Owl’s Hollow is Exploding!

So I did sit down at my computer the other day and decided that, maybe I need to increase my gardening knowledge. So…. googling “gardening tips”, I start trying to find info on best practices for my gargantuan garden.  Everything that comes up is about patio gardens and backyard gardens, but one look at the pictures on these sites tells me none of these gardens look like ours.  But that’s ok – I look outside and then I read it again….. and I start laughing.  It really, really hit me how big garden is and how much we don’t know.  The article said to start small, one or two items, then see how it goes…… well clearly that is not going to happen here!

The plants in the grow room have gone crazy – clearly we did something right here – and we really don’t have room in there to keep them for much longer.  With the greenhouse now up, we decide to put the tomatoes and peppers into the ground out there.  Oh it feels so good to get them outside and into our happy little greenhouse.  Not sure that they were as happy as we were, but out they went. Tick on the farmer to do list.  Now added to the to do list are:  buy garden stakes for the tomatoes, find ties to use to tie the tomatoes to the stakes.  Pray for sun.  Sheesh!

I am starting to think that there is something in the soil that works like heroin or crack or something.  Once you get your hands in the dirt, the only thing you can think of is “what’s next??” Surely there is something else we can plant! We need to fill up the garden and we need to do it now!!!! You start scouring google and local farming blog sites, watching what others are saying about what they are planting.  You pour over farmers almanac sites, go back to the seed sites etc just to see when you can put the next crop in the ground.  I NEED TO PLANT SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!!   Then we go and do the worst possible thing!!!   We go shopping for plants – so doomed!

Looking for our next fix, we head off to all the local greenhouses, where we discover fruit!!!!  Of course!!!  We bought all those lovely vegetable seeds, but we would be remiss if we did not plant some fruit trees and bushes!!  Who doesn’t love fruit! Think of the pies, jams, tarts……. Yum!!!  We go nuts and I do mean totally coo coo!!  Blueberries, gooseberries, honeyberries, elderberries, huckleberries, currants (red, black, white), seaberries and kiwi.  We want it all.  We scour our property and we find strawberry and raspberry plants that the previous owners of the property raised – and rhubarb!!!  It grows like a crazy thing on the property!!  But of course we can’t stop there!!  There are fruit TREES to be had!!  Cherry, apricot, plum, and a pear trees with some hazelnut trees thrown in for good measure.  Who doesn’t love a nut tree!   A mini orchard is forming here! The addiction is at an all time high! 

Into the ground they go!  Man this is great fun!  And joy of joys – the time has come for more vegetable seeds to be going in the ground.  Peas, rutabagas and spinach – more playing in the dirt!  Grow babies grow!!   We are pretty pumped because in addition to all of this, we are seeing the first little sproutings of our potatoe plants!  The snow didn’t get to them!  We are killing this gardening thing!!!  Hhhhmmm…… bad use of words there.  But we are stoked!

Surely we are on a roll!??