I have good news: After what felt like both an extraordinarily long winter and the blink of an eye {don’t ask me how time works, I have yet to figure it out}, the first day of garden work finally arrived. And it was good, friends, so very good.

Last year’s garden was very much a learning experience – a good deal of experimenting for Mr, and a world of new experiences for me. {I always fancied myself a “country girl” … little did I know how much there was to learn!} Taking all the results and data from last year, when we started planning for the Garden of 2023, we decided we wanted to focus on mastering peppers, since we pretty much nailed tomatoes last year. {Fingers crossed that was not merely beginner’s luck, and we have equal success this year}. We also plan to continue growing our greens, because salads are a way of life in these parts. There are so many things we want to grow, and so little space to grow it in! Even with our grow-bag expansion at the end of the season last year, we’re going to run out of space before we run out of ideas. {Which means we’ll just have to find-slash-create more garden space somewhere}.

Garden Day prep began several nights before, by pulling the seeds we’d need for this first phase of sowing. So many beautiful seeds – I love seeing them spread out and grouping like with like. With a plan in place, we were ready for the weekend.

Saturday morning found us at the local feed and seed {after coffee, of course}, deciding which variety of seed potato we want this year. Since we planned for six 10-gallon grow-bags of potatoes, we decided to split it: 3 bags of Yukon Gold and 3 bags of Norlands Reds. {Can you say delicious?} Potatoes purchased, we headed home for a quick lunch and a busy afternoon.

Our garden area needed a bit of tidying, after a wild winter, but thankfully the recent rains made pulling intruding grasses very easy. While I was weeding, Mr was clearing back our green cover crops in the bags we were going to start sowing in – the white clover merely got a haircut {we’re going to attempt to use it as a living mulch} but spelt and vetch both got severe cutbacks, having served their purposes well. This green cover crop/living mulch is part of last year’s experimenting that will continue – the goal is to always have something growing that replenishes the soil, while working with/benefiting the current crop whenever possible.

With our grow-bags prepped, we started the fun part: Planting! Potatoes, sugar-snap peas, and carrots were direct-sowed, since they like a little chill in the beginning. Our more “fragile” seeds we started in pots, which now reside on my kitchen windowsills, basking in southern exposure sunlight. I can’t wait to spot the first tomato and pepper sprouts! We’re waiting for 4 varieties of peppers and 5 different kinds of tomatoes. {We really love our tomatoes}.

In addition to the planting, we also made a couple weekend runs to the greenhouse – retrieving the Italian Red and Australian Brown onions we started from seed in the fall, so they can harden off and acclimate to being outside before relocating to their grow-bags. Our fall-seedling cabbages and broccoli will join them soon, having also wintered beautifully {even though in hindsight we probably started them way too early last fall}.