I’m off to till my garden!
Today’s the day!
A friend and I are splitting the cost of renting a roto-tiller, and will start at my house, have lunch here, then head over to her house to do her garden as well (I know, I know, there are cons to roto-tilling, but my garden is fairly large and neither my husband or I have the time or energy to till the whole thing by hand, so this is the next best option for us).
With all this hard work, and a home school mom’s meeting at my house tonight, there’s just no time for any "real" posting, although I’ve got lots of posts stewing in my mind (starting my seedlings, those yeast bread recipes I had hoped to get to this week, cleaning veggies and fruits, some dehydrator recipes I made yesterday, cooking with quinoa, and a new grocery store series that I am planning to start once Raising Healthy Eaters is finished in a few weeks…).
I’ll be back tomorrow, and hope to have some good pictures of how our tilling went up soon!
Just a word of warning… when we dug up a fresh garden plot a few years ago we had problems with wire worms which ate our salad roots completely and gave the rest of our plants a hard time. We found if you ‘planted’ some potato chunks in between the rows of plants, the wire worms flocked to them and then you could dig up the potato a day or three later and throw it out complete with wire worms. Never heard from them since.
Good luck with the garden… see you tonight 🙂
Once you get the garden established, mulch it in the fall with chopped leaves, then when you go back to plant the following spring, just rake the leaves back, till the spot where you are wanting to put the plant. It is much easier than tilling the whole thing- and you have to worry less about upsetting dormat weed seeds. Good luck with the garden.
Hi, Stephanie…Could you recommend a good beginner’s organic gardening book? I have always wanted to start a vegetable garden and now that we have a house with a yard, I would really like to try my hand at it. I just have no idea how to do it! Do you think it’s too late to learn everything I need to know in order to get everything ready for the summer? Thanks so much for all you do – your blog has been such an inspiration to me! I’m starting a blog myself, but it’s not quite ready yet. Would you mind if I listed your blog on the blogroll?
Lauren, I would really recommend Square Foot Gardening (the link is down on my right sidebar). It is really geared towards beginners. I used it my first year extensively, and I am still using it quite a bit this year. I think you could quickly learn enough to do well for this year, if you got something soon. And I would be happy to be on your blogroll- thanks!
Dive right in and enjoy! The only way to learn is to do it and make the mistakes that we all need to make. You will be amazed at how well it comes out, even if you don’t know everything you think you need to know. May you enjoy every aspect of the garden, including getting dirty. 😀
Oh you are inspiring me to get busy with my garden too! Thanks!