What makes a good garden? Plenty of grass clippings, leaves and composted kitchen scraps along with whatever animal manures you can get your hands on! It is also very advantageous to the garden to do all of your burning of clean debris (no household garbage!) in the garden. The ash acts as a limer and sweetens the soil. Gardening is really very simple. Raised beds are a great way to get started. Delicious food and soaking up the sunshine while you get your exercise! How many of you have raised beds for your vegetables?

David built these wonderful tomato cages out of cattle panels. They have rings on the corners that allow them to be folded and collapsed in the off season. This works so much better than the round cages that take up a lot of space and are hard to store in the winter months. Hopefully we will have lots of tomatoes to offer to our farm friends this year! Who else enjoys a delicious BLT?

The Lord has blessed us with a tremendous amount of rain this spring. Hopefully we will actually produce some potatoes and not just beautiful plants. We will be digging up a plant or two soon to check the progress on the new potatoes. Any of our farm friends got potatoes yet?

David and Willie use the old fashioned wheeled hoes to clear the weeds between the potatoes. What is your implement of choice when it comes to ridding your garden of weeds?

Here is a picture that shows several of the tomato cages, David made, lined up in a row approximately 4 feet apart center to center. What have you found to be the best for staking or caging tomatoes? We have tried the weave but have found it to be a lot of work.

The kids love to check and see how the carrots are progressing. They love to pick them and eat them straight from the garden! Who else loves fresh carrots straight from the garden?

We are hoping to put up a lot of sweet corn this year. We are trying a new open pollinated sweet corn called Anasazi that actually has a combination of pink and white kernals. We like to do corn in double rows approximately a foot apart and then have a three foot spacing between these double rows. This provides for great wind pollination. Did you know that each silk at the top of the corn cob is connected to a single kernal? If each silk is pollinated, then the corn will be 100% filled out to the very top. This is why corn needs to be grown in blocks fairly close together. Who else loves to grow and especially eat sweet corn?

Daniel, Susan, Anna, David, Willie, Ellie, Heidi and Laura getting the garden shaped up! Notice in the top left corner, we have a rare eclipse of the sun- Susan's finger!