We have a garden. Last year was the first time we'd ever put in a garden, and it was a great experience. We moved to Mechanicsville, Virginia in November 2009. We bought a home with a greenhouse that had a perfect plot of land to put in a vegetable garden. My parents live nearby, and my Dad loves to garden, but he owns a yard that is almost totally shaded by trees, and he loves his trees. So, as soon as he saw this yard, he got pretty excited about putting in a garden...and it got me interested, too. The first year was amazing, for a bunch of reasons. First, I discovered that I really enjoy gardening; growing plants from seeds, transplanting, working the soil, weeding, watering, harvesting, the whole shebang. My wife likes it, too. Second, it's extremely emotionally satisfying, on a couple different levels. I'm not a control freak, and I actually love the randomness of how plants grow, but there is something about growing plants that produce food that really makes me feel good. I also feel that we are saving money by gardening. Vegetables are not cheap at the supermarket. Yeah, there's also the idea that we're helping the environment by growing our own vegetables. We also compost and collect rainwater, but I really do all that just to reduce our gardening costs. Unlike my wife and kids, I'm not really all that environmentally minded. The last reason the first year of gardening was amazing was that the garden produced huge amounts of food, way beyond our wildest dreams. My wife and I attribute this primarily to the man who owned the home prior to me, Mr. C. Mr. C had a garden on the same spot mine is located. Now, he'd passed away 8 or 9 years ago, and his widow hadn't kept the garden up. The grass had reclaimed it, but the soil underneath was amazing. Most everything we put in the ground grew, and grew huge. The success of the first year was primarily thanks to Mr. C's dirt. I was the main gardener, but other hands got dirty. My Dad bought nearly all of the seed for the first year's garden, and gave a ton of advice. My wife helped till, water, weed, and harvest. My sons were even involved, a little. I was proud of last year's garden.
So, here I am blogging about the garden. I'm doing this to record what's going on with the garden for future reference. We're going to make some mistakes, and I'd like to avoid making them in future years. I like to write, and I have a BA in English, so part of why I'm writing this is because I enjoy writing. Also, I'm no gardening expert, but maybe there's someone out there who will benefit from reading this blog. Sharing what works for us, what we do, might help someone else. Maybe. We'll see.
