Last year, on a whim, I bought a cucumber plant, watermelon plant, pepper plant and a few tomato plants in July and grew them in a few pots. My "garden" did not yield a lot of produce. I think I got 1 pepper that started to rot while I waited for it to turn red, 4 cucumbers which were VERY tasty, 1 watermelon the size of a baseball and a bunch of tomatoes that I don't eat. I think I would have gotten a few more vegetables, but Kayak helped herself to them before they were ripe.
Joe jumped on the vegetable garden band wagon with me this year and actually did some research-which is NOT my favorite thing to do. He actually got the book The Backyard Homestead. This book covers everything you would ever need to know about growing a vegetable garden, raising chickens, pigs, cattle and bees all in an acre lot. Don't worry-we are not getting more animals-quiet yet anways.
We are starting small with two raised garden beds - 4 feet by 8 feet. We built the garden boxes in our garage.
E was such a big helper. He wanted all of his own tools to help.
We got the two boxes built and into the yard and filled them with compost. Before we even got any plants into the dirt, we already had a butterfly in the garden. E had fearful fascination of the butterfly. He loved watching it and wanted to hold it, but when it started flying around he freaked out a little.
Joe graphed out the plot and decided where to put all of the vegetables, for a moment I thought that I was married to an engineer. E had a great time digging in the dirt and putting the seeds in the ground. When the job was done, we had planted corn, green beans, peas, sunflowers, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cucumbers, and peppers.
Notice the three foot fences. These are to keep out the dogs along with the rabbits that think that our yard is a good place for them to call home. Hopefully, this garden yields a bigger crop than my "garden" last year.
Stay tuned...
