Welcome to the 2021 garden

This year's garden was all about experimenting. Back in January, I bought this home and immediately knew I wanted to plant a garden. I've always loved plants but haven't had much experience growing flowers or vegetables. So, this garden was my chance to experiment and see what works and what doesn't. So, I spent some time planning exactly what I wanted to grow and the layout. Then, once spring came around, I had a diagram, a list of seeds to put in, and a lot of hope.

We started by tiling up the whole garden area, about 20ft by 20ft square. We could tell the soil was pretty good once we started working it up. This property was once an old farm, so we knew the field we were planting used to grow crops. Unfortunately, the ground was a lot harder than anticipated, so it took us a while to get the whole space tiled up. Luckily, we had some help so we could switch off and take turns with the tiler. So, on we went taking turns running the tiler until we had the whole thing tiled up.

We laid out the beds, added some compost, and off we went planting away. I sowed every bed with the seeds except for my vegetable bed. I planted tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, yellow squash, and zucchini. I went with a small number of vegetables this year because I wasn't sure what we would eat. My other beds were dedicated to flowers. I planted cosmos, sunflowers, nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, zinnias, lavender, and so much more.

My goal for this year's garden was to plant things that I was primarily familiar with and sprinkle in a couple of new things. I wanted to start with flowers I knew would succeed while still trying out things that were new to me. Some flowers, like zinnias, sunflowers, and nasturtiums, thrived. All season I had so many blooms it was hard to keep up! While other flowers like poppies and English daisies did not do so well (I am pretty sure I planted these too late). I would say about 85% of everything I grew did very well. For my first year, I would say that is pretty good!

This year's garden taught me so much. I have so many ideas on what I want to do next year. We will be expanding in the garden in spring, and this fall, I'm working on adding bulbs to the beds.

Thank's for reading!

Kayla