Our First Thoughts

We all know gardeners of many varieties from those whose talents and likes spawn fabulous flower gardens to those whose desires see expansive vegetable gardens. In our stresslesscountry.com site, we will be describing our on-going experiences in our move from the city to the country including our initial and on-going vegetable gardening development. There is, in addition, flower gardening development throughout our front and side lawn areas.

It's not that there isn't some past experience with vegetable and flower gardening, however, it is experience that occurred more than 30 years ago when gardening chores were part of my boyhood. So for all those jewels of gardening wisdom passed down from my father, there is more forgotten than remembered.

The initial challenge is to rekindle the memories so that vegetable gardening not only is successful but, more important now, that vegetable gardening helps to supply those fresh vegetables through the growing season, canned and frozen vegetables throughout the long winter, and as a means to reduce the monthly grocery bill.

Since there was no garden area, as such, with the exception of a small, old greenhouse ready to collapse, one of the first tasks was to choose an appropriate spot. The second task was to decide whether we would create a vegetable garden in the traditional sense (plow or till the area), or to engage implanting vegetables in raised beds.