I Met a Boy

Ok...when I was 15, I met a boy.  He was my first real attempt at a relationship, my first kiss, my first love.  Oh the bittersweet memories.  My mother forced me to breakup with him, saying I was too young to be so serious.  Last year, after several marriages and 4 kids later, we reconnected at a reunion.  As it turns out, he was as kind and wonderful as I remember him.  We still loved each other and we created a life together. 

I am a die hard city slicker.  I love being close to the modern conveniences.  He lives out in the country in the "middle of nowhere".  So I packed up all my books and what furniture I wanted, and trekked off to the country. 

Now, I have always hated " yard work", as I so disdainfully called it.  You know, the kind of grass mowing and weeding that you do in a neighborhood so that you don't devalue all the property in the area.  So how did I end up in the woods, with critters crawling around and deer eating the foliage in my back yard?  I decided to move in with this man...that's how. 

Over the last year I have come to appreciate the space, and the quiet.  I made a decision to do something I never thought I would do....plant a garden and grow some good food.  Easy right?  Nope.

I got out my western garden book, poured through the pages, trying to decide what to plant and when to do it.  This isn't an easy task.  My state is divided up into at least 7 regions based on temperature, rainfall, and who knows what else.  I am in region 5.  So this book tells me everything I can plant for my region.  I decided I wanted lettuce, snow peas, summer squash, tomatoes, 4 different varieties of bell peppers, yukon gold potatoes, pumpkins, bush beans, leeks, cucumbers, and some sunflowers around the edges to look like the pictures in the magazines. 

I made my way through the garden stores gathering seeds.  I ordered some online, and I frequented the local garden sales at the high schools, getting flowers and some tomato starts grown by the FFA classes.  Whew!  I had no idea this was so much work when I set out in Feb doing the research and the ordering. 

Then there is the whole land preparation.  There was an area that my fiance had prepared several years ago for a garden.  It was overgrown with grass and weeds.  There was also the matter of the deer.  I didn't not want my beautiful garden to be a buffet for the deer.  I don't mind sharing, but deer can ravage a garden pretty quickly, as I discovered when I put out some geraniums on the front deck only to find a potful of stems the next morning.  Those pesky deer have 2 1/2 acres of forest to forage and they come up on my porch and eat my geraniums!!  I now own a slingshot. 

So we tilled the garden much too early the first time.  It rained and turned into a mud farm out there.  I am in the pacific northwest where it rains 9 months out of the year.  We let it dry out and tilled it again about 2 weeks ago.  Then we got fence posts in...the metal kind with the little nubbies on them.  We strung wire around the top and this last weekend we hung netting all around the garden area.  I think I am late getting going.

 I have a small greenhouse and I started growing peppers, snow peas, lettuce and tomato starts in the greenhouse getting them ready for planting.  None of the peppers came up.  I have since learned that it was too cold and I watered them too much.  I have peat pots full of snow peas and lettuce that are flourishing.  I have also discovered that I could have planted the lettuce in the ground a month ago. So far...not so good.  LOL

So ....tomorrow, I am going to spend the day securing the bottom of the netting into the ground, planting the peas, beans (which you have to soak overnight), squash, cucumber, lettuce and potatoes.  Did you know that there are cold crops (those which grow in cold weather, and warm crops?  Go figure...I REALLY am an amateur.  So I am going to put all the cold crops in the ground tomorrow.  I have also discovered that these snow peas need some stakes and string so they can climb and grow upward.  The plant will yield more.  I also read that there is some powder that you coat the seed potatoes with to prevent them from rotting.

So as a hopelessly inexperienced amateur...I have some questions.  As my potatoes start to grow shoots that come above the ground I am supposed to pile dirt around the green planty looking part.  I am to continue to do this until the dirt is about 4-6 inches high...so I guess I am going to have gopher -looking mounds of dirt in the garden where the potatoes are growing.  Then I am to leave them in there and let them grow, and harvest them when they are ready.  They are growing underground for crying out loud...how do I know when they are ready?  I can't see them.  Also...with some of the warm crops it says to plant when the ground gets warm.  What the heck does that mean?  What is warm?  Sometimes it doesn't get warm here until July and then gets cold again in September.  Are there some vegetables that grow better than others?  I am guessing that oranges, melons and other fruits of that sort cannot be grown in the northwest, but does anyone out there know what kind of  "warm" crops we can grow here?

So I am off to my greenhouse.  We will see what tomorrow brings.  I can use all the advise I can get.  I am pretty sure that after my planting project tomorrow I will have many more questions.  Signing off until tomorrow....

Karen-the most amateurish of beginners.