The Silva Family Garden - Week by Week

So we have started up our first garden. We took pictures week by week intending to post them to the blog every week but we were too busy. So now we are playing catch-up. Here's the chronicles of the Silva Family Garden 2009.

March 28th - Planting Seeds

We began our garden by planting seeds. Caleb helped plant the seeds. We planted onions, lettuce, cauliflower, and peppers. We planted them in this starter kit we purchased at the Home Depot. It did okay but we had more luck planting the seeds in empty yogurt cups.

April 10th - Working Outside

We have moles in our yard. We didn't want them to eat our garden so we put down chicken wire to keep the moles out.
Here's my strapping husband making dirt (he wrote that). Caleb was watering it down. He loved helping out with the hose. Now let me explain how he is "making dirt." We are following the Square Foot Gardening method. Gardeners are encouraged to make dirt instead of improving the existing soil. It is a mix of peat moss, compost, and vermiculite.
Our first garden full of dirt.
We then had to build these cages to put over the top of the our garden to protect the crops from deer, rabbits, squirrels, birds and Mason.

April 18th - Gardens Ready

Our gardens complete with the cages. They are awaiting the plants inside the house.

April 25th - Planting Day

Strawberries go into one of our gardens. We had to adjust our planting plan because we got so many strawberry plants. Oh darn! Too many strawberries! Life is so tough!

May 2nd - Our garden is doing well

Peppers (far left column), Broccoli (middle left), Cauliflower (middle right), and Peas (far right).
Strawberries (3 columns) and onions in the right front square. Our onions died before translating so we purchased starts.
It may not look like much but these are raspberries starts that we planted at the base of our deck. A member of the Ward had starts so we got these for free!
This also doesn't look like much right now but there are potatoes growing in this container.

May 9th - A Moment of Silence

We lost a few plants! We lost 1 pepper plant, our cauliflower, and 3 strawberry plants. And I forgot to take pictures (remember me saying we were too busy).

June 19th - How Does Our Garden Grow!

In this is planted 8 boxes of strawberries, zucchini, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and onions.
Here you can see peppers, broccoli, beans (under ground), and peas.
The raspberry starts took. You can see new growth!
We added rhubarb starts. We won't get rhubarb until next year. The white pipe is the crappy sprinkler system that the previous owner installed (Mike added that).
Our potatoes are popping! So for you people who don't know about potatoes, the plants come up above the dirt. You cover the plant with an inch of dirt and the potatoes get bigger.

May 23rd - Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend is when most people in Rochester start their garden. We, however, are ready to harvest some spinach and lettuce. We will also have radishes soon!
Notice the trellis in the back? We have added this for our vine plants (tomatoes, zucchini, watermelon and cucumbers - to be planted). Everything is growing well.
In this one we added tomatoes, a pepper plant (to replace our dead one), parsley, cilantro, and planted carrots up front in the right. This is our salsa garden. We picked up these plants at the Rochester Public Market.

Stay tuned for more garden updates and witty economic posts (Mike typed that too).