Province Line Road

In the beginning...

Who would have thought I would end up on Province Line Road in Lawrence Township, NJ.  Growing up a world away (exactly 50.7 miles away) in Bayonne, NJ, I had never even heard of Lawrence (or as the traditionalists enjoy calling it, Lawrenceville).  Yet, here I am!  In the spring of 2008, my wife Rebecca, my son Fletch and I moved into Rebecca's grandparent's home. The split level was built on 2 acres of some old family farmland, about 50 years ago.

There was an existing garden in the back yard, and I am sure at the time it was built it was in the most perfect, full sun, well to do location on the entire lot. 

As you can see, life grows on and so did every tree planted in the landscape surrounding the property, shading the majority of the garden until the wee hours of the afternoon.  Never the less, in summer of 2008 I did what I thought was the proper thing, went ahead and planted my very first garden with tomatoes, garlic, peppers, corn and basil...with marginal success.  I do believe I harvested a handful of tomatoes, a pepper or two, a fair amount of basil, some barely recognizable corn and no garlic.  The best thing to come out of that garden was this...

a lady bug gift for Fletcher, courtesy of my cousin Jeff.

With renewed vigor!

Well...after 2 years hiatus, the spring of 2011 rolled around.  Some trees were trimmed in the landscape, the backyard got a wee bit more sun during the day, and so I decided to double the square footage of the garden.  I stripped the lawn adjacent to the garden, sunk in a bunch of new metal fence posts, ran some additional fencing and off I went.  The Sisk Family Farm was born!  I even thought it a good idea to try for the first time to start a few plants from seed indoors.  The usual suspects were on my mind, tomatoes, peppers, basil, corn (this land used to be a corn farm...I mean, how hard could it be?) with the addition of eggplant, morning glory, zinnia and sunflowers, which my son and I planted together.  As you could imagine, the seed starting was a complete failure.  I did manage to plant a garden with some plants I purchased from a few local nurseries and the H*** Depot.  Again, the harvest was fair, 20 or so tomatoes, a few peppers, some very small corn, and a couple of eggplant.  I even tried a version of the "Florida Weave" with my rows of tomatoes.

 FAIL!  I used a very "stretchy" bright orange roll of plastic tie that did not keep the tomato plants upright.  One success...

a few of the sunflowers grew to nearly 8'.  Fletcher was VERY pleased with his roll in our garden, and so was I.