Gardening as a Beginner

As the wonderful readers here know this is my families second year gardening. Last year we did square foot gardening in raised beds and this year we are expanding to grow 3 times as much and in different ways.

This was my last photo of some of our new garden beds:

and this is how the long bed on the left now looks:

The sunflowers are growing so nicely! I put two different breeds in, the taller on the right and the shorter in the middle only I am learning that the shorter two is growing faster. I hope this does not stunt the growth of the back row. The hottest sun we get here is in the afternoon from the west and that is why I lined this row up this way. I guess we shall see! The third row, on the left, is morning glories that I expect to climb the fence, they seem very slow to grow compared to the sunflowers!

We have Strawberries!

The children love their strawberrie plants. They have even taken the time to put straw under the tender little fruits to protect them from the ground a bit. Our 7 year old daughter wanted me to be sure to share this photo with everyone of her first berries this year!

Gardening is great for the mind and body!

I have been a bit down as of late, pregnancy blues perhaps, but one thing I look forward to every day is garden time. Our teen has been specially helpful with the garden bed tilling for the corn crop.

We feel strongly about trying to live more sustainably and passing the lessons we learn on to our not so little family. The kids are showing great dedication to the endeavor!

Now that the near 40′ foot by 5′ foot garden bed for corn is dug, we tried this:

I must warn you, this might work better in different top soil than it did for us. Our area was so large that we found after a while that it just wasn’t worth it to keep using this cupcake tin for the spacing. However in fluffy soil such as our raised beds it works so much better. The ground soil, or rather dirt here in our part of GA or hard to work with even once tilled. We amended the soil with peat moss and compost but I am not sure it did enough. Finally though the corn seeds are in the ground, the last of our big garden projects for the season!

In a few weeks we will add role beans to the corn rows and then a week after the pumpkin seeds!

No matter were you live chances are you can garden in some way shape or form and if you need help brain storming just where to start send me a message! Happy Planting!