It's a New Garden!

We've had lots of gardens. When we first moved to NJ, we tried to keep up John's father's garden in PA, but it was pretty big and it took almost two full days each week to take care of it and all the produce. We were both working full-time and had young children so that only lasted a couple of years.

In 2012, John tilled a large portion of the backyard in NJ where we had had an above-ground pool, and we gardened there for six years. We successfully grew peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peppers, cabbage, popcorn, and some interesting carrots.

The garden in NJ started looking pretty bad during the summer of 2018.

Most of our plants looked dried-up and desiccated, no matter how much we watered. After some soil testing, we found out that the soil was infected with verticillium and fusarium wilt. They are serious fungal diseases that affect many plants, trees, and shrubs, and there is no fungicide available to successfully treat the soil. This is kind of a forever disease, so we won't be able to plant in this location again.

But we bought the house in MD in 2018, and John broke ground for a new garden down there. We had quite a productive patch for four years.  

But with the MD house sold, and the NJ garden soil infected with fungal wilt, what's a gardener to do?

Dig up Ryan's backyard! We've been working on this for about six weeks, and we now have a fully tilled and fenced garden planted with peas, turnips, carrots, onions, and dill. I've started tomato, pepper, and cabbage seedlings that are coming along nicely. The soil temperatures are still a bit chilly, but I'll plant them in the garden in the next couple of weeks. 

Ryan isn't really a gardener, but he's helped a lot, and he may come to enjoy it more now that there is a garden in his backyard. I've planted a row of mint next to his shed, and he's been making sure that it has enough water, so he should be able to make mint tea soon. At the very least he's got less lawn to mow! 

I hope your garden is coming along, whether it's full of flowers, vegetables, or you just enjoy and admire growing things wherever they happen to be growing.