Planning Our Garden

As spring is on its way, it is time to start planning our summer garden. Our hopes are to develop a year round garden and we've learned the hard way to start small.

It's easy to get caught up in the beautiful vegetable gardens on Pinterest or on the magazines in the checkout aisle of the grocery store. I've often found myself caught up idealizing what we could accomplish and how beautiful it will be. And then as summer hits and weeds come in and the kids lose steam in caring for plants, it doesn't turn out like I thought. Gardening is not as easy as those beautiful pictures lead one to believe.

So, where to start?

What to grow

Our kids are not picky eaters when it comes to vegetables. We sat down with the kids a few weeks ago and talked about what we should try growing this year. They named many of their favorites and we started a list that was divided into three categories: food to grow, food to gather from local orchards/farms, food we have to buy. Depending on where you live, the fruits and vegetables might be in different categories than ours. We are also very fortunate that our house had a few fruit trees that are well established. We also had a strawberry patch, but the chickens escaped and decimated it. We will be starting a new strawberry patch in a more protected space, so this year strawberries will be gathered from local farms to give us the amount needed for jam and canning.

Will It All Fit?

We are fortunate to have a large space for a garden. Several years ago, my husband designed and fenced a large area for a vegetable garden that will give us about 600 square feet of growing space. After taking notes on spacing of plants and a water plan, we have come up with a plan that will maximize the space and give us room for corn, beans and peas, squashes and gourds, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, and some root vegetables like carrots, beets and radishes. We've also been able to plan another area for an herb garden that will be in a shadier part of the yard. A few items did get moved to the "food to gather" list, mostly berries and salad greens.

Stay tuned!

Now that plans are made, it will be time to start preparing the soil and planting starts.