As soon as the seed catalogs start rolling in I want it to be spring.
I start sketching in my notebook and dreaming about tomatoes.
I spend about $5K in my mind and then I whittle it down. In the end I buy about 90% of what I want on impulse from my local farm store, missing out of the exotic varieties I picked in the seed catalogs.
I did place a small order to a company called Rare Seeds. I got the weirdest tomatoes varieties I could find. Of course, then I start making grand plans about saving my seeds next year. Like homemade Halloween costumes, I always intend to do this and just never actually do. Still, I try a few new gardening things every year year. Maybe this year it will be saving seeds.
As I as pondering my gardening history I started thinking back about my very early adventures into trying to grow stuff.
I started growing flowers back in my house in college, think 1999ish. I always loved gardening, but the thought of growing food really hadn't occurred to my brain yet. It all started around 2003 with a few un-staked and untended plain old red tomato plants in an empty spot next to the house. I didn't even eat tomatoes back then and I planted them to humor Josh.
Then in 2009 I got the bug for square foot gardening. I read the book and had my two 4/4ft beds with a 3ft/8 foot tomato bed. I learned a great deal about how to use my space in a garden and to not plant things in a traditional rows. It was a very obtainable little starting point.
Side note: I come from an endless line of gardeners. My father loves to garden, and he and I share a love for over reading and researching our gardening. I promise I have read more books about gardening than I did to get my master in nursing. My grandfather was a agronomy professor at Purdue and during the great depression had an apple farm in Canada. Generations further back had proper English gardens. As a child I remember my dad having me pick up a handful of some gorgeous Indiana soil and told me to smell it. I've taught my kids to do the same thing and I tell them, "It smells like magic". That black soil is impossible to not appreciate.
By 2010 I had fallen madly in-love with gardening and what it does for my soul. Eleven years ago I posted about it. (Damn, is this blog really that old?) I made the classic mistake of trying to start seeds my very first year. Spoiler - it didn't go well. I might have forgotten to water them for long periods of time.
By 2013 my original cottage garden was built and was so damn adorable. Look at that little cutie. She was my baby. Mulched aisleways with high tensile wire fencing. My handmade arbor. I look at this little garden and I just want to hug it. Cute little sweetie. You can see where my zinnia obsession started.
In March 2014 I did a blog post talking about how much I love gardening and how it completes my soul. By then I had the pretty little cottage garden and had added a huge back garden. I want to say it was 20ft by 120 ft. A beast of a garden. I had three large tomato beds. Two rows of blueberries and grapes. It was a beast of maintenance and I have to say, that it wasn't always kept to the best degree. The front garden was tidy and well tended, but the other gardens had a free and wild feel.
2015-2017 was more of the same. TONS are plants and strong starts, that would eventually get away form me. That's ok. Four kids, full time jobs, goats, and all the other things we had going in those days. I can't believe we were able to do all the things we did.
We had been living on our 18 acre farm at that point for 15 years. We liked that farm, but it had it's loopholes. Drainage got changed miles up stream and it was now in a flood plane. The barns would have two feet of water in them at times. Our oldest daughter had graduate high school and we felt no strong ties to that area any more. We wanted to move to what felt like home, the small town my husband had grown up in.
We bought a disaster house on five acres and I got to live my dream of doing a full house renovation. We bought it in November of 2016 and moved in to it August of 2017. The house had a full reno and you can read about it more on my blog. With that reno going wild, there was no chance to start a garden. I also knew that I needed time to get to know my new property before I put in my forever garden. I didn't want to rush this time. I wanted to plan and use my experiences to set things up as well as I could.
In 2018 I put some plants around the house and 1 row of tomatoes around the pre-existing greenhouse and shed. The soil on this property is terrible. Its a thin layer of poor soil over and foot of gravel. This all used to be a huge old dairy farm and this area was a barnyard full of cows on gravel. I could barely find a worm in the soil that first year.
By 2019 I was freaking out about needing a garden. I told Josh that I could not LIVE another year if I didn't get a garden (drama queen). I knew where I wanted it - near the greenhouse and water. Close to house to be enjoyed. There were still many projects with the house that needed center stage, but we did get the exterior fencing and some of the beds in. The clothes line still ran right through the middle of the garden at this time, and Otter was helping me hang clothes.
2020 was a year with lot's of pro's and con's but from a garden stand point it was AMAZING. We were on full house lock down at the start of gardening season. That is the best way to make sure the garden gets off to a good start. We added tons more soil, another large bed, and a corner animal pen. Why an animal pen in the garden? I like when my little creatures hang out with me when I am gardening. The pen is 9ft/9ft and is the perfect place for a few baby ducks or some rabbits to hang out. It makes me happy to putter around with little creatures being over loved during break times.
I put in a large pumpkin patch in another part of our property and squeezed too many tomatoes into every spot of earth that didn't have grass on it. Here in zone six, gardens are in insane mode by July.
This is a video walk through.
That long winding tale gets us up to date. Here I sit on a cold January evening in 2021 and I have garden dreams in my heart.
This is the map of my current garden. The green beds will be new beds this spring. Blue beds are beds that are already in place. This is going to give me a nice large area for me to play and play. (I'll still plant tomatoes all over the damn place.)
This year will be our second summer living on our property. Too much HAD to happen last year for my little garden to be built. I also wanted to have one full season on this property to make sure I understand this farms quirks a little better. This is going to be the garden that I have for the rest of my life. I'm 41, I hope I get to garden in this garden for the next 50 years. It has to be right. I learned some things in my old garden: 1. You can;t be close enough to the water source 2. I want to relax in my garden as much as I want to work in my garden. 3. I like excuses to be in my garden - like having a work bench in there. 4. I want to be able to sit in my garden with another person. Maybe even eat in there. 5. I like my big dogs near me at all times, but I want my garden well protected from them. 6. The pathways need to be rock, not mulch. It lasts forever. 7. Fencing that goes around the garden needs to act as a trellis and be good at keeping chickens/feral boys/goats/WHATEVER out in growing season. 8. Flowers are a pretty part of my gardens and should be an after thought. 9. Potted veggies and flowers are visually appealing. 10. The sound of a water fountain that can also be a water source for fauna makes me happy, but it has to be small enough for me to clean it if the ducks invade it. 11. I like to work my chickens into my gardens to be natural source of fertilizer and to let them work the soil. I have ideas on how to do this in a way that limits what the chickens have access to. I had an original plan that had my garden would have the chicken coop in it and the runs would be part of the garden. I even played around with the idea of a chicken moat, but the reality of that seemed to have too many issues for me. We have some ideas for the chickens, but that is for another post.
The light green beds are outside the fence. The purple are gates. One leads into my dogs outdoor run. One leads into my back yard. The red areas are a hammock and a bench.
The orange area is my work bench. We have an old sink from our remodel and tons of supplies to make my potting bench. I want it to look roughly like this one.
The blue circle will be a small fountain. I have been buying the supplies to make this from flea markets this winter. This is the basic concept I will be going for.
My zinnia patch is starting to bloom. I adore zinnia, really who would not? There is a part of my personality that sees the zinnias in this little patch and feels critical for not planting them in more places. We still have way too much blank space around the house. My landscape dreams for this year have not been what I was dreaming of. Of course my expectation is to surround the house in lush half edible/flower beds, but I have the next 40 years to get it just right. At least I hope so.
This dog is such an asshole and a snuggle bug at the same time. She keeps chewing the corners of the trim, which may result in her death. But then she snuggles in for nap time and I decide not to take her to the pound.
Listen - I need you to understand that Josh is 44 now. The man is getting a little silver in his beard. But holy hotness, look at him carrying out two 50lb bags of chicken feed. No, thanks we don't need a cart. My hot husband will just carrying them out. He is seriously everything that is attractive about a man. I respect that everyone who is attracted to men has different things that they find attractive, but I've got a double take in my heart for tall strong men. Beards are bonus points.
Lily had her theater summer camp. Of course she made her candy bag rainbow. She has loved rainbows her whole life, good thing it suits her teenage years so well.
Lily killed it as Miss Hannigen in Annie. The little boys say she acts like Miss Hannigen whenever they are home alone with her. There may be some truth in that.
These fat pigs are living their best lives. I think they have the cutest little faces.
The deck continues to move along. Next week we pick up our hot tub. I've got some ideas for decor and furniture.
Two more little ducks hatched from our second bath of babies. They are so cute! Maybe not in the picture because they are still wet from hatching. Once they fluff up they are adorable to the highest degrees.
This is summer breakfast to the max. Crazy hair. Relaxing with screens. Straight chilling.
I'm not getting my big garden this year. Too many other projects. DEEP SIGH... Major sad face. But, I am squeezing in plants everywhere I can think of. This also gives me time to keep planning and dreaming exactly what I want. What are these big projects, and smaller projects, killing my garden?
A HUGE deck. That is going to be amazing. Hot tub area with cover, dinning table with chairs, area for a grill, firepit relaxing area. It's going to be a centerpiece of the place.
A great hose storage area on the side of the house. With custom hose hook made by Josh. We added a storage basket for tools and equipment.
A bird house that my father made with a license plate from my parents minivan in the 80's that says "Eye Van".
Against my greenhouse I have an area that is going to be a cold frame someday, but this year it is a tomato bed. I was just about in tears thinking about not growing tomatoes again this year (last year was all renovations and no garden). I just can't live with out a tomato fresh off the vine and still warm from the sun. So seven little babies are out there growing up strong.
We bought a bunch of saplings from Arbor Day Society and the kids and I planted them all. I love how much open sun we have on this farm, but we need to bring more trees into this world. I'm so glad to have added these trees. Especially the six peach trees. I can't wait to see these babies grow.
Right now I have two little side beds that are growing zinnia's (one of my favorites) and wildflowers to encourage butterflies and hummingbirds. Both of which I have not seen once since we moved here. This place was so stripped down and unloved with plants and flowers. Wildlife had no reason to be here, but I'm going to give them a reason.
We planted pasture grass on our back few acres. It look HUGE but most of this in the farmers field. Our total property in 5 acres. See the little hill with a white target on it? Josh used the tractor to make a shooting backstop.
While I was planted the pastures I wanted the kids to get out and get some activity. I offered them 25 cents per rock that was bigger than a baseball. They got excited and ended up bringing me over 250!!!! It was amazing and so cute to see them use teamwork to gather all those rocks, but I about had to sell a kidney to pay them.
I have BIG plans for the front landscaping of our little cottage. Budget is always a limiting factor. For right now I used field rocks to make a little bed, added some compost and acidic fertilizer, and planted two stunning blue hydrangeas. They are coming in lovely and someday they will be a real show stopper.
We took out goat back and forth to a vet school in Illinois and she got her cast off with no residual issues.
We ate lots of wild berries.
Max and Josh made a rocket and fired it off. Then picked it out of a tree.
We got three new kittens that have been hours of entertainment for the kids. They are names Broccoli, Scrubs, and Jack Sparrow. A few weeks latter the little grey and white one found its way here and got named Peter Pan.
Lily did an art camp and made the best teapot. Its amazing.
County fair was amazing! All the animals did well. Emma won Grand Champion pygmy wether with Bo. Lily won reserve Grand Champion do with Marshmallow – a home grown baby girl
Lily won Champion All Other Breeds with her little Babydoll Southdown Ewe, Bernadette.
We learned that Q has three front teeth on top instead of two. This should lead to some pretty fun dentist bills in the future but just adds to his serious cuteness.
I took five chickens to the butcher and the three turkeys are going soon.
The garden didn’t have its best year. It started VERY strong, but late blight killed off most of my tomatoes. I have a plan on how to deal with them next year, so I learned from it.
We got to sneak out on a Schaefer family cabin trip to Kentucky. The whole crew had a good time.
Lily had too much fun decorating her locker for sixth grade.
Disco ball included.
Max started second grade and Lily sixth.
For her birthday this year Lily wanted to take her girl friend to get nails painted and then watch shows at our house. I was the trusty driver.
THIS PLACE!! I love it. I hate it some times too - when it rains for two weeks and all the weeds I pulled come back. Or the barn floods - again. BUT - mostly I just love it. We have a love hate relationship, but this time of year we are making googly eyes at each other and madly in love. It's green like Ireland right now.
My front garden has had an interesting year. It looked so good, just trucking along all pretty, with a few issues that I was going to get to. Them my fat pet sheep Oz decided it was so nice of me to grow it all for him and he was happy to eat the ENTIRE thing. He got in and ate everything except swiss chard, some zinnias, garlic, and kale. What a brat. He was very remorseful when he got locked up for the rest of the season. It actually ended up being good for the garden. I replanted one entire strawberry bed that really was over due for a makeover. The other strawberry bed gets to live this year as a sweet potato bed and become a strawberry bed again next year. The soybeans bounced right back like nothing has ever happened. The broccoli and peppers could not be saved. But I replanted the peppers and they are pretending nothing every happened. The few cantaloupes got new seeds put in the ground and caught right up. I think the garden really is going to look all the better for Ozzy's remodel.
No sheep remodeled my other garden areas. The tomatoes are going INSANE! I dare say the best they have ever been. The blueberries look amazing this year, and I am coming up with strategies about how to make them every better next year. The grapes may start knocking on my back door, I think they might be alive - like Little Shop of Horrors.
BUT - my old orchard garden is OUT OF CONTROL!!! I planted it with cover crops this year in an attempt to choke out weeds. The wheat did just that. It has taken over its area and has few weeds. The 2/3 that I planted with clover couldn't fight the weeds. It's a jungle. I am currently letting the chickens try and take it back but they may have some major issues. I think I need to just till that bad boy under and come up with a better plan.
The fruit trees are doing great this year. My Fuji apple tree is so loaded I had to thin her out. We planted to cherry trees and two more peaches. The weather was wrong this year for peaches but maybe next year. The plums still have issues. I can't figure out why - I have two and I thought for sure they would cross pollinate but so far no luck. I am adding a bee colony next year for honey and pollinating so I hope that this helps, and I will plant one more plum to see if that does the trick.
I am a wife, a mom, a nurse practitioner, a smart mouth, a professional party planner to only my own kids, a Disney crazy lady, a gardener, a mini-farmer, and a converted spoiled brat.
