The Country Garden Showcase- Week #1

YOU'RE INVITED!

Hello 2012!  It's time to start planning and preparing the garden.  So get out those gardening books and get started.  To help us get motivated, I have just added a NEW weekly gardening blog party.  The Country Garden Showcase.  I will post the link on Mondays and will leave it open through Sunday each week.

  

Please add your ideas, pictures, stories, recipes, gardening tips and advice. 

Link as often as you like.  I'd sure love to see your garden and I'd like to watch your progress throughout the year.  In case you didn't already know, I am a gardenophile.  I love growing fruits and veggies and growing flowers too.  Mostly, I guess I just love playing in the dirt.  It's my therapy.  ,

I look forward to trying new techniques and homemade garden solutions and I encourage you to post what works and doesn't work in your garden.  Together, we can build quite an encyclopedia for gardening and it is my greatest hope that we can help improve eachother's harvests along the way.  All we have to do is share!

Please add our Country Garden Showcase button to your post OR a link back to the Party, if you don't know how to add buttons.  

 I am eager to get started and I hope you are too.    I look forward to seeing pictures of your garden.  

 I am starting off this new BLOG PARTY with a recap of my last season, a few lessons learned and a few ideas mulling about in my head...

 Last season, I learned how to grow climbing plants UPWARD (including giant pumpkins in custom made hammocks

I extended summer crops like peppers and tomatoes by adding these row covers above

 I fell in love with Black Krik Heirloom tomatoes

 Fava beans

 scarlet red runner beans (especially their flowers)

 and I enjoyed a few volunteers, compliments of local birds...

 I realized just how important those crop classes were.  They taught me the importance of plant identification.  The huckleberry above is yummy.  The similar looking Black Nightshade below is poisonous. BOTH were growing in my garden last fall.  The huckleberries I planted, the nightshade I didn't.

 I grew buckets of tomatoes  and I wasted almost nothing.  I am proud to say that I canned more than 80 quarts of tomatoes in all. 

 

Last year's garden exceeded every expectation I had in spite of a late May 21st freeze, an ice storm, and searing hot humidity.  I grew lots of new things ie: scarlet red runner beans, lima and fava beans, bok choi, leeks, and huckleberries.  I tested homemade organic fungicides that worked!  I managed to improve my soil some, I expanded my harvest by growing things UPWARD and under PLASTIC ROWS,  and I have a great pile of compost cooking yet.  This year, I plan to add herbs to my little space and I hope to improve the soil beneath my fruit trees too.  


January Garden Plans: 
prune fruit trees & grapes
fertilize
spray copper fungicide

remove litter from base of trees to prevent overwintering of coddling moth

check watering system

chip Christmas tree and leaves into compost pile

aerate and layer compost pile

improve soil in raised beds with mulch and till

make veggie garden plot diagram *remembering to change plant family from last planting in each box 

plant winter veggies ie: peas, beans, carrots, radishes, lettuces, mescluns, and beets under 3 mil plastic inside boxes

when I'm done I am gonna relax and read your garden posts...

HAPPY GARDENING!

Have a Happy New Year and may 2012 be your best year so far.

I have linked up this post to The Homestead Barn Hop!