It's That Time of Year... for Gardening!! (Abby)

    
Hi!
    
    My name is Abby, and I'm Joni's daughter. She's been a little more active on the blog than I have, so I figured it was time for me to pipe in! To start with, I'm 17 years old, and I love Jesus! My passions are gardening and homesteading. I've been planning my ideal garden for years now, even though when I was a little girl, the "planning" consisted of just writing down as many fruits and vegetables as I could think of and dreaming about the day when I'd be able to grow ALL of them. After my family moved to our current property a few months ago, from the city to the country, I was SO thrilled that I could FINALLY have the garden I'd been dreaming of... even though I understand much more now that, here in Wisconsin, I might not be able to grow quite as wide of a variety of fruits and veggies as I might find in the produce section at Woodmans! This will be my first year having a garden of my own, but I've been working at my aunt and uncle's market garden farm for a couple of years now, and it has given me tremendous insight into the wonderful world of sun, soil, and seeds.
  
  It's the middle of February now, and you might be thinking I'm a little crazy to even be thinking about gardening when there's several inches of snow on the ground and temperatures are below freezing. Well, even though I might be a little crazy (haha), I'm able to get a jumpstart on my garden by starting some seeds indoors!
  
  Yesterday and today, I started some onion seeds. I bought the Round Tropea onion variety, and I'm super excited to see how they do!! I recently heard about soil blocking as an alternative to starting seeds in traditional potting trays, so I decided to experiment with my onions. 




    I used 1-inch square soil blocks for these onions. After I planted the onions in the soil blocks, I read that it isn't recommended to plant onions in individual cells, since they are in there for a while before you're able to transplant them into the ground and potting them up is apparently not recommended... so we'll see how this goes! This year is going to be more experimental in nature, especially since it's my family's first year on this piece of property. I'm okay with a few bumps and bruises, and I'm looking forward to the lessons I know God will teach me as I strive to be a good steward of the land and resources He's provided me with.




    The rest of the packet I planted in some empty lettuce clamshells. Why waste what you can reuse, right?
    I'll provide updates as I go; hopefully you'll enjoy hearing about our garden as much as I'll enjoy talking about it!


Growing in Hope,
Abby 

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