Happy April! Brad and I have started working in our garden and figuring out what we are going to do for the year. I’ve had some issues in the past few years getting my garden to grow much so this year I am sticking with what I can do well.

The Plan

I have 3 large beds and 2 small beds along the side of our house. The three large beds are going to be all strawberries and the two smaller beds will have rhubarb plants. I also have 2 wine barrels that are filled with garlic plants that I hope will be successful this year (they didn’t quite work last year). I am excited to have a bunch of strawberries and rhubarb this year (I see many strawberry-rhubarb crisps in my future).

We are also going to be growing potatoes this year. A couple weeks ago, Brad built some potato towers. In one tower I put Yukon Gold and the other are Purple ones (I forget their name).

DIY Potato Tower

The potato towers are built using 2×6 boards and some 2×2 boards. The tower uses “rings” of the 2×6 boards – 2 of 24″ long and 2 at 21″ long.

We started with two of these rings and will add more as the potato plants grow. We put one bag dirt in the bottom, then added about 10 potatoes and topped the potatoes with another bag of dirt. Once we see some potato plants coming through the dirt we will add another ring and dirt. The potatoes are ready to harvest after about 4 months so towards the end of summer we will be ready for some fries and grilled potatoes. To harvest the potatoes, remove one of the one of the boards and reach in to find potatoes. This is great because it allows the harvest to begin while the upper potatoes are still growing.

We have a wonderful produce stand just down the road from us so I’m not going to miss too much by not having a bunch of vegetables in my garden.

Have you started your garden? What are you growing this year?