Garden Planning and Footstep Garden

 I enjoy my garden and am planning it out now!  Gardening is an excuse for me to be outside and a way to relax while still doing something!  

 

It is also a way to be more healthy, exercise, provide produce for the winter and cut expenses for our household budget.

 

This year I am doing something for me and taking the Master Gardener classes and am so jazzed! And I hope to blog more in my Footstep Garden blog...to keep me accountable for my progress! 

 

Expanding simply is my goal.  http://footstepgardener.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

To add a few new varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, beans and peppers to my seed order was one way of doing this.  To learn more about the differences in varieties and thinking about how they will best work for me and within my schedule, my life and my environment.

I used to work against myself.  I started 50 tomato plants one year and couldn't figure out why I couldn't keep up with them and three little boys of my own and those I provided child care for....  

My personality needs some room to roam and meander and I plant to match me knowing that I will be more successful that way.  I've stopped trying to do what everyone does...instead I do what works for me!

My goal this year is to plant intentionally and not willy nilly as I grab plants from the green house and stick them in the ground.  To take into account how I like to grow things.  

For example:

• I plant my beans, peppers and tomatoes more in squares then in rows.  I find I can manage them better.  
• I use single posts and twine instead of cages that frustrate me.  Using a raised bed helps me do this.
• Using small old tires along the back fence to plant potatoes in helps me plant them and forget them.  I use mulch and when I water my flowers...they get it too!
• I put my garden where it works instead of feeling like I have to have everything in one square plot.  
• Herbs in my flowers.  Zucchini on the back of my flower bed and along the fence.  Onions, dill and other perennials in a back corner out of the way!

Finally to expand simply...I have a plan and I'm beginning to order seeds so I'm set and ready to go!  Not going to buy too much on a whim in the spring.