Looking For Improved Growth

Last year’s garden was remarkably successful, considering that we moved to Iowa in early-May and didn’t get much planted until later that month.  In the end, we had a ridiculous number of tomatoes and squash, but good yields of sweet potatoes, carrots, radishes, and green beans (if you count the latter as “good”…).

This year, however, we more than doubled the size of the garden, partially because everything grew too close together last year, but also because we wanted to expand into some different vegetables.  A few weeks ago, we borrowed our land lord’s tiller, which made short work of the existing garden, but also took care of the surrounding area we didn’t take care of last year.  Believe you me, Iowa dirt is quite a bit easier to till through than Missouri dirt.  I think it took me 10 minutes to go over the whole thing, and I did it again the next day just to make sure I got it all.  Since then, I’ve just used a spade fork to “turn over” the dirt and limit growth of weeds.  Then, two weeks ago, Brooke planted peas, broccoli and spinach, which are three things that we either didn’t grow at all last year, or didn’t find much success in growing.

This past weekend, however, we moved on to the other, larger items.  Brooke is pictured above watering tomato and pepper plants, though she also planted a few rows of two-color hybrid sweet corn.  If I recall,  she ended up planting over 20 plants in the plot she’s watering, and the vast majority of those are tomatoes.  Mostly romas, but also some that should make for reasonable sandwiches, etc.  Some of those plants we inherited from my Mom (thanks!), but the others she started in peat pots indoors awhile back.  I mowed the lawn the next day and saved the grass clippings to help surround the individual plants, hopefully limiting the growth of grass (that you can clearly see growing to the right of Brooke, where the broccoli, peas and spinach are).  Brooke also put some milk jugs around the tomato and pepper plants to help protect them as they get bigger.

The only thing(s) I know of yet to go in are the green beans and the soup beans.  Brooke is starting to plant herbs in pots up closer to the house over this next week, now that the temperatures seem like they’ll stay above freezing (finally…).  We’ll probably get everything else planted by Memorial Day, but then we’ve got a large amount of weeding to take care of, especially over by the peas.  We’ve got pea and spinach plants coming up, so it’s easy to identify the weeds around them.  The carrots, however, haven’t popped up yet, so we’ll have to wait for them.

On a side-note, Meg had great fun playing outside while we were doing all this.  I took some pictures while we were outside, as I tend to do when there’s a camera attached to my phone.  She discovered that eating dirt annoys her parents, though, so we’ll have to keep a close eye on her in the future…