Garden Update

Spring in western NC is always a little unpredictable. The first part of April was beautiful. We had a few weeks of consistently warm, sunny weather. This was followed by several days of rain and then cold frosty nights. Nevertheless, our plants seem to have survived the sudden changes unscathed and our garden is coming along nicely. On my last trip to Sleepy Hollow Farm I came home with several varieties of tomato, zucchini, and cucumber plants. We got those in the ground and are looking forward to filling the rest of our beds.

We also finally got a rain barrel to collect water for the garden. I found a really reasonably priced, locally made one at Earth Fare last week. Over the last couple of days I started to get really stressed out about all the missed rain collecting opportunities, so yesterday during a sunny break in the storm I decided it was a perfect time to connect the gutter to the barrel. As soon as I got the pipe disconnected from the gutter the sky opened up. It was like standing under a small waterfall. Still determined to collect water I stayed outside only to realize that even with the ladder I was not tall enough to reach the rain gutter. In the end with a little help from my man everything was connected. Water quickly began to stream out of the pipe we used. I am still pretty shocked at how much water actually passes through the rain gutters and can be stored. I really had no idea.