More gardening space

Last years (2010) garden was a pretty good producer for us newbies.  We shared the space with Holly and Ian and we got plenty of goods. The space in the ex-baseball cage worked well, but we decided on a bigger garden this year. So, we are letting Holly and Ian have last years garden area and we are expanding out. Here's a picture of the area we'll be using for our garden 2011.

This is the view of how the area looked before David borrowed a friends back hoe. Geez, a man and his toys!! Suffice to say this area doesn't look this serene any more. David ended up digging about 10 trenches, each about 4ft deep. We called them 'grave rows' because, well, that's what they looked like! lol. We have been filling them up by hand, first screening the dirt, taking out big rocks, then combining compost, sand, peat moss and filling in the rows. There's two rows left, whew! Almost done with this part of it. Looking forward to growing good stuff this year!!

Coming and Going

Here's a picture of our garden last year, 2010. We had a batting cage put up for the boys when they were playing baseball a few years ago. Since they aren't playing ball anymore, we thought it would be a good garden area - already deer proof!

The smoke in the background in the Sapphire Mountains is a summer forest fire. Thankfully, it didn't cause too much smoke for us in the valley.

When will it get warm?!?

This has been a cold spring! No wonder we have a short growing season here in Montana. Despite seeing it lightly snowing in the bitterroot mountains, I went out to the garden with my sweatshirt on beat the dirt off of some of the weeds/grass clumps that we have pulled from around the berry beds.

I have the potatoes planted and they are starting to peek through. I planted corn starts last weekend and they are hanging on, but the wind is a bit harsh for their little stems. We also planted squash starts and I've lost a few due to the wind. When it gets warm I'll plant the rest of the starts.

Waiting for warmth...