the garden is in!
I am so happy to report that my garden is done! Well, for the most part anyways. After a very rainy Memorial Day weekend, the sun came out and we had the most amazing week weather wise!
I realized, once again, that I have too many seedlings. I still have a few more pots to plant, and I think that I may have been a little overzealous with the amount of tomatoes I wanted to put in the ground. But, I do feel really good about all that I have planted. I hope that we will get a lot of produce out of all this effort!
This year we were planning on doing square foot gardens. Matt and I both really like the look of the enclosed raised beds. We did a modified square foot garden though. We were all ready to buy all the wood to build nice boxes and all the different ingredients for the special mix for the beds. Then we realized how much all of that was going to cost – a lot. So we changed our plan and decided to use our own soil.
We built 6 boxes (well Matt did!) out of 2×4’s. I really love how they came out! They were very easy to organize, and I was surprised at how many plants I was actually able to plant. We did lose out on a lot of space by only doing 6 boxes, but I didn’t want to go completely overboard this year – which I tend to do. And because we used 2×4’s we were able to use our own soil with no problems.
We have been gardening in this spot for several years now, adding amendments and fertilizer every year. Because of this, I felt confident in our soil. Although it may not be as weed free as new soil, why spend all that money to cover up the good soil we already have?
So we are excited for a new gardening season! Hopefully everything will grow really well. I fully expect there to be an unruly mess come August, but that is OK! It is awesome to know that we are contributing to our local eating lifestyle. To know that we are growing vegetables without pesticides, that are completely healthy and not contaminated, that is incredibly important – especially in light of a new Hepatitis A outbreak and potential GMO contamination of our foods without our knowledge. And I am convinced the kids are more anxious to eat the veggies they actually plant and then pick.
Are all of your seeds and seedlings in the ground? Do you do any succession planting later in the season?
Linking up at the Homestead Barn Hop and Clever Chicks and Green Living Thursday
That's a great looking garden! How's the progress been since this post?
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Looks great!
All of our seedlings are in the ground…finally! We went a little crazy with seedlings this year as well. A lot of them didn't germinate for some reason, but we still had tons to plant and it took forever. Your garden looks great! We wanted to add some soil to our beds this year, but after buying the wood and paint for the beds and layout we had spent way too much money. So amending the soil is on next year's agenda 🙂
Your garden looks like it's going to be awesome! It's actually a fact that kids do eat more veggies when they are involved in gardening…you'll be having lots of fun come harvest time! 🙂
I absolutely agree that kids love to plant, harvest and EAT! I'm convinced I did not actually use a single cherry tomato last year instead the kids gobbled them up immediately! Your beds look fantastic and I can't wait to see it in August!!!