Ethan Begins our Garden

Ethan and I have been gardening together since he was tiny. In fact, one of his favorite photos is one of us standing in our veggie garden, a forest of corn behind us, a swath of gourd plans in front of us. So much greenery that you can barely see us.

On Friday evening we watched a documentary about garden, "Back to Eden."

On Saturday Ethan drew up garden plans to scale and began to lay down what would go where.

We took stock of the potatoes that we had saved for seed potatoes from last year. We had three kinds from last year. I loved the colorful sprouts from the purple potatoes.

He is even planning to convert a small patch of the lawn in the front into more garden space. He cleaned out a bit by the small fence and planted a few things there. That bed has two kinds of peas and will add spinach soon.

He also amended the cold frame next to our house and planted a bunch of stuff including: Danver's 1/2 Long Carrots, Lunar White Carrots, Big Detriot Red Beets, Sugar Beets and Butter Crunch Lettuce.

In the back yard he fixed up a place where the wooden retaining wall had rotted. He reworked that soil and planted white potatoes, purple potatoes, Dwarf Curled Blue Ccotch Kale and both kinds of carrots.

On Sunday night, after it was too dark to dig, he planted (Yellow) Alpine Strawberries and California Wonder Peppers in pots that we will start inside.

Today he has worked on cleaning out another bed. We were very much in need of more dirt and Ethan found that a neighbor had free dirt available due to a remodeling project. She lives just a few streets over and the soil is lovely. I perfect solution for both parties.

I love watching Ethan garden. He is happiest when he is working outside and feeling productive. It does my soul good to see the young man he is growing into. He continues to work at improving our gardens. We will be planting more stuff in pots to start inside this evening.