Let's talk gardens

The weather here has been a bit wonky this spring. It was warm and beautiful the last few weeks of March. I was not alone in my urge to get outside and get my hands dirty in my garden soil. Most of my friends who garden were in the same place, bent over their gardens. I moved my 2 established beds to another part of the yard where we will be adding 5 more beds next week. If you've ever started a garden bed you know that building is the easy part, it's mixing the soil that's tough. I went over the weekend and got $150 of soil, composted manure, peat moss and vermiculite. It's an investment. When those beds are overflowing with pounds and pounds of veggies I will save several times that on my grocery bills. Well that's the hope isn't it?

My beets. So pretty and their greens are delicious.

Our new plot that we had tilled into the ground. This will be the home of my roma tomatoes for canning, my green beans and our corn plot!

These are our potato towers. We'll see how it works. It's supposed to grow 100 pounds!

Hubs demanded Iceberg lettuce. We'll see how that goes.

We've already run into a few snags this year. When I moved my beds, I made the giant mistake of not laying a barrier under the beds before I added the dirt back in. The result? Both beds were FULL of some kind of ground cover like weed. I am still pulling them. They grew faster than my seeds so I had to wait for the plants to come in so I could figure out what was weed and what was planted. Yesterday we had our first taste of our garden. Arugula, spinach and beet greens! Not enough to make a real salad, but everyone who stopped by was given a few leaves of each to try. So delicious!
With these small rewards I am reminded why I battle with new lessons each year. NOTHING in the entire world tastes as good as food you grew!
Happy Gardening friends! What gardening lessons have you learned?