Gardening Resources

These are the gardening books I own that I'm using to get started.  The first is Starter Vegetable Gardens by Barbara Pleasant.  It has several sample plans to use along with detailed information on how to implement them.  The next is All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.  I love the idea of using raised beds and hope to eventually have some of them.  He has great ideas about spacing and vertical gardening as well.  The last book is Grow Great Grub by Gayla Trail.  This book has inspired me to give veggies a try.  The pictures are beautiful.  She also details many types of vegetables, fruits, and herbs as well as harvesting and storage help.

Some online resources I'm using are the Old Farmer's Almanac which has a feature to choose your town and it displays what to plant when, and Garden Guides which has great articles and videos about all aspects of gardening.  Another great resource is my local cooperative extension office.  They have knowledge about what plants will grow best in my area.

Hopefully, with all this information I'll be able to have a successful garden.  Only time will tell!

Getting Started

I received the most beautiful seed catalog in the mail last week.  It is from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  There are so many unusual varieties to choose from.  I love flipping through the pages and dreaming about some day growing every one of them!  I've never tried to grow vegetables before, but this spring I am going to give it a try.

Instead of doing a traditional row garden with all the tilling and hoeing, I am going to try a unique and easy garden: bags of topsoil.  I got the idea from an article in Mother Earth News.  All you do is poke holes in the bottom of a bag of topsoil and cut a hole in the top for the seeds or plants.  Sounds simple enough for me.

I've made my list of seeds I want and will order them from Baker Creek soon.  My garden will be small this year.  If it is successful, I'll expand it next year.