Getting into Gardening

If I could, I'd live on a farm and I'd name it something like, "Gladden's Green Pastures." There would be goats, chickens, and cows. I'd also get into bee keeping. Alas, I still have an HOA even though we have been blessed with much more space and privacy. Therefore, Farmer Em is only able to keep gardens going.

Gardening is very satisfying to me! I find satisfaction, happiness, and calm in nature and working with a shovel and digging my hands in some fresh dirt. I love goals. Watching something grow and be successful is rewarding to me personally. I also really love and believe in a healthy lifestyle. I hated vegetables pretty much up until age 22. I actually still do not like salad and will never choose to eat one unless in extreme circumstances. But I love vegetables. I love to incorporate them into the dinners I cook. Roasting them or using them as the main course/entree is the best.

So I am following my dreams to have my own vegetable garden. Eventually, I'd like to grow this garden to be a cozy spot in the yard to sit and read a book and it be like a place of peace and solace.

I don't want to do it alone though. I want Ellie to have a garden for herself! Under her playground, she has started a flower garden. She is so proud of it; it is precious. She has started hers with some pink and red daylillies. We were given bulbs for free from McLean Maple Farm so that is what Ellie used to get started. I let her choose where she wants to place them. It does not need to "make sense;" it just needs to be exactly what she wants. Her creation. We recently went shopping for seeds together as well for some flower seeds she can scatter in her garden. She was SO happy and tickled to pick them out! She held them so safely in her hands as we ventured around the garden section. "These are Ellie's," she said. We will plant those in a couple months. As a home school lesson with gardening, Ellie and I have been reading several books regarding plants, plant lives, seeds, and anatomy of a flower. From these books she has been able to understand, retain, and explain to me at any random time that it is too cold right now to plant a seed. She also can explain that a seed can't have too much water or too much heat. She understands the basic needs of seeds. I was only ever taught seeds need sun, dirt, and water. If only it were always that simple. There is a lot to learn and pay attention to.

Ellie has also helped me as we begin to create our vegetable garden. It will not be finished this year, however; the vegetable garden will get off to a good start this spring. God willing!

I plan to have 4 large, L-shaped cedar raised beds that widely surround a Japanese Maple I planted this fall. We may only be able to financially build one of these beds to start. We will add the other beds as I save our money. This vegetable adventure is not just something that makes me happy; it is also a way to eventually be able to save a bit of money by harvesting our own produce and freezing and canning some as well.

So, I have a lot to learn and I have been doing research for close to a year. Even with that, I learn by doing and by making mistakes and improving on my skill. I started seedlings this month (February) to plant in a few weeks - to each vegetable's recommended guideline. I started with carrots, broccoli, peppers, onions, beets, and tomatoes. All organic seeds and organic soil. I started the seeds in small greenhouse systems. Each species has its own greenhouse to begin its growth in. I want to have an "Aerogarden" eventually, but first I need to learn exactly what I am doing. Therefore, I purchased individual pellets and pods to plant the seedlings in for germination. There are two types I purchased, both by the company, "Jiffy." The first one I used for the broccoli hosted 36 pellets. The pellets were cups of dehydrated soil wrapped in a netting. To use these, I had to hydrate each pellet slowly and patiently with 1/2 a cup of warm water. The next step was to gently pull away a bit of the netting at the top, and then bury 2-3 seeds into each hydrated pellet. Cover with soil, then cover with a clear lid to create a greenhouse effect and keep indoors and follow through with other steps as they begin to grow. I made the mistake of removing the entire netting on like 24 of the 36 soil pellets after they were hydrated. This won't be problematic, but potentially may cause roots to expand a little wildly. It is indeed a learning process. This particular germination process was really, really time consuming. So for the other 5 vegetable seeds, I chose a similar but different system. I bought a tray with biodegradable empty cups in which I filled with organic seedling specific soil. Being able to just fill the cups with soil instead of waiting for each one to hydrate by slowly dripping water made the process move much faster. Messier but faster. This suited my needs much better. So, currently our seedlings are planted and "greenhoused." We will watch them as they grow and follow the next steps!

 (Above: First system in which I had to hydrate each soil pellet)
(Below: Second system in which I filled each cup with soil; time and money efficient)

(All 6 vegetables in their "greenhouses")

We still need to build our first raised bed, too! We will get on that soon.

Things I am learning:

*Companion planting
*Natural pesticide
*When to plant what
*The needs of each species

I'll keep recording our progress and what I learn and how I grow as I grow our veggies!! So excited for this adventure!