another literary reference ... to beans!

Just wanted to pass this along: a friend sent this excerpt to me, knowing how excited I am about my garden! (Thanks Dacia!)

"The garden was growing now. In tiny rows of different greens, the radishes, lettuce, onions, were up. The first crumpled leaves of peas were pushing upward. The young tomatoes stood on thin stems, spreading out their first lacy foliage.

. . .

All one hot morning, the beans were popping out of the ground. Grace discovered them and came shrieking with excitement to tell Ma. All that morning she could not be coaxed away from watching them. Up from the bare earth, bean after bean was popping, its stem uncoiling like a steel spring, and up in the sunshine the halves of the split bean still clutched two pale twin-leaves. Every time a bean popped up, Grace squealed again."

"Springtime on the Claim" ~ Pages 15-16
from Little Town on the Prairie
by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Welcome to our Garden!

I decided to start a blog to share our experiences as we begin our adventure with gardening! After several years of wanting to have a garden, but feeling that we just don't have the space or the right conditions for a garden in our small yard, a friend told me about Square Foot Gardening so I checked it out ~ and was intrigued! I read about it on the website and then borrowed the book from the library, subsequently purchasing a copy of my own.

Last month we built 2 raised beds, then began the search for the 'ingredients' to fill them! The compost and peat moss were easy to find, but the vermiculite was a bit trickier to locate! After trying several farm and garden centers, we finally found what we needed at Weston Nurseries. (We made a return trip last weekend for more ... and they were sold out!)
We mixed the contents of all the bags . . . filled the boxes . . . .
then last week (Memorial Day weekend), we began planting!





We built and planted a third bed this weekend, but this time, after not being able to get vermiculite, just decided to fill this box with some purchased garden soil and mixed in some compost.
It will be a good experiment to see which boxes grow better!



Right now I am sunburned and exhausted, but too excited not to begin this blog! I will post pictures and write more about our adventures as the season progresses ...