Gardening in a swamp?

Talking to my neighbor about the small 'drainage problem' we are learning about in our first winder on our property this week, I found out our house is built on an old swamp. No wonder the garden is still soggy wet, even after a little bit of decent weather. The water isn't standing in the garden, but it is not 'merely wet' either.

I'm normally against building high raised beds (they are expensive and difficult to work), however I may have to break down and bring in soil and build beds in order to have the garden dry out before June!

The peas are not coming up very well, and digging up a few seeds, they are basically just rotting in the cold, wet soil before they can sprout. Time to a last effort to plant peas inside to get them started and then transplant them out, and in the future, note to self to chit all early seeds to give them a head start.

At least the snow is gone

It is winter, it is wet, there are even puddles where I hope to have a garden. Welcome to gardening in the maritime Northwest. This is the time of year to decide what you want to grow, determine when it needs to be planted, if it needs to be started, and make certain you know where to get seeds and plants. It is also a time to make certain you are learning from your mistakes.

Me? That is why I have decided to start this blog. The last two years, I attempted to keep a 'journal', with information on what happened in the garden each week. When I planted things, when they germinated, when they flowered, fruited, were eaten by slugs, bugs and snails, etc. But inevitably, the journal would be "put away" when I went to find it each weekend, and by the end of the summer, it must have been in a "safe place". I don't know how long it took tomatoes to start yielding last year, or the pole beans, I just know it was a long time.

So a blog. It can't be "put away" on a shelf or, hopefully, misplaced. Google, my trust is in you. It is time to start planning the garden.