I’m a gardner now! who’d have thunk it?

So during the pandemic, I decided to try my hand at growing, and keeping alive, house plants. This sparked in me something that I long thought I hated…gardening. I grew up gardening with my mom, but it was more like forced labor. Why pull weeds, sow seeds, and sweat my face off when there were SO MANY fun things to do during the summer? I held this belief right up to the point I had kids (and a house) of my own. Now, learning with my kids how to grow vegetables and flowers in our basement, and then transplant them into our gardens to watch them grow has been incredible. And it’s only just begun…wait until we can start eating them! Here is a little bit of the process of our veggie garden.

This is the layout I created for the garden. Since it is our first year planting in this space, we’re testing out various crops scattered throughout to find out what grows best where. We’re doing the square foot gardening method, which is pretty simple and allows us to plant the same varieties of veggies in different locations.

After our second round of seedlings survived, we hardened them off and transplanted them in their new home. We have two varieties of cucumbers, tomatoes, kale, red lettuce, beets, carrots and flowers (for pollinating). We also have peas and this beautiful bright green lettuce called Gustav’s Salad. This stage made me nervous. Did I sow them right? What about all the squirrels and birds running around looking for a bite to eat. Would all this hard work even survive the night?

Not only did they survive the night, a week later they had really taken to their new home. Here I added bamboo stakes so that the cucumbers, tomatoes and peas could grow up and not out, decreasing their chance of disease and fungus and increasing their yield (fingers crossed).

This is a daily learning experience for us. We are thrilled with what we see on a daily basis. My boys love checking on the garden every day and helping me water. This goes for our flower garden and herb garden as well. I also find myself retreating to the backyard when I have a rare free second to check out my “Zen Zone”. It also makes my mom happy that I like to garden now, and that her grandbabies like it too.

This garden is blowin’ my mind!!

Here are a few pictures that I took yesterday. I’ll post more as the season continues.