Life of a garden

Like many others in this area, I come from a long line of farmers. My parents and theirs before them worked the rocky, loamy soil here in North Dakota.

My mom would tell stories of working in the field with grandpa and grandma, wearing hats and grandpa's long sleeved shirts they would walk among the potatoes and in order to keep pests down they would knock off destructive potato beetles into a can of kerosene. For as long as I can remember, my parents had a huge garden at our farm. My mom would buy me special "kid" seeds from Burpee that I would plant excitedly. Years after that I would help with the harvest and canning. We would have baskets full of cukes and tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce and carrots. A day of picking cukes and canning might yield 30 quarts of pickles - it was quite the job!

My own garden is not so grand, but I like digging in the dirt and watching the little seeds grow. I am dreaming of spring even though it still looks like winter here. I've already orderd a bunch of seeds, I get them locally and also order from Territorial Seed out west. They have a unique variety of flowers and vegetables. This year I'm planting Nelson carrots, London springs lettuce mix, snow peas, Kentucky wonder pole beans, beets, radicchio as well as the standard tomatoes, cukes, spinach, basil and dill. Looking forward to planting, should be getting the garden ready around Memorial Day, want to make sure we are past the point of hard frost. Once things start growing I'll take pictures and show the plant progress. Here's hoping we have sunny spring days coming our way!