Waking up the garden

This year we have decided to expand our home vegetable garden from 3 medium sized raised beds to a total gardening space of about 30'x15'. Growing a good portion of our food is part of our strategy to help get through these tough economic times. If the price of food goes way up then we will be insulated a little more than others and we can be sure we have wholesome, organic produce.

Michelle and I have been pouring through the Territorial seed catalog and all of our gardening books for the last several months as we planned for this garden expansion. We want to pack a lot of veggies into the garden space so we have been using companion planting techniques to ensure the plants get along well in tight quarters.

The first task was to create a little extra driveway space to give us room to open the car doors once the garden fence is up. We cut out the sod and filled the space with crushed rock, the kids helped out and Grandma Kathy kept Jackson out of trouble. We had 2.5 yards of garden compost mix delivered. Right now we have the grass (and sod we cut out of the driveway strip) covered with cardboard and weed fabric to help kill the grass. In a couple weeks we will do a single tilling to break up the dying sod, mix in the garden compost and level out the ground.

Michelle prepared the front of the garden (facing the road) with a nice rock border and thyme we transplanted from our backyard garden beds. We need a few more big rocks though, and there is no shortage of those around here.

As of today, our black elderberry bush is beginning to leaf out and the leaf buds on our cherry, plum, and fig trees, and our berry bushes and shrubs. Our crocuses flowered in the last 2 days and our bulbs are looking perky and green. It is exciting to see our plans begin to take shape and we are beginning to get anxious to begin planting.