Huge Gardening Project

As you might have guessed, I haven't been working on the Figs and Ginger quilts because this garden has taken a lot of my (our) time lately.  We work so hard, sometimes it's hard to get moving the next day, because my muscles are stiff from working out there and by evening, I just want to sit and work on something small with my feet up.

Luckily, the tractor is doing the tilling, because there are so many rocks in this field.  I think we have picked up enough "large" rocks to fill the large front scooper at least 3 times.  Some are small boulders, others are smaller, but they are large enough to have stalled the tractor several times.  I also found 2 large pieces of bent up sheet metal in the field.  Now I'm not talking small pieces, they must have weighed at least a couple pounds each!

I think we have all the vegetable beds ready for this year, and I've reserved a couple rows to plant later, to help spread out the harvest, but we're still working on the watering system.  Since it's the first year of our garden in this area, we're learning about the soil and nutrients needed and hoping the warmer space with more sun will bring us more tomatoes, melons and squash, which weren't as happy with their old location.

The plants had to go in the ground before the seeds, but everything I wanted to plant is in the ground! Later I'll plant more lettuce, beans and other short growing crops, and then fall crops will need to be planted in the summer.

Earlier this year I bought some strawberries, grapes and blueberries, but didn't get them in the ground until this weekend, so I lost some of the strawberries and am crossing my fingers that the rest will still be ok since I kept them cool in our garage.  A couple of the grapes have new growth, so that's a good sign.

Some of our young fruit trees looks like it will have fruit this year and we're hoping we will get to taste the fruits of our labors, after patiently waiting for a few years!