Does this scream victory garden pin up or what?

A Gardener’s French Tip Manicure. 

Roma Romama Roma Tomatoes. A little Lady Gaga garden humor. 

I’m very excited about my garden this year. With the help of the fantastic SmartGardener.com website I have hopefully avoided my biggest gardening sin of over planting. Everything pre planned and spaced appropriately with our household and garden size taken into account. I didn’t follow my plan exactly to the T but it did help me get a good visual before I broke ground. And if i want to be VERY picky about it I’ll go back and make the plan match. And I love the journal and email reminders. 

So many people ask me questions about gardening and what to do all the time. Truthfully it’s all just been blind luck. And trial and error. Everything that I know about gardening right now came from the fact that i either learned from a victory or a failure the first or even second year I had a garden. Farming has always been risky. 

I started my first big garden in 2010. Dad had just been diagnosed with cancer and was going to be home now so he wanted to start a garden like his family used to keep when he was growing up and what I remember him having when I was very young. My neighbor had extra space in his large plot he had tilled in the field at the bottom of our house. I remember going to get seeds with dad and planting the rows. This is stuck in my mind very vividly because it was one of the last projects we worked on together. If not the last one. I remember him getting tired. I remember not knowing what I was supposed to do but doing it anyway. Hence the reason I accidentally planted two loooooong rows of okra. There was so much okra that year.

But moral of the story, if you don’t know the answer. Find out. Ask someone. Google it. Go to the library. Pinterest is full of tips. And if all else fails just do it anyway and learn from the results. 

This is my 3rd garden. I want to be purposeful and diligent that what I grow is used either by me or someone else. I want to freeze or can what we don’t readily consume. I really want to remember I shouldn’t be afraid of pruning and that when okra gets 7ft tall it’s hard to pick. I really want to ready my beds for winter when the time comes and plant some winter crops. 

It’s the growing season. I need to be reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle. Jerusalem, you need to get that back 😉