A Slow Day in the Garden: Planting Our Summer Vegetable Garden

A simple slow day spent with my hands in the dirt. Planting seeds that will become delicious vegetables to eat fresh throughout the summer and to store away to have for later is a day well spent.   

There weren't many garden plants to be found this year in the garden centers. We only saw tomato plants and pepper plants, so we bought and planted some of those and planted the rest of the garden with seeds.

Chris, my husband, got our garden ready for planting using the rototiller to plow up the dirt, tossing out any clumps of weeds until left with fresh turned soil. Our soil, here in west Texas, is red in color with a sandy texture. If it doesn't have something growing in it to hold it down it will blow away with the winds that sweep across it. Therefore, we have to be sure to keep the garden area watered so it stays packed down even before we get anything planted. If not, all of our fresh garden soil might end up scattered across the neighbor's field.

Chris planted a row of tomatoes and a short row of bell peppers along with a grouping of corn seed on one end of the garden. I am excited to see the corn already popping up! 

Today, I planted three rows of squash seeds. (Squash is one of our favorite things to eat from the garden) I wish I would have gotten all the other seeds planted as well because little did I know we were about to get a really good rain overnight. 

To plant the seeds, Chris already had some rows hoed and ready to go. So I just dug a small hole and dropped three seeds in and moved down a few feet and dug the next little hole and dropped three seeds in. After repeating this all down the row then I covered the row with soil that was mound up along the backside of the row.  You can use a hoe, I used the backside of a rake, to grab the mounded up soil and pull across the row leveling the soil over the top of the squash seeds and the areas between the groupings of planted seeds.

I had actually planned to start the squash seeds in some small containers to give them a head start on growing before planting. Time got away from me though and I never got them started. We are well past any more frosts, now, so I decided to to sew them directly into the garden. 

After getting my rows planted I made sure to get the soaker hoses pulled back up along the rows of newly planted seeds. We have them set to go off with an automatic timer. They work pretty well, but he is also going to be setting up a sprinkler head that rotates across the garden. I'm sure it will need it as well when we get into the hot summer days that are quickly approaching.

This was a wonderful day of planting. I can't wait to do it again to get the okra, cucumbers, potatoes and whatever else I can come up with planted in the ground. 

Thank you for stopping by the blog, today! 

~ Tammie