Gardening

We've been busy little bees here on the Schultz farm!! It's about time. I must say that the prep that goes into a garden is hard work....especially with small children. We have to work around their schedules, and their moods. Some days they love being outside with us, some days they whine and want to go inside. It feels like we've been doing little bits of work here and there for forever!! The last two days were busy and hard (my body is SO sore) but very fruitful. Dan has been such a help to me through this process. Not only is he much stronger than I am and faster at the manual labor tasks, but he has more experience with how to use the garden tools, and how to construct garden beds.....my experience.....zero. I am going to try my best not to call this my garden because up to this point it has mostly been Dan's work thus I should call it his garden....so, I'll call it ours.

Dan spread lime over the beds and then tilled it all in. We sent soil samples off to get analyzed but they still haven't come back and we were running out of time. Dan talked to the peeps at Lowe's and got a recommendation for this area.....the soil is pretty much the same all over Smithfield.....and he ended up putting down a conservative amount of lime. He then staked out the beds and tied string so I have a visual on where my beds are until I get the hang of it. We then hoed and raked the rows in 10 beds. I learned that I am no good at hoeing. Good for my marriage.....not so great for gardening! lol I know....not funny. :) Due to my total lack of coordination with garen tools, Dan made most of the rows. I then made a trough on each row and watered the soil and planted seeds and covered them with compost. So far I've only planted my seeds which were: carrots (danvers and nantes), lettuce (buttercrunch and grand rapids), and onions. I still need to plant strawberries, broccoli and scallions for the March 15th planting. Since it is currently raining and will continue to rain all weekend I probably won't get back out to plant until next week.....that and I still need to harden my broccoli and scallions which have been growing inside. I also have all my herbs to get into the ground but I am going to wait until they are at least 6 inches tall before I stick them outside.

So, things are moving along. I'm excited to watch things sprout up and grow. I'm glad that the first round is pretty much done and I now know what to expect for my April 15th and May 1st plantings. Spring is really in the air right now....the bradford pear trees are in bloom which always indicates spring here since they are the first to bloom. They are puffy and white and I love that most people plant them close together so they look like clouds.

Dan throwing out lime

Tilling the lime in

Strung out beds

Beds raked and hoed into rows

View of my garden...only 10 beds (out of 28) have been rowed and planted

My seedlings getting bigger and bigger!