Welcome to my garden blog!

I'll keep track of the goings on in my new garden here. It's mostly for my reference, but maybe someone else out there can learn from my mistakes or good fortune.

I bought my second garden book, the Burpee Complete Vegetable and Herb Gardener. Man, that book has EVERYTHING. Totally worth it. I have been following it closely. I bought my soil pH kit and found that (surprise, surprise) our soil was a tad too alkaline. I was not surprised to find out we have heavy clay soil. That is just what we had in Marysville, CA and it was a pain to deal with their too. I have worked with the dirt in this yard enough to know that I should probably buy a potter's wheel and get busy. Ha. We have started composting and have had a wintering crop of clover which should help build up the organic material in the yard. There used to be a hot tub where we are building our garden and the previous owners were not very into GREEN things, shall I say. They paved over most of the yard for an RV.

My husband has decided he wants to have a few chickens here at our place, and as I embark on this gardening adventure, I am finding this could be a good thing. I am eager to get some of the chicken manure in the ground as it's supposed to help amend alkaline soil. How weird is it that I am looking forward to having chicken poop in my yard??? We won't be having any roosters, but 2 or 3 hens for eggs and to be outdoor pets.

Today we planted some radish seeds, Easter Egg II. We used the old kids water table (drainage plug open, of course) and a container. We next plan to grow carrots in there. I'm using some good soil there instead of our clay crap.

I have planned for and have seeds for: bush beans, cucumber, zucchini, round baby Romeo carrots, Sugar Baby watermelon, and a variety of flowers suitable for cut flowers, just for fun. My oldest loves flowers and I loved growing them in our garden when I was a kid. I may also buy pumpkin seeds if I have space and the inclination to grow something else. I don't want to do too much this year and burn myself out.

That's the news from the Contra Costa garden!