Garden

With a growing family and growing grocery bill, Alan and I decided to start a garden a few years ago. It seemed to make the most sense and would even provide the kids with some useful chores to do as well as a freezer full of veggies to last the winter.

Our first garden didn't turn out so well. Al plowed a patch out of our hayfield next to our house and we fought grass which continued to encroach. That and some husband accidentally drove his seed-drill through the end and planted it in oats. Have you ever tried to weed out oats? They're pretty stubborn and super-hardy. Between the oats and potato bugs we had a small crop that year.

The following year, Al got smart. He tilled frequently (just about every other day or more) and we moved out potato patch near where we keep our extra round bales. The idea of moving the potato patch was to cut down on potato bugs that hatch from the soil in spring. Moving each year prevents the bugs from hatching and immediately ruining your crop. Besides that, we also had to pick the bugs off by hand and apply a dust to the plant as protection.

Last year also brought us a ton of squash. We had one zucchini but accidentally planted what we thought were melons, but turned out as a pile of summer squash (got our packets mixed). We had an entire row of zucchini and yellow squash that just went crazy with production. I baked and cooked what I could but were were still left with massive squash that even our neighbors couldn't eat. I recently found out you can freeze squash so that's the plan for this year. It will also make some nice baby food.

Last year's garden was put in with help from our Belgian/Percheron mare Missy

Cut to this year: our garden is expanded to 3x the size of the old one. Al must mean business! We ordered seeds from Farmers Seed & Nursery http://www.farmerseed.com/ for 1/2 price what we'd pay at the local greenhouse and have started the seedlings indoors for earlier crop. Minnesota has a very short growing season, if you plant too early, frost will kill everything; too late and the stuff never gets ripe. *Note- Got the farmers seed order... Potatoes were rotten! I would be careful about ordering from them!

We're putting in sweet and ornamental popping corn, radish, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, onion, potato, garlic, kohlrabi, lettuce, melon and squash. I think Al must get a little garden-happy or perhaps is in a competition with the neighbor for best garden/ earliest harvest. Either way we should save some money and eat well this year.

Tiller? Nah, we just use a plow! You can see our little assistant on board as well.