I'm Back.....

Wow! I haven't posted for over a year. Where has the time gone?!

Well, friends, I've been busy. I've been working on a number of projects, but today I want to address the one that has been the most challenging to me. This project actually began in earnest last summer and was continued into this summer.

I was raised in the country. Think fields, barns, farm animals and gardens. I currently live in a small town, but am still a country girl at heart. So it should be no surprise that I still think gardening is a good thing. There is just something about watching your garden grow and produce tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, etc. It's very satisfying to see shelves of mason jars filled with the abundance of a well tended, productive garden. So last spring I decided to plant a garden rather than just a few tomato plants around my patio.

In the early spring of 2009 a friend came with his tractor and broke up the ground in our little back yard and my gardening began. I planted. I hoed. I weeded and watered. I made a nice little border around the parameter of the garden with bricks and landscape timbers. In short, I worked my butt off, and the garden grew! What a delight!

At the appointed time, tomatoes began to appear on the vines and shades of yellow and red began to peek through the foliage. Ahhh. My garden was producing and my mouth was watering. Time to begin our succulent and tasty harvest. Life was good.

As I began to pick tomatoes, I noticed that more than a few had already been sampled. A bite here, a half-eaten fruit there. Not only that, but the plants were beginning to die from the ground up. This I attributed to some sort of blight or other plant disease, and I made haste to harvest what I could before the whole garden succumbed to whatever this was that was attacking it. Maybe I would have better luck next year. I had all winter to research and find out what the problem was and how to avoid it in the future.

During the course of my research, I ran across what seemed like an excellent form of gardening in small spaces. Thanks to amazon.com I soon had my copy of 'Square Foot Gardening' in hand and a whole new plan forming in my mind. What a great idea! Raised boxes of a special soil mix that was practically guaranteed to grow the finest produce imaginable, and with very little effort after the initial set-up and planting. Hurry up spring!!!! This is my year for the best garden ever!

The rest of the story?......Later. I'm tired.