The days are getting longer and occasionally we wake up to a warm morning and it's putting me in the gardening mood! Have you wanted to put in a garden but hesitate because of the time and expense? Maybe you live in a rental and can't till up the yard? I've been there and where we live now we can't till up the yard and buying tons of containers to have a container garden was out of our budget. So, what did we do? The first year we lived here our flower bed was overgrown with weeds, my heart was really bad that year so we didn't do anything with it. The next year we cleaned it out and by a fluke we planted a pumpkin at one end which actually produced one pumpkin...an idea was born! This last year I decided to turn our flower bed into a garden. It was already weeded but it had mulch so my kids and I raked all the mulch to one end that we weren't going to use and spread it around so it looked nice. Then we picked some plants. We planted two squash plants, two pumpkin plants, onions, sweet corn, and way too many tomato plants. Everything we planted yielded a surprising amount of produce. Our corn did thrive but the ears were only about two inches long! We had so many tomatoes and squash that we ended up giving a ton away. We also had two pumpkins.
This year we are really planning our "garden" since we know that plants will grow and thrive. Our plans so far are cucumbers, peppers, one or two tomato plants, onions, and the kids are still trying to decide what else to plant. Our neighbors are also sharing their garden plot with us so we'll plant our potatoes over there and maybe a squash plant. My husband is building me a container to put on our cement patio to plant lettuce and green beans. We also dug up a new spot to try pumpkins at.
By using our flower bed for our garden last year we didn't buy much produce at all. It was so nice to say " we need potatoes or tomatoes" and the kids could go outside or next door and pick fresh produce. We also didn't use any pesticides so it was all organic!
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5 comments:
Great info on your garden. I'm trying out container gardening and I'm super excited! Also, your link was to blotspot not blogspot, sorry
I'm going to try a 'salsa' garden this year...my first. We only have a teeny plot but I could also do a few containers as well. The only problem is that we're at 7000 ft.
I would love to have the space to get the yield that you have.
I am really getting in the gardening spirit! All that nice weather really got me motivated to get my plans in order. Now it is cold again and I am bummed. Hopefully the cold is almost behind us.
Good luck!
:)
I too am getting excited to plant our garden. We also have very limited space and last year tried a few containers and got some peppers, tomatos, squash, and lots of blackberries. I am excited to refine our garden and get more this year.
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