Our Spring Garden

I LOVE growing my own food.  I never thought I would be the type of girl that would get such pleasure out of digging in the dirt with my family, but I DO!  By the time winter is coming to an end every year, my hubby and I are itching to plan out what our garden will look like that year.  We typically do a spring crop and a summer crop.  We say every year that we are going to try a fall/winter crop but this is year six for our garden and we have yet to do one.  Oh well.  Maybe this year will be our year.  **Not holding my breath**

Normally we just till and plant right in the ground.  Ken spends long hard hours tilling the ground, replenishing the ground with new compost, and then we plant.  We do great until mid summer hits and we go out of town on vacation or camp with the youth group.  When we get back the weeds are OUT.OF.CONTROL and then our garden pretty much goes to pot.  It's a wonder we ever get anything out of it, but our little modest garden has faithfully produced bountiful crops every year despite our neglect.  Bad gardeners!  Whoops!

This year our garden is a little different. We decided to try raised beds.  They are supposed to help slackers like ourselves have low maintenance gardens, and so far we are loving them.  They were easy to build, thanks to my handy dandy hubby.  Really though, I helped put them together and if you can work a saw and screw in some screws, you're good to go.  This year our raised beds are only one board high due to budget, but next year we plan to add another board to make them even higher and better.

Benefits of raised beds
Better drainage
Fewer weeds
Soil control
Keeps out pests
loose dirt without loads of tilling
Easier on the back
Portable
Purty


For our spring crop this year we currently have planted spinach, lettuce, broccoli, collard greens, onions, garlic, and potatoes.  I wanted to do more, but we just didn't get around to it.  See...slackers.

 1st bed:  lettuce, garlic and spinach...and some random scissors that I used to cut the lettuce and spinach.

 2nd bed:  broccoli and collard greens

 3rd bed:  onions and potatoes

 I picked our first bunch of  spinach and lettuce tonight.  Two big bags!  We've been nibbling on it for a couple of weeks here and there but we finally have enough for some sizable salads.  I can't WAIT!  Fresh salads with homemade dressing, topped with some chicken and homemade sourdough croutons...best salad ever.  YUM!

 

So there it is.  Our Spring garden.  I can't wait to plant for the summer.  We have lots more yummy stuff to grow and will keep you posted.  

Do you have a garden?  What are you growing?