Abbey's Gardening Update

Each spring we have huge aspirations with our vegetable garden, but by August we often find the 90 plus degree days and excessive midwestern humidity tame our zeal. Even so, April is a time of excitement around our house. I've been working in a garden since I lived in Overland and was about 14 years old. Aside from a few "odd" years at Alert where I didn't put in a real garden but rather grew corn in the front yard flower beds, I've pretty much always had a garden. Now that we live in Union with a nearly two-acre yard, I'm excited all the more when warmer weather comes around.

Abbey has always been a very good helper when it comes to the garden. She likes to eat almost everything that comes out of it, especially cantaloupe and strawberries. This spring I went to Purina Farms in Gray Summit, Missouri and bought two pickup loads of compost for $17 per pickup load. It's about 10-20% manure and the rest is wood chips, animal bedding, etc. I tilled it in to help our soil this year. If interested, you can get a load year-round by calling ahead of time at 636-742-0103, extension 6122. I also built some raised beds for Annette (and Abbey!) to grow their strawberries in this year, and here you see Abbey filling up one of the beds with compost.

She moved on to planting the tomato plants I bought a few days ago. I got 12 Jet Star and 12 Better Boy plants. Besides tomatoes, we planted green beans, lima beans, okra, corn, green peppers, watermelon, lettuce, cantaloupe, and probably a few other treats Annette snuck in there while I was marking rows for the kids to fill up with seeds. Now it's a matter of waiting until late June or early July and watching the harvest come in. There is nothing quite like that first homegrown tomato around the Fourth of July. As far as this year goes, I doubt any strawberries actually make it from the garden to the kitchen if Abbey is the one picking them.