From the first time I saw our mountain home with my own two eyes, visions of rows and rows of garden beds danced right on into my head. With this much space, I could create a real food forest homestead that would supply us with so much of our own produce. Over the past year its become very apparent that there’s a laundry list of priorities ahead of “build a food forest,” stuff like: get a water line run to the bar so we have a hose, and clear the diseased trees that are located right where we want to do our future garden. But my vision hasn’t changed and I know one day I’ll be able to make it happen. Just not today.

But us gardeners know you work with what you’ve got, and right now I’ve got a pretty petite but might fenced in patch of land on the hill above our house. It’s not the best place for a garden due to the amount of shade it gets, but there’s a corner of it that gets enough full sun to be a perfect home to Benwood’s first ever spring garden patch.

So I brought in potting soil and compost, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, set up a sprinkler, and got to planting. One day I’ll be planting from seed (or transplants that I grow from seed), but for now we’re starting with mature seedlings that most likely won’t immediately die, which is all we can really ask for from our seedlings.

There’s an entire row of just peppers—Hungarian, habanero, jalapeno, bell, giant bell, and others—that will hopefully turn into stir fries and hot sauces and find their way into oils for dressings. We use a lot of peppers when we’ve got them, and I always find growing them to be so rewarding (relatively pest resistant, high output, makes a spicy meatball).

In the other row we’ve got a mix of several tomatoes as well as a few firsts that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time—peanuts, string beans, and eggplant. I know my way around a tomato plant but I’m excited to learn what trials and tribulations and rewards these new guys bring to the mix.

I got it all in the ground on May 9th just in time for our first real heat here in Tennessee that will help warm the soil and get our plants going heavy and hard, so I’m hoping that by this time next month I’ll have some significant progress to report!

Thanks for checking out my small but mighty first garden here at Benwood, and I look forward to updating you every step of the way!

xoxo

Beau

(& Matt & Fox & Barley & Rye)