Begining again

Well, I suppose its time to begin again this year. While this doesn't mean we haven't been doing some fun things around here, it does mean I need to actually start thinking about the science garden. I think after last year the expectations have been raised.

2012 Tomato plants

Now, I know I won't be able to replicate the 13 foot tall tomato plants (at least we hope I won't), but we are hoping for a good yield. Our goal has always been to at least get out of the garden what we put in.  As such, I have started a cost into garden spreadsheet as well as we are going to weight the harvests on my new scale that I got for Christmas.  Hopefully, this will teach Pooka how much food costs and will work on her math skills as well as finding a quantative way to measure what we produce.

This year we are also adding a few new beds. First, the front yard had these "professionally" landscaped bushes right in front of the house. We never really liked them because A) they were planted too close together and B) they had great big sharp pointy thorns that loved to get embedded in my feet since I am a barefoot kinda Mommy. As a result, in the fall, we tore them out and have been giving the soil there a rest before we plant our herb garden out front.  This should (in theory) cut down on the number of pots we have on the back deck.

Goodbye evil bushes...

We are also extending Pooka's veggie beds around the shed as more "landscaping" beds. Putting a 2 ft bed all the way around 3 sides of the shed should give us an additional 50 sq ft of veggie space. This will probably be needed after Pooka's birthday and all the new seeds she got.

What does all these changes mean? They mean that I actually have to plan the garden this year. No more flying by the seat of my pants, or in this case plants. (I know, bad pun). So while I bury myself in paper and plans and seed packets to figure out what we are doing, just know that Pooka keeps looking at her catalogs and asking "Mommy, can we grow this too, and this and this..." Then I look at her, and throw away all I have done, and start over with the new plant added. The things we do for children.

Some of Pooka's seed catalogs. They are still increasing in number