Stepping Heavenward: How Does Our Garden Grow?

Our garden always begins in January. While the ground is covered with ice or snow and the leafless trees look so forlorn, I am sitting by the fire looking through seed catalogs and dreaming of summer. By early March our garden is beginning to grow. As the seeds we carefully placed in our Jiffy-Pots in February begin to sprout and grow, our schoolroom turns into a mini-greenhouse! We've found that the key to starting seeds inside is grow lights....

The pepper tray. We are growing lots more peppers this year due to the fact that most everyone around here loves spicy food. We are experimenting and trying to find the HOTTEST hot pepper to grow. Right now we've got Cayenne, Serrano, Anaheim chili peppers, Caribbean Red, Habanero, Chinese 5-Color (the children's favorite because they change color!). Plus we are growing many sweet peppers as well.

Tomatoes are always a favorite! Last year our crop was disappointing so we are hoping for better this year.

The garden in March.....

By mid-March, the garden outside was starting to come to life. Seeds we planted in the fall were sprouting, and plants that lay dormant through the winter came to life. We ate many luscious salads this spring with the abundant greens from our garden.

The spinach was Susannah's favorite. She would go out to the garden every day and pick and eat her spinach. Joshua grew to love it also. They also ate mint from our numerous

varieties in the garden: apple mint, spearmint, the the favorite of course: chocolate mint!

This is garlic that we planted in October: Elephant, Inchillion Red, and California Select.

The garden in April.....

We added new topsoil/compost mix to all the boxes, as well as an organic fertilizer mix described in the book Gardening When it Counts, by Steve Solomon.

Below are rows of newly planted potatoes...Rose Gold, Caribe and in another patch this size we planted Yukon Gold.

The garlic continues to grow and should be ready for harvest in June when the tops start to die back.

The garden in May.....

By the end of May, the Yugoslavian Red lettuce was heading beautifully.

Thanks to regular and copious spring rains, our sugar snap peas did beautifully this year. Joshua and Susannah came out to the garden each morning with me to pick peas. Most got eaten before we ever made it inside!

We planted lots more beets this year by request from just about everyone....

We usually eat them roasted with some olive oil. This year we also learned to like the beet greens as well... sauteed and sometimes topped with a squirt of red wine vinegar.

Potato patch at the end of May. We hilled them weekly with topsoil/compost mix or horse manure and finally with straw. They'll be ready for harvest at the end of June/early July.