My New Hobby

From back to front and left to right: Green pepper, tomato, basil, squash, strawberry, strawberry, and in front a row of sunflower seeds.
To the left of my little garden are four blueberry bushes and a raspberry bush that still need to be planted. I need to buy another raspberry plant and something for them to grow up around.
I can enjoy it from my kitchen window.

I took the plunge and started a garden. It's something I've been wanting to do for years, but I decided that now is the time. My parents and grandparents always had a huge garden, and it is one of my favorite memories from growing up. We would run out to grandpa and grandma's raspberry bushes and eat more berries than ever ended up in our buckets. I'm thinking about planting a couple of apple trees on the other side of the fence...mom has a great recipe for home made apple pie!!

I'm using a book about square foot gardening. My brother Ryan had great success with it last year so I thought I would give it a try. First I built the 4' x 4' container. I got the wood at Lowes who cut it down to size for me, and then today I pulled out the drill and screwdriver and had it put together within 20 minutes even with Olivia's help...she can really handle an electric screwdriver quite well. Then I took it to the backyard, found the perfect spot, laid down weed tarp, filled it with a mix of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite, and finally planted my plants. Olivia kept calling us farmers and said she needed her farmer's hat. I tried to explain the difference between a farmer and a gardener...but you know...she is 3.

Olivia got more interested in playing with the hose after digging around in the dirt a little and finding that there were no worms in there yet. I told her we would build her a special garden just for her and her worms. That made her very happy indeed!!!

I might have to build some sort of barrier. Already I've caught Lucy and Tigger laying down in the middle of it as if it was some sort of bed. And with Mickey's absent minded ways...he almost plowed right through the middle of it too. Thankfully I hadn't planted anything yet.

I'm a little concered about the squash. The planting guide that came with it said to plant them 3" apart, which I did; but the book I'm using indicated one plant needed about 3 square feet. I'll see what happens. And I think I'll buy some more strawberries. Their planting guide said 18" apart, but my book said I could put 4 plants in 1 square foot. We would definitely eat more strawberries than squash!!!! One of the plants already had a partially red strawberry...it's in Olivia's tummy now. I'm also waiting to see what happens with the tomato. I was supposed to plant it on the north side of the garden so it wouldn't shade the other plants, but I wanted it along the fence (the south side) for visual purposes. I did read that planting the green pepper, tomato, and basil close together helps those plants to do really well and supposedly give them a better tast. We'll see (o:

I'm going to build another one and put it to the right of this one. I plan to plant carrots, peas, beans, spinach, swiss chard, lettuce, and marrigolds. Because of rain I only had time to do the one today. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the other one done.