Not My Grandma's Garden

My Grandma will be 88 years old this year and up to several years ago she has always put out a garden.  It fed several families since we all lived pretty close.  I remember seeing her and her brother out in the hottest part of the day hoeing and pulling weeds.  She planted one field in the back of the house and one in the front of the house.  The back garden had corn with field peas climbing the stalks, potatoes, onions, and radishes.  The front garden had green beans, squash, cucumbers, peppers, cabbages and other stuff that I just can’t remember.  It was a lot of work! I think I got my love of gardening from my Grandma. She also loves flowers and even today is always planting or repotting something. 

My husband and I have raised beds which is definitely not my Grandma’s garden (hence the name). We have five 4x16 beds made with railroad ties and two smaller ones that are 4x8.   The raised beds are easier to weed. You can plant a lot of different things in each bed and experiment with plants you or your grandma never thought to plant.  Once the growing season is over for one crop it is pretty simple to add a new crop.  All you will need is a small tiller or hoe to turn up the soil then create your rows then plant.  We hand-draw a layout of our garden each year, rotating the crops which helps reduce the risk of soil born disease and we write the date next to the crop so that we have an idea of when to expect it to sprout.  After planting, mulching is a good way to keep the moisture in your soil; we use a lot of straw for this purpose.   

I plan on posting a copy of our garden layout. This is a picture of one of our beds.  We planted potatoes at one end and okra at the other end.

I will post more pictures soon. Please feel free to comment!