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The first year Sean and I planted a garden, I remember the only thing that grew was the jalepenos, but I enjoyed picking them and making poppers for Sean! Besides that all I got was a LOT of mosquito bites! The house we were in at the time was surrounded by TONS of oak trees. Beautiful, but also gave us to much shade for the garden to grow well. The next couple of years didn't improve much, and we didn't have much time to dedicate to it. I was still in college and while I enjoyed helping Sean around his house, I simply wasn't into the outside stuff, I was happy filling picture frames with images from when we started dating and adding throw pillows to the couch to offer the house a more feminine touch! We got married, moved and started over in a new, much sunnier spot. Shortly after our wedding, we were thrilled to find out I was pregnant and the following summer, instead of caring about a garden, I was learning how to care for a newborn. One of my favorite garden memories of her was when she was about 1 year old, I was doing in home daycare at the time and had up to five kids on my busiest day. I thought it was an awesome idea to get the kids involved in planting our garden. All the kids helped us pick types of fruits and vegetables to plant and helped to "care" for the garden. They were great at watering and did their best to help pull weeds. Miss L has ALWAYS loved tomatoes, so that summer, we went out to play in the backyard and started by checking on and watering the garden. We picked a few ripe tomatoes and I let each of the kids eat a cherry tomato right off the plant! We all walked to the swing set to play and I placed the other tomatoes on the patio table. While I helped lift the other children onto the swings, I turned around and realized Miss L was no where to be found. I called her name and heard a little squeal. She had walked back to the deck, up the couple steps, and climbed into a chair at our patio table. When I came around from the back of the chair, I saw my sweet girl, wet, muddy, and COVERED in tomato seeds! She had reached one down and was sitting happily in the chair eating a large tomato like it was an apple! This was the beginning of my love for our vegetable garden. I wanted to have more mud and seed covered memories. I realized that the garden was not only something that could fill our belly but also provide us with an activity to do together and a place that I could give my children independence and an opportunity to explore, get dirty, and feel responsibility and accomplishment!
This year, my Mother's Day gift was the addition of two more raised beds to our garden. I made a list of all the fruits and vegetables I would love to plant, and we selected what made the most sense for our garden. I was so excited this year when my rhubarb and strawberries all came back bigger and better! The strawberries spread taking over half of one of our raised beds and are full of white blooms already. My rhubarb had giant green leaves and stalks that were already twice as thick as last years before I even realized it was growing again! These were fun things to start watching as we waited for the never ending winter to finally end and the warm temperatures of spring to finally arrive (even though I am not sure that has happened yet, but I remain optomistic. This year our garden has tomatoes (roma, beef steak, 2 varieties of heirloom, grape, and tomatillo), green bell peppers, sweet and hot banana peppers, purple bell pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, burpless cucumbers, canning cucumbers, red and green cabbage, red onion, rhubarb, strawberries, zuchinni and yellow squash, canteloupe, and watermelon. We have chosen to use landscape fabric in the boxes with any plants that do not need to spread as an attempt to help with weeds. This is something we did last year and felt went well so decided to stick with it again this year. We stake our tomatoes with wood stakes and use a loose string to tie the plants to the stakes to help them stay tall. We have no wind block in our yard, so the wind is to strong for the small growing plants initially. We also have a triangular trellis set up for the cucumbers to vine up as they grow. So far we have had a number of cold nights in which we have had light frost. We have not lost any plants that we are aware of yet, but are anticipating that we might in the next few days. We will we watching them closely to ensure any plants lost will be replaced quickly. Stay tuned for more info on how our garden is doing as well as ways that we get our kids involved in the garden and make it a family project!