Farm Fresh from Our New Kentucky Home

No more apologizing, I've been doing it a lot lately... but I know its been ages since my last post. For those of you still tuning in at home, John and I moved to Lexington, KY just over one week ago and as you can imagine, things have been a bit hectic. As the dust begins to settle, I bring to you a brand new Accidental Syrup from our New Kentucky Home!

While the very first thing that I unpacked was my kitchen, I haven't really gotten into my cooking routine yet. I did find inspiration for this delicious summer vegetable dish one evening after my mom and I planted my garden. (See my next post for the recipe)That's right! My very own garden. My mom has the greenest thumb around and she has a bounty of fresh vegetables picked fresh from her garden all summer. When we found out we were moving up this way, I was immediately excited about the opportunity to learn all of her secrets.

Fortunately our new yard already had a nice garden frame (for lack of a better word), though we had to remove the luscious weed garden that occupied it in order to fill it with gardening soil. The garden is probably 8 x 14 feet or so and we filled it with mom's magical gardening soil mix:

• Four large bags of Miracle Grow Gardening Soil
• 20 bags of generic Top Soil
• One large bag of Peat Moss

We "folded" it all together with shovels to ensure it was well mixed before gently leveling it out with the back of a rake. We then planted a variety of tomato plants -yellow cherry, red grape, Roma, Better Boy, and various heirlooms including two plants from my grandfather up in Pennsylvania. He's been cultivating heirloom tomato plants that trace back to his native land of Italy for as long as I've been alive, and longer I'm sure. We also planted cucumbers, peppers of all kinds and colors, squash, and okra. All of these plants require at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day so they can co-exist nicely together in a garden. I followed the instructions on the plant labels in terms of how far apart each should be planted.

Lastly we planted marigolds around the edges to deter critters from snacking the veggies and then I weaved a soaker hose between the plants. This makes watering easy as you can just hook the hose up for 30 mins or so on days without much rain to ensure everything stays watered. All in all it was actually a fairly easy project though now, I've found the waiting to be the hard part. I walk out to check on the garden each day and find myself staring suspiciously in hopes that I might catch a vegetable sprouting before my eyes. No such luck yet though I do look forward to sharing recipes featuring the fruits of my labor as we get into the summer months!