Teamwork in the Garden

Every year. Every single stinking year. That's how often we have the garden argument. It goes like this (yes I know it by heart)...
1- DH will offer to till the garden
2- I'll say I don't want the garden tilled
3- DH will have NOTHING to do with a garden that isn't tilled and hoed. If you want "that kind of  garden," you will be on your own.
4. DH will complain about how ugly the weeds are and how terrible our garden looks. (Sometimes step 4 will occur while DH is munching on something from the ugly garden.)
5- Fall will come and the argument will get laid to rest until the next year.

At least it was always that way until last fall. Last year's garden was practically nonexistent because of family illnesses and my bad back. The weeds were over my head and I couldn't do anything about it. Surprisingly we did get a few bits of produce, a green bean or 2 and the occasional cucumber. Still, most of our produce came from the farmer's market. So when fall came, I turned over all the gardening for this year to DH. It turns out that since DH is away from home a lot, he didn't think he could handle all the gardening by himself and maybe he would just like to be more helpful and supportive of my gardening ideals when he is home! (Insert a hallelujah chorus here and throw in some fireworks, too!) This year our garden is going to be a joint effort!

Starting in late February, DH proved his commitment by helping to pick out the seeds from the catalog and put up the grow lights and shelves in the basement. Our seeds did really well! This weekend we got most of the garden set up and planted (did ya notice the "we" in that sentence??) DH did most of the back-breaking stuff, the bending and stooping and crawling. He also put up two sections of fencing for the climbing stuff. And he hauled in and spread the straw to keep the weeds down. It was something to see the look on his face when he saw the great condition of the soil!

 My part of the compromise was to divide the garden in half. One half will lay dormant this year. We will spread the wasted hay and critter bedding on it for next year's garden. Then we will rotate the plants to that half and let the current garden be dormant.

I think we're going to make a pretty great team!

Peppers and Onions

Seed starting has commenced! It felt sooo good to play in the dirt. My new seed order hasn't arrived yet so I planted some old seeds yesterday to see what (if any) comes up. Garden 2016 is now in progress! And hopes of a successful gardening year are a great way to beat the wintertime blues!

Garden Planning

The wind is blowing hard, the temperature is dropping, snow is flurrying, and I do not want to go outside at all! DH had to leave this morning to go back to work but before he did, he fed and watered all the critters. I'm really thankful I got to stay inside most of the day! I finished my crocheted hat and started reading "The Accidental Farmers." In between I worked on our seed order. This year we received a gift certificate to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange for Christmas. What a blessing! It just arrived last week and we spent a lot of time poring over the catalog, discussing seeds and checking out our inventory. We added some new things to try; popcorn and okra. Tomorrow I will mail the order off and wait impatiently for the arrival of the seeds. We also made a rough draft of a garden plan so we would have an idea of how many plants to start. It's a lot of scribbling and nowhere near scale but I thought I'd share it anyway.