1st Years Gardening Part II

This was our vegetable patch at one point along the way. Kids can dig up all the weeds and roots while playing. Perfect!

I was very excited about my garden. I had BIG dreams about being very self sufficient, providing my family with tons of vegetables. I had BIG ideas! With everything going on at home, being big, heavy and pregnant, and having a hard enough time keeping up the basics at home, maybe gardening could've waited another calendar year. However, I am no quitter! Even if I did not give my 100% and did what should've been required, I still got - and am getting - something out of my garden experiment!

My broccoli plants grew really big but they produced small florets that I just couldn't see my family having to fight over during dinner time. Eventually, we dug them out, fed them our pet Guinea Pigs and made room for other plants, which I had sown into decomposable pots ready to plant.

The broccoli is on the left. They are still small in this picture. I never did take a picture of how big they grew. Lets put it this way, I could not see the soil around them. They stretched beyond the two planks along side them.

My lettuce was a hit. However, it may have been too much of a hassle outside and I could've easily had the plants inside. The lettuce grew fast and provided me the greens I needed for my famous smoothies. It was just the damn slugs that got to me. Endless slugs! Not a big fan of slimy slugs. I googled how to get rid of slugs without using overly harsh chemicals and how to make home-made, non-toxic pestacide. I will blog those recipes.

My spinach prematurely bolted, since June was a bit too cold. I planted new plants in July and we got a good freezer bag full of leaves. I gave the rest to the Guinea Pigs and removed the roots from my patch. I have big plans for my gardens empty space, oh yah! Just wait and see!

My spring onions did fine, grew well and were delish!! Yum YUM! I planted more!

I had planted my chard and dill right under our dryers 'fume pipe' which put me off. Our Guinea Pigs seem to benefit most from our garden.

1st years Gardening Part I

 

This is what was I was facing with all my little seedlings needing to be planted a.s.a.p! I had my work cut out for me and I was heavily pregnant too. Thank God for a loving, caring and strong husband. It took several days to clear this vegetable patch out. Several new gardening tools too, which we were luckily able to borrow.

I really like this picture above. It reminds me of the verse in Genesis!

 Genesis 3:16-19

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you. ”

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

I got them planted all in a rows. I placed planks in between the rows for easy access to the plants and also so I didn't have to stand on the soil.

I planted peas, broccoli, spinach, spring onions, tomatoes, dill and Swiss chard. Little did I know that half of these weren't going to work out as I had planned, for one reason or another. I will explain more in part II and III.

 My aunt had brought me herb pots for my yard.

The little beginnings of our pumpkins, squash, zucchini.