My "Please God Don't Let Us Starve When the Depression Hits Garden!
In the past, I have dabbled in gardening. John built me quite an extensive herb garden which I have kept up for 3 years off of our kitchen. In a raised bed, it has not been that difficult. So in the last couple of years we have expanded and grown corn, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and lots of container veggies such as tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, strawberries, and snap peas. The hardest part for me is the harvesting. That is a big job! I let my zucchini get away from me last year, and had to give away tons of tomatoes, because I couldn't keep up with the freezing.
But I have always dreamed of having a "true" garden, that I actually fed my family on. And in this economy, what better time, right? I am going to grow myself a "Victory Garden", or a "Please God Don't Let Us Starve When the Depression Hits Garden", as I like to call it! I figure, John has all the stress of worrying about keeping his job in an economy that looks dismal, the least I can do is grow a garden and try to contribute some healthy food, WITH the added bonus of saving grocery dollars on my organic fruit and veggies that I insist we buy.
So John agreed to sacrifice a third of our yard to my little project. I started to do some research and decided on the square-foot gardening method. Check it out at . This appears to be the easiest, most water efficient way to grow veggies in a small space. And I figured since I'm at it, I might as well try to grow a year-round garden. I bought the book, Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. He insists that a year-round harvest can be had from any garden in the country if you choose the right variety and have proper cold-frames. So with knowledge in hand, I set out to plan my garden.
This was a lot harder than I thought. Saturday morning you would have found me at the kitchen table with charts, grids, pencils, and rulers spread across it. I took advice from my kids and hubby on what they wanted to grow, and then looked at what we eat a lot of, and what costs the most to buy at the grocery store. I found that continual harvest gardens need a lot more space, due to succession planting. I'm going to need a garden calendar! At the end of it all, I decided on 6 4x4 foot garden boxes, 3 with vertical frames. In these I will grow, sugar snap peas, broccoli, pole beans, leeks, 2 varieties of tomatoes, carrots , cucumber, green onion, zucchini, and a ton of lettuce (roamine, swiss chard, mache, spinach, and butter). On the hill behind our yard I will continue to grow pumpkins, winter squash, and add raspberries to my strawberries. We added garlic to our herb garden last fall. With this a mostly continual harvest and half of it year-round, I figure I will be busy and can keep veggies on the table without much trouble.
This weekend John is going to help me buy supplies and build the boxes, so I can start cold crop planting this month. The task seems a little daunting to me, but I figure I'll catch on as I go, right? We shall see...I consider it my effort in this terrible economy.
But I have always dreamed of having a "true" garden, that I actually fed my family on. And in this economy, what better time, right? I am going to grow myself a "Victory Garden", or a "Please God Don't Let Us Starve When the Depression Hits Garden", as I like to call it! I figure, John has all the stress of worrying about keeping his job in an economy that looks dismal, the least I can do is grow a garden and try to contribute some healthy food, WITH the added bonus of saving grocery dollars on my organic fruit and veggies that I insist we buy.
So John agreed to sacrifice a third of our yard to my little project. I started to do some research and decided on the square-foot gardening method. Check it out at . This appears to be the easiest, most water efficient way to grow veggies in a small space. And I figured since I'm at it, I might as well try to grow a year-round garden. I bought the book, Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. He insists that a year-round harvest can be had from any garden in the country if you choose the right variety and have proper cold-frames. So with knowledge in hand, I set out to plan my garden.
This was a lot harder than I thought. Saturday morning you would have found me at the kitchen table with charts, grids, pencils, and rulers spread across it. I took advice from my kids and hubby on what they wanted to grow, and then looked at what we eat a lot of, and what costs the most to buy at the grocery store. I found that continual harvest gardens need a lot more space, due to succession planting. I'm going to need a garden calendar! At the end of it all, I decided on 6 4x4 foot garden boxes, 3 with vertical frames. In these I will grow, sugar snap peas, broccoli, pole beans, leeks, 2 varieties of tomatoes, carrots , cucumber, green onion, zucchini, and a ton of lettuce (roamine, swiss chard, mache, spinach, and butter). On the hill behind our yard I will continue to grow pumpkins, winter squash, and add raspberries to my strawberries. We added garlic to our herb garden last fall. With this a mostly continual harvest and half of it year-round, I figure I will be busy and can keep veggies on the table without much trouble.
This weekend John is going to help me buy supplies and build the boxes, so I can start cold crop planting this month. The task seems a little daunting to me, but I figure I'll catch on as I go, right? We shall see...I consider it my effort in this terrible economy.
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