Do you have a garden? If so, I would love to hear your best tips. If not, you can learn along with me.
Growing up, the majority of our vegetables came from my grandparents’ garden. We ate the very best tasting tomatoes, the sweetest corn and yummiest green beans among other things. My grandparents with a huge garden would provide veggies for the entire family and it was a yearly event to “process” the harvest. Instead of shopping at the store we would go to the pantry for the jars of some of the goodness or freezer for other goodness.
It wasn’t until I was an adult, shopping for my own food that I realized how lucky I was to have access to the homegrown food. It has been a process of trial and error to find and cook the vegetables that taste like what I remember as a kid.
For years I have dreamed about growing my family’s vegetables in my own garden. I decided that this would be the year. The kids are old enough to be involved.
We started some seeds in the house a few weeks ago. Bella has been taken responsibility for making sure they are thriving. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been as successful as we wanted. Maybe next year we will try to start the plants as seeds again.
Although we live in a pretty urban area, we are surrounded my wildlife. There is a nice sized herd of deer that visit us daily and LOVE fresh veggies... really anything that is edible. We also have a ton of squirrels and chipmunks (until the snakes appear) who also destroy crops.
I’ve been researching raised gardens and decided on using pallets with a “cage” this year for our garden. Creating the garden from the pallets is a pretty easy project and creates perfect rows for our veggies. The pallets I found needed a little modification. We used a crowbar to remove every other slat to give enough space for our plants.
The landscape fabric was the strongest that I could find to hold the soil in and weeds out. I used a staple gun to attach the fabric on the back and sides of the pallet. I’m definitely not the expert on soil, but we used a combination of top soil, conditioner and a manure mix.
As far as the protection from our wildlife pets go, we build a cage from 1x2’s, 1x3’s and chicken wire. David took care of the cage construction and I took care of the chicken wire. Because being stabbed with a wire is not something I look forward to, I took care to bend and twist each of the cut wires.
To get the kids involved the initial part of the garden, I had them each decorate a clay pot for our herbs. While they loved this project, my time involvement was way bigger than theirs. It was like when you plan and cook a huge feast and it takes your family 15 minutes to eat it. Haha! They turned out great… almost exactly what I envisioned.
I’ll give you progress updates on our adventure.
If you want specific instructions on any of these projects, feel free to reach out to me!
