Starting the Garden

Holes for tomatoes

 So we finally started planting the garden.  It has been unseasonably cool recently, so we hesitated to plant anything.  This is going to be our seed garden.  I will be hand pollinating at least some of the blooms so that we will have seeds that aren't cross pollinated.  We have over twelve varieties of tomato that are open pollinated or heirlooms.

I have also planted about a dozen corn seed.  It is very difficult to find heirloom sweet corn so we want to make sure that we have seed for next year.  I also planted scalloped squash, acorn squash, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, and bell peppers.

Added Agricultural lime

Added Epsom Salts

Tomatoes are very sensitive to nutrient availability.  They need very particular nutrients in fairly large amounts.  After the holes are dug deeply enough to bury the roots up to the first set of leaves, I put about a cup of agricultural lime and a about 1/4 cup of Epsom salts in the hole.  I then mix the  lime and Epsom salts into the dirt a little bit.  This keeps there from being and pockets of agricultural lime that are unusable by the plant.  Then I put the plant in and refill the hole all the way up to the first set of leaves.

Mixed Epsom salts and lime with dirt and adding plants

The next step involves a lot of newspaper from my grandmother.  I wet the newspaper and spread it out on the garden around the plants.  Then I am putting leaves on top of the paper to keep the paper from blowing off of the garden.

I am also using old blind slats to label all of the tomatoes.  I cut pieces and hang them from the tomato cages.

S poking the squash seeds into the ground

All of my children helped in planting the garden. They almost fought over who got to push the seeds into the ground.  S was really cute as you can see.  He had a lot of fun helping to plant the squash seeds.

More garden updates coming up.

Thank you for all the kind support.