how does my garden grow?

for as long as i can remember, the hubs and i have had some level of a garden since we began our lives together about 25 years ago. we've had our ups and downs {not our marriage, but our garden} and some years have yielded better results than others.
the last couple of years, there's been a less-than-stellar harvest.
mostly, now that we really think about it, was bad soil management.
now you'd think a girl from wisconsin would know better. it's crop rotation 101, really.
well, not really that simple, because we've rotated our "crops." one year the tomatoes here, the next over here. swap out the zucchinis and yellow squash. and then back again.
seriously, it's not much of a rotation at all.
and then there's the sheeting we put down to keep the weeds at bay {we're lazy that way}. with the sheeting down {and reusing it each year} it keeps us from feeding the soil.
you know.
fertilizer. really tilling up the soil and adding some good ole-fashioned manure.
we failed at gardening 1.0.


this year… it's gardening 2.0.
we're going to try our hand at hay bale gardening.
for one, it's something different.
secondly, it's like a "clean slate" of soil.


thirdly, it's higher off the groud = no bending, less pests, etc.
fourthly, we can plant flowers on the sides and it'll look pretty. marigolds are natural pest repellents, too!
and lastly, it'll {hopefully} keep our three little "gardeners" from stealing all of our produce. seriously, we hardly got any tomatoes last year… just as soon as what few we had growing would begin to turn red, our little shop lifters would grab n go. grrrrr. ditto with the cucumbers and squash!

{looks are deceiving… they're relentless little theives!}
we'll probably have to work a little harder at watering.
this could be a challenge, too. our little emma has always got to be right in the middle of that activity.
this was captured via a crappy cell phone video… but you'll get the idea.

the sizing of the photos is still driving me nuts. click on the photo if you want to see what the other half of my dog looks like!