Garden site between the trees.
I have been blessed with a landlord that supports my green food ideology! They have given me permission to plant a garden in my huge backyard this year. And somewhere in the back of that huge yard is where my garden will find its’ home! I’m so excited I am beside myself. For days I have been thinking and planning to make this the best first year garden I possibly can. Now, I’m not romantically naive in believing it will be the easiest and highest producing garden ever. But I do have hopes of it at least being worth half the effort and resources put into. Then hopefully each year it will increase exponentially.
Because of the many what if’s, I have personally decided to pay for another spring/summer CSA membership this year. It would be a tragedy in my family if the garden failed AND we didn’t have all those delicious, healthy vegetables to rely on from Madison Creek Farms!
As I have gone through this planning phase, one of the best resources I have found has been Pinterest! It has been so quick and easy to scroll through the gardening topic and look for pictures and captions that are related to my particular interests. For me it’s been much quicker than researching everything by hand on Google.
In the coming weeks I will walk you through my planning process including:
- the size of my garden,
- the vegetables I chose,
- the layout,
- the type of garden,
- my planting calendar,
- starting my seedlings,
- compost, pest prevention, and getting dirty,
- and finally, the harvest.
My seed starter shells.
My goal is to grow things that are great money savers on the grocery budget, vegetables we love and eat all the time, and vegetables that are wonderful to use in my compost cooking. I hope to use items that are normally thrown away like leftover lumber, eggshells and two liter bottles to build my raised beds, start my seedlings and plant some of my vegetables in. I will even use seeds from my seed saving experience to cut costs in that area.
The trimmings from the vegetables will be harvested and eaten of course. But after that I plan on keeping the trimmings and getting as much value from them as I can by making soups, stocks and whatever else I can create, and then finally putting them in the compost heap to have zero expenses and zero waste in the garden AND in the kitchen with what I make of the harvest.
Next week I will be showing you how to use every day items, even compostable items, to start your garden seeds indoors.
Anyone planning on doing a garden for the first time this year?
Or any experienced gardeners have some tips for us newbies?
Shared on Hearth and Soul Blog Hop.
Recent Comments