Companions in the Garden

At the end of Week One we have seen progress with our seedlings. Many are now showing signs of sprouts, but this one to the left, is showing the most. It's name is Bloody Butcher. We should see even more sprouts by the end of this week.

We spent the afternoon yesterday working in our vegetable garden.  You should have seen it last year before we decided to reclaim it!  It was really overgrown with weeds!  And we ended up with a fairly great crop considering it was our first time.

 Since some of the vegetables we planted last year didn't do so good, Mom bought us a book from our recent school book fair. It's called, "The Old Farmer's Almanac for Kids."  In the chapter, "How does your garden grow?" we learned that plants like other plants for companions, but not all plants like each other!  Some don't do well at all when they are planted next to each other.  This could be why some of our vegetables didn't fair so well last year.  So, using the guide in the book, and considering how big they'll grow, we planted tomatos, squash, zucchini, basil, and eggplant.  Without the corn, as we had planted last year, that left us with plenty of space to try growing other vegetables.  If the weather holds, we'll be planting more later in the week. 

One thing that was great about the book is that it confirmed what Mom told us last year: using Marigold flowers around the outside of the garden will discourage rabbits from feasting on our hard work.  That's good to know as we have wild rabbits too!  We planted 64 Marigolds around the entire garden!  We will need more when it comes time to plant our corn!   So Marigolds are Superheros, just like ladybugs are!  Who knew?!