the garden

It has been nice having my sister, Beth, living in Bowling Green. One of the carrots we dangled before she decided to come was that we could grow a garden when she arrived and live off the land. We don't have much land in downtown Bowling Green, but we managed to get a good 7.5' by 10.5' square carved out to plant stuff in the sunniest corner of our yard. It has been quite therapeutic to plant seeds and watch the sprouts come. It is tiny bits of life that are uniquely hopeful, and surprisingly so. If I'm having a bad day and walk by our planters, I am immediately encouraged if there has been some change. Anyway, here are some photos of the process.Out front we planted some daisies next to our roses that seemed to dead, but are producing new branches.We bought 4 tomato plants at the farmer's market from the nice Amish man with a long beard. He is so kind and always has great tomatoes. We also planted yellow squash, zucchini, green peppers and mixed bell peppers from seeds in these planters.

The spot we picked for the garden. BEFORE:

After a couple of weeks, our squash started to sprout.



We started to shovel the sod off our garden spot. Owen helped. Actually, Beth did almost all of it by herself. She took out some frustration there doing the tough physical labor of shoveling the hard ground. I helped a bit, but would never have finished by myself! Beth was determined, thankfully.


The spot after it the sod was gone.

We rented a tiller and Justin tilled the ground up.

We added fertilizer rich soil and Justin tilled some more.

Priscilla, our good friend, came and helped us plant seeds in the garden. We planted cucumbers, snow peas, pole beans, green onions, pumpkins and Asian cabbage. We have started to see sprouts of the peas and cabbage so far. We have yet to transplant the rest of the the sprouting plants we have been keeping mostly indoors. I'm finding myself to be an overprotective parent, afraid to put them out there in the elements. After the current round of storms have gone through, we will have to transplant them because our squash are running out of room in their little planters, and some are dying.The good news is that after nothing for weeks, our peppers have started to sprout too! Priscilla encouraged us to keep them inside and they needed that warmer environment to sprout. They are doing great now!

Once we have transplanted we will have a little fence out there to keep out rabbits, squirrels and the little Shepherds from tearing up the garden. We are excited and hope to reap a large harvest this summer!

This is our zuchinni, squash and pepper plants....still inside due to the weird weather.

Here's a close up of the pepper sprouts.

We bought a cilantro plant at the Farmer's Market. It is delicious!

We started growing some basil too.