Our Little Garden 2011

After a couple of weekends of being busy, dodging rain, and finally get more dirt for our little raised garden, we got it planted today.  Last year was our first year having our own garden and we learned some lessons from it.  Here is what we learned...

1. We will never ever use tomato cages again.  By the end of the Summer, the cages were all bent to pieces and were providing zero support for the plants.

2. While I love squash and zuccini, they just did not do well in our raised garden.  Don't know if they weren't getting good drainage or what was going on, but the plants (after growing to full size) literally rotted.  It was disgusting.

3. Less is more in a raised garden.  They need room to grow!!!

4. Placement of the plants is important.  You want easy access to everything since the whole idea is that the soil is never walked on (except for the neighbors cat who thinks that it is a giant litterbox...that will hopefully me stopped tomorrow with some mothballs) so it stays loose. 

All that being said, here is a picture of Garden 2011.

On the left side of the garden picture, there are 4 burpless hybrid cucumbers.  Not too sure if one of them will make it, but ya never know.  The two staked plants are tomatoes.  The one at the top is a grape tomato plant and the one at the bottom of the pic is a "Cherokee Purple" tomato plant.  I had read about the Cherokee Purple tomatoes in Southern Living and decided to try something different this year.  It will be a couple of months or more before we see any tomatoes on either plant, but I'll keep everybody updated on the gardens growth.

Another project that we have had going on is getting our storage shed painted.  It's obviously a work in progress (as you can tell from the picture....lol) due to lack of time and the rainy weather we have had.  It's coming along though.  We are painting it to match our house (we have dark red brick with white siding).  Excuse our lack of grass.....our yard has been a pain since we moved in!  Here is a picture of the sheds current state....

I hope that everyone has a blessed week!

Alicia