MY FIRST GARDEN

My first garden in full bloom. I learned about plant spacing, pest management - easier when plants are farther apart, and how beautiful growing your own food is.

A lesson in abundance!
!::...Oh yeah...::!
I was gifted with the most amazing spring garden. I grew a mesclun mix, rainbow chard. spinach, lettuce, garlic and nasturtiums. Based on the square foot gardening principles I grew things crowded. On top of that I didn’t thin very much. When things were little it was hard for me to imagine just how big they’d get.  I'm schooled with greens thinning now.  It's particularly necessary because of my fear of slugs.  A dense mass of tender greens is slug heaven :-(  -----EEEEW-----

I ate greens from this garden for at least a couple of months. I was going to try succession planting, but didn’t get around to it. That’s something that I’ll strive for next year. With this first garden I wanted to simply grow things, keep them healthy,  and eat them. Then make the transition from spring to summer gardening. I did it!

I started this garden in October of 2008 by creating a sheet mulch of: 

•  Leaves from my neighbors cherry tree
• TAGRO Mix
• Cardboard boxes
• ...in that order. 

I lost all my pictures in a sucky hard drive crash so unfortunately I can’t show the very satisfying before and after pics. Here’s a picture of my house though. The picture of my first garden is taken facing toward my house, standing on the stairs and looking to the left.  See where the garden went?

This is STAR!