The Garden

We are in the process of developing our first garden.  We are exploring Square Foot Gardening, biointensive, raised bed, double dug, organic and French intensive techniques.  We have been researching all about companion planting, and growing for encouraging beneficial insects.  This whole process started sitting on Ruth's couch one day when I picked up a copy of Square Foot Gardening.  Shortly after that I was doing some research on cool places to go for our anniversary when I stumbled upon The Stanford Inn.  This began a whole process of discovery and quite a bit of daydreaming.  The Stanford Inn, is an eco resort that has its own biointensive, organic, raised bed gardens on the premises.  These gardens are just one piece of a whole.  They also have a onsite vegan restaurant called Raven's Restaurant that serves all the Stanford Inn guests vegan or vegetarian made to order brunches as part of the total package for all overnight guests.

Anyway, this whole discovery got me dreaming about a lifestyle center patterned after the sustainable, eco-friendly models out there.  Let me just say, I am still dreaming.  Maybe, one day, something will come of it all.

So the first step, is actually learning how to do some of the things we have been researching about.  Right now, I am on my way out the door, to do some soil sample gathering for soil testing.  Apparently, the local county extension agent does this for a nominal fee.  The garden test seems to be free  (well, upon closer scrutiny the test wasn't free but still reasonable) and the field test costs $10.

In the next couple of days perhaps we will get some pictures of what the process is looking like.  Right now, it seems that every spare second is spent reading up on plants, growing methods or working in the garden.

Hope those of you who are also gardening or more seasoned at gardening, will share your wealth of information with us.

Our dream is to create a small piece of the paradise that God originally made, here on our place and hopefully learn the lessons this process is meant to teach us.