Thursday, March 31, 2011

Garden Plans





We've joined up with the Homeschool Village for their Garden Challenge!

Now here in the Great White North, there's still snow on the ground lol However, we are starting to see perennial flowers popping up so my gardening fingers start getting itchy!


Here's a dark picture of our backyard garden area (pardon the crappy quality lightening of it!) I promise I'll put a better one up in sunlight!



We've got a long flower bed (15 ft or so), well, it's a flower bed in the spring, come veggie season it holds veggies too. Then at the end of this is our original veggie garden. It's waaaaaay too small IMO, but we live in a rental unit so can't really make it bigger. I dream of a 1/4 acre garden!

In the front we have 8 ft thin beds on either side of the front walkway and some more thin beds along our porch (sorry, no pics atm). This is where we have some day lilies, my mini rose bushes from the kids and some annuals.

For our annual flowers we always get inpatients. They have a large variety of color and ANYONE can grow them. They're really hard to kill and love everything from full sun to full shade. I also purposely planted them just a little too close together so they end up being a huge wave of flowers once they're fully grown. (I buy these from the stores as seedlings)

For veggies... in the spring flower bed in the back we'll be planting potatoes and tomatoes (cherry and beefsteak). Possibly peas too, depends on space. I'm a *bad* gardener and crowd my plants, but everything seems to grow like crazy anyway!

In the main veggie garden, I know we want to try *something* new this year, but not sure yet what that's gonna be. We will have fingerling carrots, sweet peas (though possibly in the other garden), radishes and green onions (which we replant all season), a few kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers (maybe some other colors too), and some kind of spicy pepper.

We also have a few window-style boxes for herbs. This year's selection will include basil, garlic chives, dill, parsley, and maybe oregano or a different type of basil or chives. Last year our herb got weeded out and we didn't get much from them. This year we'll pay more attention to them lol

Possibilities for additions to the garden this year are: spinach, sugar pumpkin or zucchini. Have to see....

Brianna loves gardening! Since the first year we put in the gardens (when she was 3 or 4) she's helped with planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, ect... She typically helps with the bigger seeds (green onions for example) or seedlings cause she's a little too generous with the little seeds lol But, she's a great weeder. If Lee and I don't even want to look at the garden for weeds, she'll do the whole thing. It takes a few hours at her pace, but she gets it done! Harvesting, though, I think is her favorite part. Especially since it usually means we're eating something garden fresh for supper that night!

One of the requirements for this blog post being in the link up is that we post our resources. Really, I don't use any. When I have a quick question and when I first started I'd call my grandma, but for the most part we wing it and figure it out as we go!

Ahhhh I can't wait til gardening happens!

4 comments:

  1. that is a GREAT idea to help -- with bigger seeds!! Never thought of that! (will try with my 3yr old)

    thanks for linking up - next link up is April 28th 10am est!

    Stef - HSV TEAM

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  2. What is that coming up in the first picture? It sounds like you have a gardener on your hands :)

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  3. @Stef - Thanks for hosting this! We love gardening over here :)

    @Zonnah - tulips! I think it started with just wanting to dig in the dirt lol But yes, she loves it!

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  4. We just started our seeds inside a few days ago, and have a few sprouting already today! I can't wait for the weather to clear up enough to get out in the dirt and actually get them planted.

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