First Vegetable Garden

We planted a garden! It was the first garden for each of us, and while we enjoyed it I think we were both glad that it only took a day!

The 20x15 ft' patch is in the backyard of Hannah's parents in Ambler, about 25 minutes from Philadelphia. It was a bit late in the spring to be planting (it was over ninety degrees on the day we planted), but that only meant that the plants we were putting in the ground were more developed. Aside from Richard and Moriah's kale seeds, every plant we put in the ground was fairly mature. Here are the steps, roughly:

1. Spread compost (manure and decomposed leaves) to fix nitrogen into the soil. Using a lawn fertilizer would add too much nitrogen to the lawn at once, and runoff from lawn fertilizer causes serious damages to waterways and lakes. 

 2. Till the soil. Tilling homogenizes the dirt, clay, and composted materials and also eradicate any weeds that would compete with our young cultivars.

 3. Spread plastic cover, which keeps weeds down throughout the garden. We used rocks to hold down the plastic and poked many tiny holes in the surface to allow water to seep through into the ground.

4. Plant! We planted about 20 tomato plants, 3 pepper plants, 3 small rows of kale, cucumber, 2 kinds of basil, tarragon, rosemary, oregano,radishes and asparagus. 

Rows of Kale Sprouts & Seeds

3 kinds of peppers

Tomatoes!

All in all, the entire garden only took us a few hours. This is something I would definitely do more of too, as it was quite enjoyable especially when you surround yourself with pleasant people. When everything starts growing I will update the blog with our successes (and failures too). Hoping it will be a bountiful harvest.