A Garden

When we first moved to our house, we had a garden off the back side of the carport. But then one of our trees got too big, and that spot doesn't get sun any more. So for a few years, we haven't had a garden. Last year, Zak really wanted a garden, and we never had time to worry about it because we were redoing the house. So this year, we decided to give it a try.

We have a spot at the back of our yard that is sectioned off with railroad ties, that we think may have been a garden at one time, but since we have lived here it has just been grass. We also have a problem that our backyard slopes off, and so any watering that we do just runs off to the neighbors yard. We haven't known what to do. But we think that we have the problem solved.

Brian tilled the area. I now think that we should have cut the sod out first, but instead we just tilled it all in. The ground was SO tough, that this small section took about 3 hours for Brian to till. We found that it actually helped to break up the ground by the shovel full to help the tiller break down into the dirt. It took quite a while, but everyone helped.

And the boys "raked."

We got a load of compost and tilled it in as well as removing grass roots through a screen. I wish we had had time to do a better job of this. Hopefully the roots will just break down, and not grow grass.

Then we planted. We planted green onions, onions, carrots, beans, cantaloupe, tomatoes, potatoes, basil, green peppers, and still plan on putting in broccoli, garlic and cilantro.

For Zak's birthday last fall, Grammy and Gramps gave Zak garden tools, seeds, and a sign for his garden. He was ecstatic to get to use them all. And he even planted his sign!

Hopefully the garden will be productive and we can manage keeping it alive. I'm sure there will be more pictures to come.