I love the rustic, four winged raised garden beds my talented husband built me a couple years back. I have come to really appreciate the merits of the raised bed growing methods and on top of that, have integrated square foot gardening into the mix. I still have lots to learn when it comes to gardening, but I enjoy adding new little bits of wisdom and and techniques each year. I love the blank canvas and fresh start that is a newly tilled garden bed each year.
My little boys and I had fun flipping thru seed catalogs this spring and circling all our picks of vegetable varieties we wanted to plant. It was hard to whittle down our list to a reasonable amount! Then we had math class in the garden beds- first marking out the square foot sections and next evenly planting the seeds. We got science class in too, observing our little seeds sprout and change, daily even.
It was a rough start for the garden this year. Things took a long time to germinate and some never came up at all. My emotions were interwoven tightly with the changing state of my garden beds. It's sort of amazing how you can come off the high hopes of freshly planted seeds to the disappointment of stunted growth and bare spots in a garden plot. With some trial and error, mainly some fertilizing and the addition of soaker hoses, the plants finally really took off!
I just love the beds literally overflowing with foliage and starting to really produce an abundance of fruit to show for it as well!
3 different varieties of eggplants we grew this year.
Hot peppers, stuffing peppers, sweet peppers- so many peppers!
Chinese long beans-a new variety for us this year.
And harvest time begins!
A little boy and his basket of garden treasures.
The garden seems to be a game of chance with varied success from year to year. This year has been a good one and my family and I have really been enjoying eating from farm to table.
No comments:
Post a Comment