It's been a while

Wow, it's been quite a while since my last post - life sometimes just gets busy and some things get dropped. I realize now that I should have kept up with this blog, as it is a way for me to track progress in my garden, but more importantly share my experiences (good and bad) with others. I'll leave this for another post someday, but I believe all of us have a responsibility to try and grow our own food for greater sustainability and to guarantee food supplies.

So what is the status of our garden this year? After a strange year last year where things just didn't grow well, I'm eager to get planting this year and see what will grow and what won't. Seeding will start next weekend, so I'll post some photos of that next Sunday.

For today however, I'll share my ambitious plans for the veggie garden. This year I am going to attempt Square Foot Gardening which is a form of intensive gardening. Here is my garden plan (click to enlarge to readable size):

As you can see everything is planted quite close together. Not sure how that will work with some of the larger plants, but I guess I'll have to keep an eye on things and thin plants if they are too close together. Diakon because of it's length will be planted in some large sections of plastic pipe in a very sandy mixture. Quinoa will be planted in my asparagus bed, which I haven't show on the plan. Radishes will be planted here and there between other plants. Garlic was planted back in October and I only planted 7 cloves (they are peaking out of the ground already!) - this was before I decided to do the Square Foot Gardening, so I didn't plant them 4 to a square foot as on the plan. Will do so next year.

What also isn't shown is my greenhouse - I grow tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in pots there as they need lots of heat. One of my major projects this summer is to redo my whole greenhouse to make it look nicer and to expand it a bit as right now it is very cramped. But that's for a separate post. And I also have lots of fruit (peach, pear, apple, plum, grape, figs, raspberry and strawberry)

Happy Gardening! Feel free to leave comments about what your gardening plans are this year.