Promoting a Preferred, Proper, Practical and Professional Produce Production Protocol

I had to do create some kind of title to catch your attention because this entry isn't the most exciting one I've done.
It's kind of exciting to us though and I wanted to keep track of the progress as the summer moves along.

The boys and I decided to plant a vegetable garden in our back yard.

We got the idea last year when we were visiting my cousin up in Stanley, N.B. and marvelled at the amount of awesome fresh vegetables they had from their garden.

We all enjoy veggies but T is a fan of onions in particular so we had to make certain that we have a lot of them.

I have to ask a favour if you're reading this. If you see something that we are doing wrong that we can fix please let me know as soon as possible.
If it's something that is too late to repair, please keep it in your head and casually mention it at the end of summer so that I can note it for next season.
Thanks. :)
As I write this we have already learned an important lesson since first planting. You'll see farther down.

The plan has been in our minds all winter but I wasn't really sure of when we were supposed to get started with the process.
I grew tomatoes years ago when I lived in Ontario but that was easy. I just bought little plants that had already been started and plopped them into the ground in a garden that was already there.

This project is a tad more complicated since we had to dig out a patch in our yard for it.
No problem. I picked a good location with plenty of sunlight.

Several weeks ago T and I were shopping and spotted a display of seeds. We bought a couple of packages of pea, carrot, cucumber, corn, and onion seeds.
Then we bought one of those plastic tray things with a bunch of sections with peat disks.
These things make life pretty easy for someone like me. All I had to do was add water to the tray. The peat disks absorbed the water and swelled up.
I just put the seeds into the tops of the peat, closed the lid and put the tray in sunlight. And we waited.
It's a little greenhouse. Very nice.

The hard part was digging out the patch of the yard for the garden. The digging wasn't so bad but pulling the sod out and loosening the soil wasn't so much fun.
It seems that there's a fair bit of clay but we'll see how that works out.

Here's a bunch of photos of our first phase.









Okay there it is. Planted.
That was just over a week ago.

Remember that first lesson I mentioned that we learned? Most who have gardens will have spotted this right away.
I'll give you a hint.
It has to do with planting delicious looking green stuff right beside a forest overloaded with bunnies, deer and other assorted hungry wildlife.

Yep. Two days later I went out to see how things were progressing and found a bunch of the plants pulled up and lying on their sides. Some did appear to have been chewed.

Don't ask me why but I forgot to take a photo of the destruction before we repaired it.

Off to Home Depot we went to get what we needed for a fence.
Two small rolls of chicken wire and 6 wooden stakes later this is what the vegetable garden looks like now.





At first I thought that deer had done the deed since it looked like a hoof or something had made the holes to dig out the plants but the next day I looked out and spotted Bugs the Bunny looking sadly through the fencing at his salad.

We'll see how it goes.
If I do several updates you'll know that the garden is doing fine.
If I never mention it again it's safe to assume that it was a disaster and I'm sulking about it. :D

Stay well,
Tim