Our 2011 garden... so far!

We've mentioned in passing a few times now about the garden we had hoped to put in the backyard since we moved out here to Charlotte. We finally got our act together this year and made it happen! We put the plan in motion last fall, marking out four spaces and building the boxes - this gave us a jump start and drive we needed to get it done early!

To make this go easier (not to mention, much quicker), we rented a husky tiller and went to town tearing our plots up! We, meaning me, because Jeff hasn't been cleared to do much work after his surgery - he decided to hang out and take pictures.

Here are the beds all worked up and ready to go!

We did come across one surprise while getting our garden area ready - Jeff saw this first, then called me over.

We knew exactly what this was going to be!

Apparently the previous owners buried one of those St. Joseph statues in hopes of selling the house quickly!

We've been tempted to do this in the past when a couple of our former homes took a while to sell, but never ended up doing it. I hope this doesn't bring us a bout of bad luck!

Back to the garden. In our first bed, we planted a row of spinach - they are just about ready to to be thinned out. I think we'll try and place some of the thinnings in pots for a bit of edible greenery around the back patio.

Sitting next to the spinach is lettuce - we may have been a little over zealous with the minuscule seeds though. I need to get one of those handy seed spreaders for better control!

The final row in this box is Swiss chard - these took a few extra days to peek out from the soil, so they are just beginning their journey.

In the second box, we've only gotten one row plated so far - kale! I'm excited to see how these turn out as this is our first time with them. I think a selection of our most used herbs will end up in the remaining spots in this bed.

Speak of herbs, we randomly planted a thyme plant last fall we picked up at the farmers' market. I ignored it when it started getting cold, thinking it would die off and we would replace it in the spring. However, guess what jumped back to life with vigor when the warmth started?

The third box has nothing to show as we just planted carrots and two types of potatoes - we'll do another update soon and hopefully they will be included! The last bed will be for tomatoes, perhaps peppers and a row or three of sugar snaps - it will be a few weeks before we plant the tomatoes, but our plan is to get the peas in tomorrow.

Here's to a bountiful garden in 2011!