garden also. It was a bit cramped last year and I tried to spread the plants out a little more this year. But my mind sees these small plants and makes me think I need to cram more and more in the open space. I always forget that plants grow, and some grow big! So my mantra for planting today was leave space for growth.

Beginning of our expanded garden. My husband does a special combo mix of soil, peet moss, and manure. Which is another wonderful tidbit I got from the above mentioned book. My husband has done this every year with his own special mixture. The book gives great examples on how to follow the authors mixture.

The starter plants I got this year are 2 different types of cucumber pickles (8 total), 2 different types of tomato plants (8 total), hot banana peppers (2), jalapeno peppers (6), cantaloupe (2), watermelon (2), spinach (4), broccoli (4), and cauliflower (4). The last three I have never grown before so I am excited to see how they will turn out.

The finished planted garden!! The back row are the cucumbers. The tomatoe plants are on either sides. The canteloupe are front left followed by hot banan peppers, and spinach. The bottom right are the watermelons, then jalapeno peppers, and then cauliflower. The broccoli is in the middle.

All my spaced (hopefully spaced far enough apart) rows. We still need to add something for the cucumbers, cantaloupes and watermelons to grow upwards on. After that, it is just a little organic fertilizer, watering, pruning, and reaping the rewards of hard work! I am hoping to continue my canning of salsa and dill pickles this year too.

Just thought I would throw in a shot of how dirty I got today with all my planting!!

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I hope to take a picture week by week so you can see my garden's progress. I am sure my journey with a larger garden will lead me to have some tips and pointers for any gardeners out there.

I hope your green thumb is itching to get some planting done on your end!