Grow What You Love to Eat
This is the third installment in the 5×5 Garden Challenge Series. Every Wednesday I’ll be posting about the challenge, covering topics that will help all the new gardeners get started. If you haven’t heard about the challenge head on over to the 5×5 Challenge Website, we’ll also be putting up a page here that pulls in all the 5×5 Challenge posts.
I had high hopes of getting the raised bed build for my 5×5 Challenge garden, but the rain conspired against me. So this week we’ll talk about vegetables.
For the 5×5 Challenge I’m going to be growing the Rainbow Kitchen Garden from Renee’s Garden seed. It contains: zucchini, tomatoes, scallions, beans, and lettuce. These are all vegetable that I love. If you don’t like any of these, feel free to choose the 5 vegetables that you like.
The point of growing your own food is to grow things that you love. If no one in your family loves tomatoes, don’t grow tomatoes. That being said, if you’ve never tasted a homegrown tomato before, it’s completely different than a store bought tomato and you might actually like it. The same goes for most vegetables.
Which vegetables do you love and which vegetables do you dislike?
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The Triangle Garden
If you remember, last week I introduced you to Dailon and mentioned that he was already working on something. I also mentioned that the rock wall I was building was going to enclose a new garden space.
The new garden will be a triangular shaped garden right across the driveway from my kitchen window, which is why I wanted to put a garden space in this spot. It’s a nice space, with good soil and an old outhouse (that is currently being turned into a small chicken coop).
We started by clearing out a pine tree. It was planted in the middle of the space and was leaning.
There was also a raised bed made of railroad ties, that also went away. Mr Chiots was more than happy to get his tractor out for this chore.
The plan is to put some chickens in there to clean out all the weeds. Then I’ll figure out what sort of design I want to use. I’ll continue building the walls to surround it, and hopefully one day it will be a beautiful space that I can admire from my kitchen window.
Do you have any exciting garden projects for the summer?
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Cultivate Simple 27: Pondering Ponds
Today on Cultivate Simple we’re talking about ponds. We went to the local library a few weeks ago for a workshop on pond building and maintenance. We’d love to put in a small pond here at Chiot’s Run for increased diversity and provide a place for planting water loving plants. We had a small pond back in our garden in Ohio and really enjoyed what it brought to our garden. Of course we have 40 acres of wetlands in the back, but we really want something that we can see from the house.
Books of the Week
PDF Of USDA book on Ponds: Planning, Design, and Construction.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:13 — 68.8MB)
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Quote of the Day: Robert Brault,
Through the blackest night, morning gently tiptoes,
feeling its way to dawn.
~Robert Brault
I love being outside at night, especially in spring, when the air is crisp and there aren’t many insects around. More than the dark of night, I love being up early, right as night begins to fade to day.
One of the reasons I love camping so much is because we’re usually up as the first whispers of dawn break over the horizon.
I especially love getting up early, seeing the first whispers of dawn on the horizon.
What’s your favorite time of day?
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Rebuilding the Past
One of my hobbies is building rock walls. Back in Ohio, I built them all around the garden. Yesterday I spent time rebuilding and repairing a rock wall along the front of the new garden area.
The original wall was in terrible shape, no longer resembling a rock wall at all, it looked more like a pile of stones instead. You can see it in the photos below, just barely sticking up on the right hand side of the photo. The large tree is the one you see in the second photo behind the wall.
After a few hours of work, I managed to rebuild about 20 feet of it up to a height of about two feet tall. This is just small portion of the walls I will eventually build. Just to enclose this new garden I’m going to need a couple hundred feet of rock walls. When I think of how long I will need this wall to be, I might cap it at two feet!
You can see the continuation of this wall back into the woods. It continues the entire length of our property, which is pretty far. Though it is in rough shape in some sections.
I think one of the reasons I like building rocks walls so much is because I really enjoy puzzles. Rock walls are just real life puzzles that you don’t have to take apart and put back in the box when you’re finished.
What’s one of your hobbies besides gardening?
