Once upon a time, a long long time ago. Almost 16 years to be exact. We bought this house we live in. We were so excited that it came with apple trees, pear trees and a 30x70 foot space for gardening that the former owner had used year after year until he and his wife had grown too old and feeble to attend to it. We were excited to pick up this tradition and make it our own. We forgot who we were talking about here. Us. The new house owners. The ones with a toddler, 2 full time jobs. 2 unmotivated people who like their relaxing time. What were we thinking?! We did the humongous garden for two years until we came to our senses.
Last year I was missing the gardening experience. Surely we were older, wiser, less lazy. But just to be on the safe side, we decided to build raised beds (here are the free plans we used.) No back breaking tilling, no terrible clay dirt. Just pretty wood beds filled with bags of lovely dirt. And we did do this. Raised beds. We had 9 tomato plants, beans, cucumbers, watermelon, hot peppers, sweet peppers and some herbs. The cucumbers and hot peppers grew like wild flowers. I think we got maybe 9 tomatoes total. So yeah. Not a hot year for tomatoes for us. I also don't think we had completely conquered the laziness in ourselves either. Note the 2 beds way in the back and a stack of dirt bags in front of one. Yeah, we only got one filled and kept saying we were going to do the other and plant plants. The summer got away from us. So we still have room to grow.
Last week mom called and said she wanted to garden with us this year. I'm assuming this means she will be driving over weekly to help weed and water and pick? I might need to keep my house clean regularly then. This might be a good thing. (We've started a NEW way of doing chores I'll share in a later post.) Hubby and I talked about it. I'd like to add at least 2 more beds back there. Maybe one to the side of the concrete patio where our shed used to be, right next to the house... It gets dappled sun so I'm thinking maybe only herbs and lettuce grown there? On the south side of our house is a sweet sunny spot and the little one wants to revive the area we had there years ago to plan watermelons. It's shaping up to be a banner gardening year! Oh, and this year I'm getting smart. I'm ordering organic dirt and compost mix to be delivered and dropped on our driveway. We'll have no excuse but to wheelbarrow it to the gardens or be the embarrassment of the entire neighborhood.
Today I learned about a new FREE curriculum for planting a Victory Garden, based on those they planted during WWII. You can read all about it here on this site. You can also order a free poster here.
Do you garden? What do you plant? Here's our potential list:
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Potatoes
Sweet & Hot Peppers
Bush Beans
Kale
Lettuce
Cauliflower
Herbs
Still planning my list with the help of these catalogs:
I'm thinking we'll make this gardening project into just that. A project. A homeschool project. The little one will help plan everything out. Maybe do square foot gardening? (Here are some worksheets and some more worksheets I found for planning that.) We need to get seeds soon and get them growing indoors to get a head start. We can study the life cycle of a plant, what bugs are harmful and organic ways of helping our plants grow naturally without chemicals. It should be a fun spring. Now let's see if it all comes to fruition. Maybe third time's a charm!
Some more great links:
Almanac (great for planning planting dates)
Square Foot Gardening Unit Study (to purchase)
P.S. I also found 'The Lazy Gardener's Seed Starting Chart' to use. You KNOW that has my name written all over it!
8 comments:
I'm saving your blog post for future. I had a garden for one year before my kids arrived, and haven't even thought about it since... Until this year! However, we will be traveling through April & May (then July again too), so I'll have to research to see if there's anything we can do this year. Might have to wait for next year... Anyway, thanks for sharing your research and blessings on your garden! I will be a great homeschool project!
Awesome post! I hope one day we are blessed with more space to garden. I wrote about food and gardening on today's post as well.
Amie-from the HHH
www.ahandfuloffun.blogspot.com
We had a little garden last summer, which didn't do too well...I'm trying to figure out if it was the dirt, or the gardeners, lol!! ;) I'm looking forward to trying again, though!
Visiting from the HHH!
I'm an avid gardner and love,love, love your links. Thanks for sharing.
I would love to have a garden. We tried tomatoes once- it was even too hot for those here & they never made it through to the picking. For now I will live vicariously through all the great posts here.
First Off, thank you so much for stopping by my blog I loved your comment and got carried away commenting back.
I LOVE this post, mostly because I want to have a green thumb so badly but I only seem to kill the poor things. I feel motivated though after reading this to try again. The raised bed idea is just the thing for me (I think) along with the Lazy Gardeners plan. Thanks for all of the resources.
~Claudea~
Thanks for stopping by my blog hope you will visit again:). I have tried to grow tomatoes and peppers 2 years in a row and got zilch. This year I am choosing to grow other things in the hopes that something will grow. I am still very much a novice at this whole garden thing:) Going to check out some of your links.
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