Herbs for days.....

amazing how fast our garden has come to life!!! after what seemed like days and days of rain we were back at it this weekend! it always makes us happy to dig in the dirt. after a visit to our gurus - The Herb Pharmacy - we added to our herb box - curry, licorice, sweet annie,(natch ), lime basil, standard issue basil, chocolate mint to go with our orange and spearmint. our mint is planted in their own clay pits, to avoid spreading. I am thrilled with the beauty of my herbs this year - Annie and I are working on the perfect garden markers! Hello Pinterest?!! We lost one of our cucumber plants so that got replaced. Bil planted an array of beautiful carrots - eggplant and some more marigolds to keep the bugs at bay. We picked chard and kale and a beautiful bounty of strawberries which may or may not have found themselves on top of an angel food cake. I'll never tell wink wink. the oregano got a much needed haircut which I happily shared with a friend. the garden days are happy ones - I can almost taste the tomato sandwiches. 

it's a new year

when I look at the investment of time and money that went into last years garden vs. the quantity and quality of the return on that investment I am at first mostly disappointed. But ultimately feel compelled to try again and to attempt to do it better. True failure would have been to give up or to have never tried in the first place.

Mistakes made last year include:

• spending too much money on fancy brand name fertilizer
• over crowding the garden
• planting from seeds instead of seedlings
• pulling half my plants when they first sprouted because they looked like weeds
• thinning too late

it's possible too that I may have over watered last year... but I'm not sure... that's a mistake I might make again. The thing is there are more "experts" at the garden than there are variety of things being grown in the garden.... and every "expert" has their own thoughts on right and wrong... too much vs too little... when to add this product or when to add that one.

Being newbies we try to take the myriad advice we get and choose the options that best feel right to us. Sometimes we get it right... we had cucumbers out the ears for two weeks last year... and some times we get it wrong... our beets and carrots were woody and small. But its our land... our time... our satisfaction... and it sure beats sitting on the couch watching television.

Welcome back to year two of our garden blog.

waking up the garden.

A long winters nap is over and it's time to wake up our garden. The lessons we learned from our maiden voyage into gardening last year, we hope will be a useful tool this year. A visit to the fabulous Herb Pharmacy has sparked our planting list. Annie and I will spend some time this week raking up leaves, cleaning out our herb bed and veggie beds in anticipation of our planting. We can't wait!! Here are a few iPhone snaps which by the way I hope will make the photo journaling portion of my duties this year a lot faster + easier! Won't Bil be happy! Here's to a great spring + summer and tomato sandwiches!! xo