The Gardening Season Has Begun!!

It’s only February and yet our gardening season has begun!! I have been dying to start gardening, it’s one of those homesteading tasks that has almost instant results. You can visibly see progress pretty quickly. Gardening also happens to be an area where I need a LOT of practice. Gardening is also the cheapest homestead endeavor so when I fail I don’t feel quite as bad about it. There’s less stress involved with plants as opposed to living animals. Between the satisfaction of visible progress, the thrill of a challenge and the new produce varieties we want to try this year I have been beside myself waiting for spring.

I may have jumped the gun but I planted cucumber seeds last week. I know it’s early but the weather has been really nice with 80 degree days!! Today I came outside to a sprout!! I didn’t think they would do anything and there is always the possibility we will get a cold snap and it’ll die but I couldn’t wait any longer. I decided to plant them in last year’s garden space (we are in the process of preparing a new garden area) since they had done well there and because we will not finish the entire new garden space this year. Most likely we will only be able to fertilize roughly a 4th of the new area.

We also have a potato plant growing in our compost pile. I use the term compost pile very loosely as it’s really a pile of food scraps that we don’t do anything to. Essentially the bug are breaking it all down since we don’t aerate it. This allows for plants to grow in the pile. Last year we had a few potato plants which we were able to harvest and a few cantaloupe plants which refused to produce cantaloupes. I ended up getting frustrated and pulled them up.

Pictured above is our catnip plant that survived the winter. I’m seriously amazed it survived the week or more of freezing temps and the snow we had. Now it is getting bigger, lush and has spread into the rest of the window box.

(sneak peek at our future garden space)