My very first garden!

I am very excited to have my own garden this year! I grew up on a farm and my mother grew every vegetable you can imagine. My sisters have both had gardens before but this is my very first one. Better late than never, I suppose.

Around February, I started planting seeds in my house. (I'll post some pictures from that progress.) I read that you should put more than one seed per pot as most seeds won't germinate. I did that, however, there were so many seeds in the pack that I ended up with a lot of pots. When the plants started to germinate--I separated them and put them into their own pots. By the time I was done re-potting the plants, I ended up with close to 100 tomato plants and 80 sweet bell pepper plants. All of which were viable, healthy plants. Now what?!!

I called my sisters, brothers and my mother and asked them if they would forgo buying any plants in the store and to please take some of my plants! And they did. They all took as many as their gardens could hold, but I was still left with close to 40 tomato plants and 30 Sweet Bell Peppers. I filled my garden up and started contacting my friends... I was able to give away a few more plants and ended with around 20 tomato plants left--but all of my sweet bell peppers found a home.

I rented a "manual" sod cutter from Ace Hardware and spent an evening pulling up the grass I worked so hard to grow...that took me a while to get over. The man at Ace Hardware told me that the manual sod cutter isn't "easy" but not so hard that he'd recommend the gas powered sod cutter over this one. So, I said I would take that one. (only $7.50) He said that women are the only ones who actually rent this one! The men want the gas powered one :) He was right--it was Not easy--it was work--but I don't mind a little bit of work when I reap the benefits of it. I ended up with a garden plot around 6' x 17' -- so a fairly large garden.

Next.... put the plants in the ground!