Gardening, I feel is the life blood of a homestead. Of course, I may feel differently after I start raising animals lol!!!, but consider all vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts, grains, beans
and food for the animals come from growing things. Gardening is where I am starting. This is my first year of gardening. In the past I have grown a few things like a tomato and pepper plant in a pot last year that only produced like one or two fruits each and the critters got them before I did. lol!!! I also had a decent parsley plant in my kitchen window for about a year, but that is my full resume of growing veggies before this year. We had planned to build raised beds but between the weather and lack of time, they never got done this year, so we grew the plants in the topsoil bags. Our plan is to after growing season this summer, I am going to have PC build the garden beds and dump the dirt that we are using to grow the plants in this year into those beds. I will then add compost that we are making in our compost bins to the beds next spring and add some of the bags of manure and peat that we have left over. I got a cold frame that Hubby or PC needs to put together. We lucked out on it. Hubby and I were at The Christmas Tree Shops and we saw they were clearing out their cold frames. It was half price, so we grabbed it. They had trouble locating the cold frame in the back room and we had to stand a round for awhile while they tried to track it down (after we had paid for it). Well, I was getting a bit disappointed since it was beginning to look like they were going to have to refund our money. They finally found one and since we had to wait so long, they knocked some more money off of it. Yay!!! It was a nice wooded one (double wide) with a hinged clear lid on top. Our final price was something like $20.00. I plan to use the cold frame next year to start my seeds so I don't have to buy transplants next year. I am starting to feel like a real homesteader. I have a garden, a compost bin and a cold frame. lol!!!
Follow my garden progress at:
My Garden Diary
This has been a wacky weather spring and summer. Our tomatoes are not doing very well, but our greenbeans are great. The beans were up in the raised bed. Maybe that helps drain them? Good deal on the cold frame, too! I want one!
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