From the Garden

Today I harvested the first real bounty that I've had in years from my garden!  The soil here at the Flats is very hard with clay and there is rock only a few inches below the surface of the ground.  This is what made us the Great Black Swamp not so many years past.  Not very conducive to gardening!  This year I experimented with inexpensive, store-bought square foot gardens, adding new garden soil and compost from the alpacas.  Most of the plants in the garden this year were volunteer plants from the compost heap; some strange new form of decorative gourds that I purchased last fall from the local grocery store, a lovely hybrid of tomato that is a combination of Roma and cherry tomatoes, and a couple of cantaloupe plants.  During the very dry conditions in June, I ran a soak-er hose out to my boxes.  The vines and plants have gone WILD!  I have dozens of gourds coming along and enough tomatoes to eat every day.  There are a half dozen cantaloupe hanging on the vines and the lavender and lemon balm is thriving!  This fall when I clean up the gardens, I will build more permanent boxes and use the pieces from the old to make a new compost heap.