Last weekend, in celebration of the warm days, the extended forecast (no hard freezes in the foreseeable future) and the inspiration to sow some seeds, we finally got outside for a couple of hours, cleaned up a few of the beds, and pushed the first seeds of 2014 into soil!
There are still many beds to get for the season, but completing this bed as well as planting some bush beans under a few fruit trees and getting the seed potatoes into their buckets, feels so good!
As you can see from the photo below, there’s a lot going on in this one little (4 feet X 6 feet) bed!
The corn, bush beans and beets are a bio-intensive method that has worked very well for us in the past. All three have roots systems that reach to different depths and that pull or give different nutrients from and into the soil.
The sunflowers at the back of the bed will give the pollinators another flower to be excited about as well as create some visual appeal 🙂 As you can tell by the featured photo up top, I am very much looking forward to some more sunflowers gracing our little plot!
Okra is a companion plant to sunflowers, and I’ve never grown them before, so I thought it was worth a shot. My hope is that they can get established a bit before the corn gets too big, but we’ll see. I look at our veggie garden as a constant experiment.
Then, we have the peas that half-circle around the okra. Really, my thinking here was that they are quick to grow and produce and should be done with their whole life cycle before much else in the bed has the chance to take over.
While not all of our beds will be so intensively planted, many of them will be. And truly, I am very hopeful for this year! Though we are forecasted to have a brutal summer (hot and very dry), I intend to do everything in my power to get the garden established before the crazy heat hits, then protect it with shade cloth if necessary.
How are things going in your garden? Have you had the opportunity to get outside and get your hands dirty yet? I highly recommend it!
xoxo,
M
It looks like you enjoyed a nice afternoon and your garden is off to a great start. I am still prepping the beds but hope to set some transplants out this weekend. Just a few moments digging in the dirt felt so good.
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