Now we wait

Friday and Saturday saw the planting completed. The girls helped me put the starts in the ground and sprinkle the seeds into the rows. I think the ones Penny helped me with will have to be thinned as she tended to dump the seeds rather than sprinkle. Also some of the seeds may have washed away with some slight over watering.

Overall, the garden is a success thus far. I can hardly wait to see the starts coming up.

Penny and Lucille watering peppers, tomatoes and onions

Penny watering the starts before we put them in the ground

Urban Gardening

I feel very lucky to have access to such a strong community garden program here in Racine. The town I lived in in Illinois had a community garden, but only ten plots available for the entire city which came with a waiting list as long as my arm. The first two years I tried to participate, I didn't make it to the top of the waiting list. 

When I came to Racine, I looked for a garden and didn't expect to find much but was pleasantly surprised to find the Racine Urban Garden Network. What a great group of people! They have all of the characteristics I look for in a group - a great sense of humor, a purpose and organization. Where else could I go to a "Plotluck" to choose my plot for the year? The group serves the city of Racine and provides 10 locations from which to garden as well as several partner locations that are specific to the community served.

The RUGN works "to continuously provide people in Racine with the necessary education and tools to grow their own healthy food." They offer weekly workshops in the spring to help members get ready for planting, volunteer and community opportunities to network and improve the gardens for all users, The RUGN Facebook page is actively maintained and has information not only about the gardens and the network, but articles about urban gardening. 

Here is a link** to some books on urban gardening. This one: Mini-Farming: Self-Sufficiency on a 1/4 Acre** appeals to me. While I don't have any desire to go "off-grid", I do like the idea of producing more of what I and my family consume. I don't have enough of an understanding of how GMO's and mass-farming techniques impact us to feel wholly comfortable voting for those things with my spending.

If your city doesn't have a community garden, here is a checklist to get started as well as a start-up guide provided by the University of California Cooperative Extension in Los Angeles County.

Garden Progress

Yesterday Penny and I got the garden beds weeded and prepped so I can get plants and seeds in tomorrow.  Let me correct myself, I pulled the weeds and Penny carried one to the compost pile. Then tried on her sunglasses right side and wrong side up, then carried another weed to the compost. Then surveyed all of the other beds. Then carried another weed to the compost.

Getting Ready to Garden

I"m getting ready to plant my garden. As I live in an apartment, I actually have plots in the local community garden. I'm was lucky enough to score two plots so am planning on lots of vegetables and some herbs for us this year.

Racine has an amazing community garden network. I'm continually impressed by the breadth of the options they have as well as the community participation. The Racine Urban Garden Network is a great example of how to involve the community and it's users.

I'm late on planting because I was horribly sick for about 3 weeks in the first part of May. I'm finally back to myself and am excited to get started. My sweet granddaughters and I will be going to prep the site tomorrow and hopefully plant this weekend.

I was struggling with what to plan until I came across this post from Williams Sonoma via Pinterest.  This helped me put together a plan for our garden. I'm using the Beginner and Salsa gardens as a starting place. I have enough space between my two plots to also put in the canning and salad gardens so will probably go that route. I love the idea of feeding my family from the salad garden through the summer and from the canning garden through the winter.

I'll post pictures throughout the process.  If you have ideas on what to plant or recipes for what I do plant - share them!

Creosote and Pantyhose

After three years, I'm finally at a place where I feel like I have something to say again. It's been an eventful three years - three new roommates, a move (across the street but stressful nonetheless), left a job and started a business among other things.

So, I'm starting this blog anew. A blog about knitting, food, and family.

We had a couple days this week that were almost spring-like.  Weather above freezing, blue skies (pale, but blue all the same) and a lot less snow by the end of the day.  Still sub-freezing temperatures to come, but much better than it has been by far.

We are starting to plan our garden for the year. We have a 10x15 plot at a community garden. I'm trying to come up with a plan that will maximize our yield. I'm using a tool I found at GrowVeg. I'm impressed so far with the tool. You can search your location to see what others are doing. I just received my first email advice telling me it's time to seed my onions indoors. The timing is based on my local climate and according to the website, they will prompt us to set starts out, harvest and rotate crops.

My next step is to plan the container gardening for our porch and patio. I love having a home where I don't have to to mow, prune trees, or the best part, shovel snow (which we have had more than our share of this year), the drawback is that there is no where for me to have a garden at home.

My grandmother passed away last month. When I was a little girl and we would visit in the summer, my sister and I would help her in her garden. They lived at Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho near the town of Athol. The property was a lakefront home on a very steep slope so my grandfather had put in terraces using railroad ties. I still remember the smell of the creosote oozing out of the ties and to this day I associate that order with gardening. At the end of a hot afternoon working in the garden, we could go down to the lake and jump in.  The Pend Oreille is very cold - it's the 5th deepest freshwater lake in the lower 48. We would never last long in the water, my sister would be blue and shivering after a few minutes and I wouldn't last much longer.

I'm looking forward to a garden this year, I think mostly because it's the best way I can think of to pay homage to my grandma. She was very connected to the earth, as the daughter of farmers and she and my grandfather farmed for a time near Lapwai Idaho. Even in her later years when she still lived on her own in Vancouver, Washington, she always had a garden with flowers and tomatoes and herbs at the very least.

I hope that my granddaughters will become connected to her through me. She wasn't always an easy person to be with, but I value all that I learned from her. When she passed, my daughter and I realized that we are using all of the lessons we learned from her in frugality. We laugh over some of the sillier things, like the pantyhose with no legs and the peeled Asparagus, but we appreciate the lessons in making things last, fixing them, and making do with what you have.