Gardening Blog Introduction

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a busy mom of 6 children between the ages of 4 & 12. I am married to my best friend who will be a contributor to this blog, and we live in South Central Wisconsin in Zone 5. I am fairly new to gardening. When some of our children were younger Phil and I tried a couple vegetable gardens which didn't yield much due to our lack of attention and knowledge about gardening. Last summer, 2008, we decided it was time to get serious about growing organic food for our family. Phil started our 80 X 50 garden in the evenings because it was located at our new home close to where he was boarding during the week. We moved to where our garden was started the middle of June. Because of the move and a illness that hit me in August, we battled the weeds furiously and enjoyed a nice harvest preserving over 88 gallons of food not counting our root and squash vegetables. We were very pleased with our first garden even though there were many lessons along the way.

I've spent the last couple months reading about gardening in Wisconsin, ordering seeds, and developing a plan for our garden layouts. This summer we will have the West Garden and the South Garden. Our South Garden is 80' X 50' and is the one we used last summer. The West Garden is where our pigs lived last summer. We allowed Pinky & Stinky to prepare this new 84' X 84' plot. We still have to remove rocks and some weeds from this plot before it will be ready to be planted, so it will be used for the crops that cannot go into the ground until late May & early June. I use a square foot garden method rather than a row method of planting. You may be wondering why a family of 8 needs two LARGE gardens. We are hoping to grow a lot of food that can be used for our pigs, chickens, goats, and other animals.

This blog will be our vegetable and herb garden journal. I hope you will enjoy growing and learning along with us this summer.